CfPs: National Seminar on Transformation in Villages: Implications and Outcomes

National Seminar on Transformation in Villages: Implications and Outcomes
December 6-7, 2012
Venue: Institute of Development Studies, Jaipur

The shift in development strategy from the early 1990s has impacted on different sectors in varying degrees.  It is widely reported that rural India has witnessed changes in every walk of economic life and the neoliberal package has left a deep mark on socio-economic profile of villages. Farmers of different categories and other small producers in the village also have experienced transformation on an unprecedented scale in the post-independent era.  Important changes in the commodity production sector are manifested in cropping pattern, cattle rearing, land, labour and credit (informal) markets.  While such changes are considered to be an expected outcome of the policy shift, some of the policy induced transformations in villages (environment, water, and common property resources) remain not so explicit or partly hidden.  The perceptible changes and transformations in villages have not been uniform across social and economic groupings within villages.  To put it differently, there has been a class and caste bias in the delivery of positives and negatives of the shift in the policy paradigm.

Although macro and micro level studies, to a certain extent, do inform broadly the changes in rural India, findings so far have been inadequate to bring into focus inter-intra village differences.  Case studies supply information on prominent sample, but does not sufficiently reveal manifold dimensions of the impact on diverse social and economic groupings. It assumes importance how the conclusions drawn out of macro and micro level studies differ within villages, how the economic, political and social life in villages have changed over the last two decades of economic reforms and its induced changes on  production, distribution, consumption and exchange relations in the village. However, the emphasis on villages does not overlook the fact that village is a part of the multi-scaled structure and integral part of local, regional, national and international socio-economic order. In other words, village is not a self contained production unit and, therefore, problems at the village level can scarcely be resolved at the village level.

The primary objective of the two-day seminar is to capture the transformations (through field observations) in political, economic and social life of villages during the last two decades. Also, highlight possible outcomes and implications of the observed transformations in the villages.

Village studies (field visit based) research papers are invited on the following themes:

1. Crop shift and its outcome
2. Labour market changes
3. Informal Credit Market
4. Animal husbandry sector
5. Ecological and environmental issues
6. Land market, water scarcity and its outcome
7. Transformations in political, social and economic life of village

Important dates

• Abstract submission:  November 01,  2012
• Full Paper submission: November 20, 2012.
• Abstract and completed papers to be sent to: mohanakumar.s@gmail.com; mohanakumar@idsj.org

Or

Mohanakumar,S. Associate Professor, Institute of Development Studies, 8-B, Jhalana Institutional Area, Jaipur, Rajasthan-  302 004.  Mob: 09462065620

The selected papers in the national seminar will be published in a volume of collected essays on the subject.  Authors of selected paper will receive support for travel and stay.

Further Details