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This book presents a comprehensive account of the transformation of Assam's forests and ecology from early nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. It locates present-day ecological conflicts in the colonial era when contest over forest, land, and resource began to take new shape. Arupjyoti Saikia delineates how forest resources in Assam were mapped and intergrated with mechant capitalism since the early nineteenth century. He shows how imperial forestry practices led to changes in traditional resource utilization patterns. The book also examines the political economy of conservation practices. It explores the question of law and conservation, role of institutions and organizations, and the changing role of the forests in imperial economy. The book argues how the making of forest policy in the postcolonial period was defind by the complexities of the political matrix. It discusses plantation, silvicultural practices, protection and regeneration of forests, and livlihood practices. The author also analyses public debates surrounding ecology and environmental changes in conservation practices after the 1980 Act.
This text presents an account of the transformation of Assam's forests and ecology from the colonial times to the present. It examines the role of imperial forestry practices, law and conservation, role of institutions, plantations, silvicultural practices, protection and regeneration, and livelihood practices.
Attempts To Analyse The Britsh Forest Policy From 1864-1947 With Focus On Assam. With Focus On Assam Traces The Genesis And Development Of The Policy And Examines The Socio-Economic And Environmental Impact Of The People And State As A Whole. 7 Chapters Including Conclusion - Appendices - Bibliography - Index - Glossary.
This volume studies the intersection of capital and ecology primarily in one of the most sensitive geographies of the world, the Eastern Himalayan region. It looks at how the region has become a melting ground of neoliberal developmentalism and ecological subjectivities with the penetrating forces of global and state capitalism, economic projects, and complex power relations. The essays in the volume argue that specific focus on energy infrastructure and energy production has pushed technology and capital towards asset building which has had an adverse effect on the environment, labour relations, indigenous knowledge systems, and traditional livelihood practices in the area. They look at assets like mega dams, electricity transmission networks, natural gas grids, infrastructural and developmental projects, and other alternative ventures which require interventions in the natural world and its resource deposits. Interdisciplinary in approach, the volume adopts a variety of lenses — developmentalism, state strategy, indigenous voices, geopolitics, and environmentalism — to provide a unique and alternative narrative on the various dimensions of the ecological risks and livelihood threats. It will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of politics, development studies, indigenous studies, and Asian studies.
'A model work of historical scholarship'-Ramachandra Guha 'The most well-researched, comprehensive history of contemporary Assam ever written'-Partha Chatterjee The crucial battles of World War II fought in India's north-east-followed soon after by Independence and Partition-had a critical impact on the making of modern Assam. In the three decades following 1947, the state of Assam underwent massive political turmoil, geographical instability, and social and demographic upheaval, among others. Later, the truncated state suffered widespread unrest as various groups believed their cultural identity and political leverage were under threat. New social energies and political forces were unleashed and came to the fore. Definitive, comprehensive and unputdownable, The Quest for Modern Assam explores the interconnected layers of political, environmental, economic and cultural processes that shaped the development of Assam since the 1940s. It offers an authoritative account that sets new standards in the writing of regional political history. Not to be missed by any one keen on Assam, India, Asia or world history in the twentieth century.
India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh contain one-fifth of humanity, are home to many biodiversity hotspots, and are among the nations most subject to climatic stresses. By surveying their environmental history, we can gain major insights into the causes and implications of the Indian subcontinent's current conditions. This accessible new survey begins roughly 100 million years ago, when continental drift moved India from the South Pole and across the Indian Ocean, forming the Himalayan Mountains and creating monsoons. Coverage continues to the twenty-first century, taking readers beyond independence from colonial rule. The new nations of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have produced rising populations and have stretched natural resources, even as they have become increasingly engaged with climate change. To understand the region's current and future pressing issues, Michael H. Fisher argues that we must engage with the long and complex history of interactions among its people, land, climate, flora, and fauna.
In Plantation Worlds, Maan Barua interrogates debates on planetary transformations through the histories and ecologies of plantations. Drawing on long-term research spanning fifteen years, Barua presents a unique ethnography attentive to the lives of both people and elephants amid tea plantations in the Indian state of Assam. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, nearly three million people were brought in to Assam’s plantations to work under conditions of indenture. Plantations dramatically altered the region’s landscape, plundered resources, and created fraught worlds for elephants and people. Their extractive logics and colonial legacies prevail as durations, forging the ambit of infrastructures, labor, habitability, and conservation in the present. And yet, as the perspectives of the Adivasi plantation worker community and lifeworlds of elephants show, possibilities for enacting a decolonial imaginary of landscape remain present amid immiseration. From the margins of the Global South, Barua offers an alternative grammar for articulating environmental change. In so doing, he prompts a rethinking of multispecies ecologies and how they are structured by colonialism and race.
This book offers a bird’s eye view of the economic and environmental history of the Indian peninsula during colonial era. It analyses the nature of colonial land revenue policy, commercialisation of forest resources, consequences of coffee plantations, intrusion into tribal private forests and tribal-controlled geographical regions, and disintegration of their socio-cultural, political, administrative and judicial systems during the British Raj. It explores the economic history of the region through regional and ‘non-market’ economies and addresses the issues concerning local communities. Comprehensive, systematic and rich in archival material, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers in history, especially those concerned with economic and environmental history.
Arnab Dey examines the intersecting role of law, ecology, and agronomy in shaping the history of tea and its plantations in British east India. He suggests that looking afresh at the legal, environmental, and agro-economic aspects of tea production illuminate covert, expedient, and often illegal administrative and commercial dealings that had an immediate and long-term human and environmental impact on the region. Critiquing this imperial commodity's advertised mandate of agrarian modernization in colonial India, Dey points to numerous tea pests, disease ecologies, felled forests, harsh working conditions, wage manipulation, and political resistance as examples of tea's unseemly legacy in the subcontinent. Dey draws together the plant and the plantation in highlighting the ironies of the tea economy and its consequences for the agrarian history of eastern India.
This book presents a nuanced analysis of governance in South Asia. It examines a range of themes including civil service reforms, women and development, environmental governance and public sector programmes, together with the impact of globalization on local issues and its influence on governance in the region. Through grass-roots studies, the volume also traces how the last 20 years have seen a social and economic resurgence in South Asia – transiting from stages of poverty, low growth rates, illiteracy and poor health to flourishing economies, improved savings, greater investments and stronger human development indicators. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, this book will be of great interest to scholars of politics and public administration, development studies, labour studies, and sociology and social anthropology. It will also be useful to practitioners in the field, NGOs and civil servants.