Articles by Govind Kelkar

Studying women’s work and energy use through field studies in Khasi communities in Meghalaya and Angami communities in Nagaland, the links between energy use and women’s work and leisure are explored. It is found that the choice of energy source is closely linked with women’s participation in the management of energy resources, their opportunities to earn incomes, and their ability to negotiate the cultural and social norms of their communities. Energy planning cannot stop with the provision of household access to electricity or liquefied petroleum gas. A new deal for women in the energy sector is delineated, which relates to overcoming sociocultural limits and increasing the opportunity cost of women’s labour and their right to assets.

Asset ownership and control rights are preferable to numerous policy alternatives for women's empowerment. This paper is an attempt at drawing attention to the complex inter-relationship between women agricultural producers and their lack of rights to land and related factors of production. It further explores implications of women's marginal rights to land for their economic security and agricultural productivity.

In Bangladesh, the unintended consequences of the microcredit system with NGOs as partners have been far-reaching. The very structure of social production that focused on 'man as the breadwinner' has changed to accommodate a substantial and permanent role for women as income-earners. A clue to the far-reaching consequences of this transformation is the manner in which gender norms of respect are being re-created from glorifying 'purdah-nashin' women to valuing independent income, education, work outside the home, mobility and professional engagement. Such changes have in turn, led to substantial alterations in the norms and concepts by which women define their terms of engagement with the world.

The paper argues that forests are not only sources of timber and non-timber forest products, but also of environmental services. It is through the fall in the supply of local environmental services, like nutrient recycling and soil formation, that forest communities bear the external costs that are not included in the price of timber and other forest products. Local environmental services are taken into account in forest management decisions by local communities, but not by external agents, like forest departments, and form a basis for setting up local forest management systems. In arguing for the establishment of forest communities' property rights over forests, the paper supports the establishment of markets for regional and global environmental services provided by forests.

Cross-Cultural Analysis of Struggles to Change Gender Relations Dev Nathan Govind Kelkar Yu Xiaogang This paper examines the processes which led to the change in gender relations and the establishment of patriarchy. Specifically, the authors look at some events which are evidence of the struggle between women and men in the course of establishing men's domination. The phenomena analysed are those of 'dain' among the Santhal and Munda in Jharkhand, India; the 'pippa' of the Dai in Yunnan province of China; and the Chao Pu Xi among the Naxi and Du among the Mosuo, also in Yunnan province.