Articles by Bina Agarwal

In the face of persistent rural poverty, an incomplete agrarian transition, the predominance of small and marginal farms and a growing feminisation of agriculture, this paper argues for a new institutional approach to poverty reduction, agricultural revival and social empowerment. It makes a strong case for a group approach to agricultural investment and production by promoting collectivities of the poor which, it argues, would be much more effective on all these counts than the traditional individual-oriented approaches. The collectivities proposed here, however, are small-sized, voluntary, socio-economically homogeneous and participatory in decision-making, in keeping with the principles emphasised in a human rights approach to development. The paper describes a range of successful cases of agricultural production collectivities from the transition economies and south Asia. It also reflects on the contexts in which they may be expected to succeed, and how these efforts could be replicated for wider geographic coverage and impact.

Although the Constitution promises no discrimination on the basis of sex as a fundamental right, most inheritance and ceiling provisions relating to one of the most important economic resources in the country continue to he highly gender discriminatory; and the Ninth Schedule leruls itself to their perpetuation. Suiprisingly, these aspects, which impinge directly and crucially on women's legal and economic status, have received little attention so far from either researchers or activists. This paper attempts to fill some of this gap.

Some Data and Conceptual Biases Bina Agarwal There continues to be little appreciation that problems of unemployment, poverty and destitution are in many instances gender-specific so that any serious attempt to alleviate these conditions and/or prevent their further aggravation would require a particular focus on the women of poor households. The accuracy of national level statistics, which usually serve as the principal data input in the framing of development policies, is severely impaired by biases which lead to an undercounting of women, both as workers and as those available for work. This paper seeks to spell out the nature and sources of these data biases and attempts to provide pointers on how they could be corrected and some of the data gaps filled.