Governing the conflicted commons: democracy in the Indian tribal belt

Abstract

This paper problematises the question of how policy-relevant knowledge is produced, how it can include concerns of all stakeholders, and how it informs political processes, by focussing on a specific case. To do so, it surveys literature on impacts of resource expropriation and processes of exclusion on indigenes in central eastern India. It examines how a shift to local democracy in recent decades can potentially facilitate inclusion of concerns of indigenes and the environment in natural resource governance within this resource-rich but poverty-stricken conflict zone. It argues that, in order to enable democratic resource governance, evidence-based knowledge must inform changes in institutional processes. It makes the case for a doctoral project being undertaken during 2012-15 that seeks to generate such knowledge. The project emphasizes the importance of understanding the relationship between decentralisation reforms and indigenous communities’ rights and participation in natural resource governance, in order to enable inclusive governance in a conflict zone of economic, political, ethnic and ecological interests. This paper justifies why this knowledge is required and describes the methodological approach adopted to generate it. It also preliminarily identifies gaps in the political process, explaining why it is challenging for such research to facilitate better implementation even if it does feed back into more evidence-based policy.