Articles by J J Roy Burman

Shifting Landscapes: The Making and Remaking of Village Commons in India by Rita Brara; Oxford University Press, New Delhi;
J J ROY BURMAN Rapid depletion of forests, destruction of the natural resources and the burgeoning environmental crisis has of late drawn the attention of the academics, environmentalists, activists, development workers and the NGOs world over. The present treatise under review provides a reflection of the same. Rita Brara, the author is immensely concerned about this. She stresses at the outset that the environmental concern is not to be limited only in physical terms. It needs to be looked through the edifice of social constructs. Her prime concern is about the

Despite fears of increasing communalisation in public life and the attempt to portray Shivaji as a 'Hindu' raja, long-standing syncretic traditions observed by followers of different communities, from diverse caste backgrounds continue to flourish till date across Maharashtra. As borne out by several case studies cited in this article, Hindus and Muslims frequent dargahs, mazars and chillahs, and there are instances of temples in the Konkan region drawing followers of Islam. There are also shrines and sacred sites that possess a dual identity - they are both a dargah and a temple at the same time; deities bear both Hindu and Islamic names and priests of both communities officiate at ceremonies.

K Johri among others), and defies the simple derivations from Lewisian constructs; there is also in fact a labour market in rural agriculture, governed by both tradition and changes in practice. The Todaro type dualisms are also weak reeds for understanding urban labour markets and rural-urban migration. Studies of income distribution and poverty have not gone beyond identifying macro or regional magnitudes or demarcations the structure of the problem.to illuminate the labour market processes at work. We are thus critically lacking in information on the wage structures (given the chronic inflation, diverse payments arrangements, and pooling of wage and non-wage incomes), labour mobility, labour market adjustments to changes in economic conditions, the costs and incidence of work stoppages, economic assessments of employee provident and sickness insurance schemes and of alternatives, the scope for efficiency wages, and so forth. Policy has thus been made by fiat, with little to go on as to its probable impact or the range of options. Given the pressures, governments of course decide, as they must, but such decisions do little to settle issues or move governance to a higher level of informed action. These comments should not be interpreted as endorsing uncritical applications of standard neo-classical analysis. Given Indian conditions, it would be important that efforts at analysis go beyond skeletal theory abstracted from the social structure, but aim at integrating it in the analysis from early on (as Indira Rajaraman has done so well).