Dev Nathan

Agriculture at a Crossroads

The present path of agricultural development will not achieve development goals according to a recent assessment, but a solid foundation for improvements exists.

Gender Relations and Technological Change in Asia

In the post-colonial world of the last 50 years in Asia, one broad conclusion can be stated: overall women have advanced in search of more equal gender relations in most of the continent. The challenges to patriarchy are increasing and patriarchy is weakening. This article examines how advances in information technologies have the potential to change the organization of work in Asia, especially in the areas of gender relations and cultural ceilings. Our major questions are: how are women affecting and have been affected by these wide-ranging technological advances? How do we understand the ongoing contradiction of development policy - being efficient and productive as well as pursuing social and gender equality and sustainable human development? While the new information technologies in manufacturing, services and communications hold great promise for dissolving old bases of discrimination, the potential of these technologies for decentralized and more humane development, with participatory political structures, has yet to be realized because of continuing patriarchal relations and the domination of accumulation over development goals.

Wood Energy: The Role of Women's Unvalued Labor

Gender issues have been introduced into energy policy considerations as the first round of efforts to mitigate the rural energy crisis (involving noncommercial fuels like wood) with improved technology, such as improved stoves, failed because the specific needs of the users (women) were ignored. Models of household energy use continue to consider the household a unit possessing certain aggregate resources. These models continue to be applied to both rural and urban areas despite the fact that a gender analysis of labor availability in rural households may be necessary to understand the production and consumption of wood fuel and the fact that urban and rural wood fuel use patterns vary considerably. Studies show that the collection, processing, and use of wood fuel is largely a task of women and children who have fewer possible opportunities than men of earning income with their available time. Rural households that collect their own fuel will not have an incentive to invest in an improved stove or more efficient commercial fuels if the time saved by the women from such an investment would not result in more income to the household. Thus, while income plays an important role in sparking a transition from biomass fuels in urban areas, it fails to play such a role in rural areas. Thus, attempts to increase fuel efficiency or fuel switching should focus on increasing womens income-earning opportunities outside of the homestead. Studies of leisure also indicate that sustained underinvestment in womens labor-saving devices also reflects a bias towards male rather than female leisure. A transition up the energy ladder is desirable not only to save womens time and improve the environment but also to improve the health of women and children and calls for village-level solutions.

Gender Relations in Forest Societies in Asia

Based on fieldwork in several indigenous societies in South and Southeast Asia, this arti cle explores the change in gender relations from a matrilineal and/or egalitarian system to one where male domination is present as the norm. We looked at changes in gender rela tions in forest societies in four situations: (a) colonial and state rule over forest communi ties and the takeover of forests; (b) historical and contemporary revolts of forest-dwelling women and men to re-establish community control over forests; (c) the response of national states to these autonomy movements by shifting to devolution as a policy; and (d) the current situation, where womens inclusion in local forest management is becom ing more a policy norm. However, these norms of womens inclusion, though still limited in space, have also come about through a process of struggle by women.

The Zero-Fee Tour: Price Competition and Network Downgrading in Chinese Tourism

Abstract This paper deals with the impact of competition on the tourism network in China. It identifies the supply and demand conditions among service providers, tour operators and tourists that have led to the zero-fee tour and then deals with the impact of this intense price competition in terms of the reduction in product quality and degrading of the whole network. The paper also deals with various attempts by local governments and others to curb the zero-fee tour. It points out that price restrictions have worked in a destination that has established a brand value and, thus, has become a differentiated product. In concluding, the paper deals with the supply reductions that are needed to reduce price competition in various segments of the tourism network.

Securing Women's Property Rights: Problems of Good Governance and Establishing Norms of Economic Functioning:

The article deals with the post-project experiences of women who acquired fish farming rights in ponds on government land. In the strongly patriarchal situation of Bangladesh, the establishment of systems of good governance is needed for such redistribution of assets to vulnerable women to take place. Further, it is also necessary to build coalitions against mens use of violence and other methods to forcibly grab the income or assets of women. The design ofpoverty reduction and asset redistribution approaches has to take account of the need for a long period of support and collateral-free group credit for poor women to be able to establish secure user rights in assets transferred to them, and to develop their economic assets. The successful cases, which are more than half of the total, demonstrate the substantial build up of assets by the women and their gains in security and social standing.

Labour in global value chains in Asia

This book brings together a set of studies on labour conditions in global value chains (GVCs) in a variety of sectors, ranging from labour-intensive sectors (garments, fresh fruits, tourism), to medium and high technology sectors (automobiles, electronics and telecom) and knowledge-intensive sectors (IT software services). The studies span a number of countries across Asia - Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. This book stands out for its grounded and detailed examination of both what is working and what is not working as Asian labour gets more embedded in global value chains. In trying to identify spaces for progressive action and policies in the current GVC-linked global work environment, the book goes against the grain in searching for an alternative to laissez faire forms of globalisation.

The Woodfuel Crisis: the Need for Gender Analysis

Increasingly, woodfuel and other biomass sources have become inaccessible to women due to large-scale degradation of the environment and the inability to sustain rural energy sources. There are two major features of such an energy crisis. Women in poor, rural households are affected more than others, leading to their increased labor in collecting woodfuel from longer distances. Also, there is a diversion of organic materials, like cow dung, dry leaves, and crop residues, from other uses, such as fertilizing fields, leading to eventual scarcity, with possible adverse consequences on agricultural fertility.

Globalization and Labour in Developing Countries: India

This article deals with labour under globalizing conditions in developing countries, particularly India.* It poses the question of how the convergence in global incomes and inequality has impacted on labour. In the context of the experience of the developing countries as a whole, the article argues that strategic interventions in global world markets can increase the share of labour in the benefits from globalization. Thereafter, the article deals with the position of India and shows that there has been an increase in rural real wages and in agricultural productivity after globalization. The article argues that globalization provides space for the upgradation of the capacities of labour in order to improve real wages and the quality of employment.

Global inequality, rising powers and labour standards

The paper analyses growing inequality in the rising powers, concentrating on the situation in China and India. It describes the various processes that are currently underway to reduce inequality in these economies. These processes include a combination of tightening the labour market, as best seen in China, increasing rural productivity and implementing government measures to boost basic rural incomes in all such countries. Reductions in inequality in the emerging economies have a global macro-economic effect of increasing consumption, thus counteracting the current global slowdown. They also have the benefit of creating more space at the bottom for poorer economies to take up more of the worlds low-skill production, as the emerging economies themselves move up to higher skill production and exports. This sequential upgrading is being driven by the growth of emerging economy markets and by wage increases in these economies.