91ÊÓƵ

Towards a Gendered and Green Job Guarantee Programme in India (2025)

Abstract

The social organisation of productive and reproductive labour leaves women disproportionately vulnerable to climatic changes and extreme weather events. In the Indian context, this could further reduce women’s labour force participation rates from levels that are already relatively low. Employment opportunities for women in the clean energy sector have been noted to create transformative changes in their lives only with policies such as government intervention to provide accessible public services. Towards this end, I propose a gendered and green job guarantee programme directed towards education, health, public transport (or universal basic services), climate mitigation, and climate adaptation activities.

The intersections between gendered livelihoods and the climate crisis, as well as the gendered and environmental implications of the existing rural employment guarantee in India, are reviewed. Gender-disaggregated employment creation through the proposed job guarantee programme and the budgetary implications are estimated, along with suggestions for potential sources of financing. The programme is estimated to result in the creation of 36 million guaranteed jobs, which accounts for 6% of the workforce as of 2023. Of these jobs, women’s employment opportunities constitute 11.6 million. The number of guaranteed jobs created for women accounts for 4% of the rural female workforce and 11.6% of the urban female workforce. Thus, a gendered and green job guarantee programme in India could be an effective form of government intervention to address the interlinked issues of women’s work and climate action in India.

The Economic and Labour Relations Review, Vol. 36, No. 2, pp. 337–350.

Researcher: Dr. Anjana Thampi

Climate Change and Livestock Holding: Inequalities in Adaptation and the Need for Localised Policies (2025)

Abstract

This chapter further explores the ecological question of how climate change and livestock development policies (both national and state) have impacted people's livelihood in coastal India, which are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. This chapter focuses on the change in livestock holding and the shift in livelihood patterns, especially among the small and marginal farmers. Although the share of agriculture and allied sector in total GDP has declined from 18.5 per cent to 17.2 per cent, livestock's contribution to agricultural GDP has increased from 2.0 per cent to 4.9 per cent over the 2011–12 to 2017–18 period. According to the latest NSS 70th round survey of agricultural households (January 2013), despite being marginal land-holding households (0.002–1.00 ha. of land), 75per cent% of them are significant livestock keepers. They nurture 57.7 per cent of the total bovine population, 66.9 per cent of the small ruminants (sheep and goat), 66.1 per cent of all the poultry and 62.9 per cent of the pig population. The vast repertoire of indigenous livestock breeds, which have evolved over the years across various agro-ecological zones in India, are specifically suited to the local conditions. It enables better adaptability to a range of diseases and withstanding climatic fluctuations. However, livestock production receives constant challenges from disasters like drought, flood, cyclone and other natural disasters, which leave devastating impacts on this sector. The effects on livestock are manifold—impaired metabolism, productivity and reproductive performance to the incidence of diseases. For instance, scientific evidence suggests that, with an increase in milk productivity, metabolic heat production in dairy cows increases and their capacity to tolerate elevated temperatures decreases. Simultaneously, an increase in temperature, as a consequence of global warming, adversely impacts milk production in bovines.

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Collaborators: Dr. Shouvik Chakraborty, Dr. Debanjana Dey, and Dr. Anjana Thampi

Climate Adaptation and Job Creation: Addressing the Climate and Livelihoods Crises in India (2023)

Working Paper No. 587, Political Economy Research Institute

Abstract

India was seventh in a list of the ten most affected countries due to extreme weather events in 2019. A sharp increase in the frequency and intensity of such events in the country by the end of the twenty-first century is projected. At the same time, relatively high economic growth rates have not resulted in secure and sustainable employment opportunities in the Indian economy. The loss of millions of jobs due to climate hazards in the country is also projected. In this context, I raise two key questions. First, are livelihoods in certain regions within India more vulnerable to climatic changes? The priority regions for adaptation planning and intervention are identified by constructing a livelihoods vulnerability index. Second, can institutional climate adaptation activities simultaneously address the climate and livelihoods crises in the country? The job creation estimates through five representative adaptation activities support the need for increased spending in a climate adaptation programme. Spending 1.5 percent of the GDP on a climate adaptation programme could create jobs to the extent of 1.3 percent of the labour force as of 2017-18. Investing 3 percent of the GDP on a combined climate adaptation and mitigation programme over the same amount spent instead on a fossil fuel-based programme would lead to net employment gains of around 2 percent of the labour force. This paper argues that investing in climate adaptation activities can secure livelihoods while improving mechanisms to build resilience to climate hazards. Such activities, if planned and implemented in accordance with the geographies, vulnerabilities, and socio-economic patterns of each region, could be transformational.

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Researcher: Dr. Anjana Thampi

Climate Change Litigation: Chronicles from the 91ÊÓƵ South. A Comparative Study'

Abstract

The battles against climate change are being fought at the international level; on the domestic front; on the streets and in the courts. Climate change litigation is one such effort. The global expansion in climate litigation gives substance to claims of a transnational climate justice movement that casts courts as important players in shaping multilevel climate governance. Climate change litigants, lawyers, and judges of one country are taking their cue from their counterparts in other countries. However, only the efforts of the 91ÊÓƵ North have received prominence. The rest of the world is slated to be sleeping silently. The authors aim to de-bunk this myth. In doing so, the authors endeavour to highlight important contributions by the Courts in the 91ÊÓƵ South in furthering the jurisprudence of climate change litigation.

Collaborator: Anjana Ramanathan & Sudha Kavuri

Comparative Law Review, DOI:

Stewards of the Sea: Empowering India's Traditional Fisherfolk to Safeguard Coastal Ecosystems'

Abstract

Provincial and federal governments in India classify traditional fisher-folk as backward even if no formal laws explicitly protect their rights. In this article, we elaborate on how as guardians of these coasts, traditional fisherfolk evolved stringent social and cultural norms to protect the health of critical ecosystems. We examine recent ‘developments’ in the Indian context and their impact on coastal ecosystems and traditional fishing communities – issues that reflect broader global trends. We then outline relevant Indian legislation that were designed to protect marine ecosystems and benefit traditional fisherfolk while highlighting their shortcomings. Additionally, we touch upon nationally important case laws pertinent to these issues. We also delve into relevant guidelines that hold promise. We explore a paradigm where traditional fishers have integrated technology with traditional governance practices to successfully nurture coastal ecosystems. We conclude by advocating for secure tenure rights and by identifying opportunities for traditional and small-scale fisherfolk to strengthen their livelihoods sustainably.

Collaborator: Anjana Ramanathan & Sudha Kavuri

Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development Link:

Land: Governance, Digitisation and Human Rights – A Comparative Study

Abstract

The digitization of land records is being promoted by the World Bank at scale, especially in developing countries. Efficiently maintaining land records can improve tenure safety and food security, reduce poverty, and aid democratic urbanization. While the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development encourages the use of new technology to administer land, it also forewarns that such initiatives ought to factor in digital divide. These evolving processes tend to have a detrimental impact on the tenure rights of marginalized people who are devoid of both access and understanding of such modernization efforts. Through this paper, we examine digitization and associated land governance processes from a human rights perspective. To bring them to light, we compare digitization initiatives in both India and South Africa and draw lessons from them to address issues of equity, inclusion, and good governance in an increasingly digital world.

Collaborator: Anjana Ramanathan & Sudha Kavuri

Comparative Law Review, DOI:

A Case Study of Three Communities – Indigenous Women, Jurisprudence and Climate Justice'

Abstract

The women of the Ogoni Tribe in Nigeria, those of the Dongria Kondh tribe in India, and the Ogiek women from Kenya could perhaps not be more distant geographically. However, the underlying threads of courage, the determination to fight for social justice and the resistance to depredation and attacks on their ways of life weave them together.

These economically vulnerable communities have been systematically discriminated against by the state and neglected by the larger society. Furthermore, their lands and livelihoods have been increasingly subject to unrelenting attacks from the ever pervasive “development”. Their resilience in the face of systematic oppression may hold relevance and important lessons for us too, as the world around becomes more complex and vulnerable, due largely to economic greed and social inequality; the effects of which are seen in and in turn hastened by climate change and environmental degradation.

This article attempts to identify the common threads in the struggles of these communities and the lessons that their experiences of social and political mobilisation offer to us. Specifically, the article will focus on the role women have played and will also look to underpin these struggles and responses theoretically so their exemplary successes may be replicated to inspire similar movements across the world. In essence, the authors study commonalities intertwined between climate and social justice movements spearheaded by vulnerable women in the global South to understand and highlight their contribution to the jurisprudence of evolving movements across the world.

Collaborator: Anjana Ramanathan & Sudha Kavuri

Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, .

The Missing stakeholders in India's Air Pollution Story

Abstract

Livelihood for construction workers is often used as an argument for continuing construction work despite severe air quality levels. But what about the well-being of the workers?

Collaborator: Dr. Aashita Dawer

Creating Enemies: (Mis)Appropriating Muslim Properties

Abstract

Together, the Enemy Property Amendment and Waqf Amendment will disempower Muslims by seizing the property they rightly own.

Collaborator: Dr. Aashita Dawer

Primacy of Property as Devolution of Rights: Case of Women in India through the Lens of Inheritance Laws

Collaborator: Dr. Aashita Dawer

Asian Journal of Law and Society: