Seminar on ‘The Political Ecology of Tribal Development and Policy: Rethinking Land, Labour and Nature in the Satpura Hills, Madhya Pradesh, 1860-2025’ on 30th October
The Centre for Public Policy hosted talk will be led by Dr. Budhaditya Das, Assistant Professor, School of Human Ecology, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi
21 October, 2025, Bengaluru: The Centre for Public Policy (CPP) will host a research seminar on, ‘The Political Ecology of Tribal Development and Policy: Rethinking Land, Labour and Nature in the Satpura Hills, Madhya Pradesh, 1860-2025’, from 3.30 pm to 5.00 pm on 30th October 2025. The talk will be led by Dr. Budhaditya Das, Assistant Professor, School of Human Ecology, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi, and will be based on his field research in Madhya Pradesh.
Abstract
Policymaking for Adivasi communities focuses on securing their rights to forests and land, protecting indigenous customs and cultural identity, and improving access to education, healthcare and public infrastructure in tribal-dominated landscapes. Economic poverty and political marginalization is attributed to a long history of violence and subjugation that begins with British colonialism in the 19th century and continues in the 21st century with struggles around ecological commons and land dispossession. In this seminar, the speaker will propose an alternate political ecology reading of state and Adivasi relations that foregrounds conceptions of power, territory and governmentality. Such a reading facilitates going beyond conceptual binaries such as domination/resistance, forest/agrarian and centralization/decentralization that have long dominated policy and political common sense around tribal development.
The seminar is based on long-term field research carried out in the teak forests of Satpura hills, Madhya Pradesh, with Gond and Korku Adivasi residents of forest villages. Dr. Das argues that forest villagers have engaged with the colonial, postcolonial and developmental state for over 150 years with strategies of evasion, negotiation, claims-making, compliance and resistance. This builds a conceptualization of Adivasi agency and tribal modernity that complicates narratives of passive suffering and heroic resistance. Based on archival, ethnographic research and the case study method, he highlights key moments and processes of state-making and transformations in Adivasi livelihoods and subjectivities in the period from 1860 to 2025. The dynamics of power and territorialization is examined through the colonial category of forest villages, the postcolonial impulses of decentralization (Joint Forest Management programme), forest tenure reform (the Forest Rights Act 2006) and the contemporary moment of contestations around the Morand Ganjal dam project. Using this empirical material, the seminar proposes a rethinking of the dynamics of land, labour and nature in India’s forests, and the role of state and public policy in tribal development.
About the speaker
Dr. Budhaditya Das is an interdisciplinary social scientist with research experience in the domains of biodiversity conservation, land governance and forest governance, and the environmental history of South Asia. Dr. Das has carried out social impact assessments to mitigate impacts of involuntary land acquisition for subnational governments and multilateral institutions. He teaches courses on gender, environmental history, social impact assessment and environmental governance. His research has appeared in the Economic and Political Weekly, Political Geography, Oxford Development Studies and Summerhill: IIAS Review.
Seminar on ‘The Political Ecology of Tribal Development and Policy: Rethinking Land, Labour and Nature in the Satpura Hills, Madhya Pradesh, 1860-2025’ on 30th October
The Centre for Public Policy hosted talk will be led by Dr. Budhaditya Das, Assistant Professor, School of Human Ecology, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi
21 October, 2025, Bengaluru: The Centre for Public Policy (CPP) will host a research seminar on, ‘The Political Ecology of Tribal Development and Policy: Rethinking Land, Labour and Nature in the Satpura Hills, Madhya Pradesh, 1860-2025’, from 3.30 pm to 5.00 pm on 30th October 2025. The talk will be led by Dr. Budhaditya Das, Assistant Professor, School of Human Ecology, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi, and will be based on his field research in Madhya Pradesh.
Abstract
Policymaking for Adivasi communities focuses on securing their rights to forests and land, protecting indigenous customs and cultural identity, and improving access to education, healthcare and public infrastructure in tribal-dominated landscapes. Economic poverty and political marginalization is attributed to a long history of violence and subjugation that begins with British colonialism in the 19th century and continues in the 21st century with struggles around ecological commons and land dispossession. In this seminar, the speaker will propose an alternate political ecology reading of state and Adivasi relations that foregrounds conceptions of power, territory and governmentality. Such a reading facilitates going beyond conceptual binaries such as domination/resistance, forest/agrarian and centralization/decentralization that have long dominated policy and political common sense around tribal development.
The seminar is based on long-term field research carried out in the teak forests of Satpura hills, Madhya Pradesh, with Gond and Korku Adivasi residents of forest villages. Dr. Das argues that forest villagers have engaged with the colonial, postcolonial and developmental state for over 150 years with strategies of evasion, negotiation, claims-making, compliance and resistance. This builds a conceptualization of Adivasi agency and tribal modernity that complicates narratives of passive suffering and heroic resistance. Based on archival, ethnographic research and the case study method, he highlights key moments and processes of state-making and transformations in Adivasi livelihoods and subjectivities in the period from 1860 to 2025. The dynamics of power and territorialization is examined through the colonial category of forest villages, the postcolonial impulses of decentralization (Joint Forest Management programme), forest tenure reform (the Forest Rights Act 2006) and the contemporary moment of contestations around the Morand Ganjal dam project. Using this empirical material, the seminar proposes a rethinking of the dynamics of land, labour and nature in India’s forests, and the role of state and public policy in tribal development.
About the speaker
Dr. Budhaditya Das is an interdisciplinary social scientist with research experience in the domains of biodiversity conservation, land governance and forest governance, and the environmental history of South Asia. Dr. Das has carried out social impact assessments to mitigate impacts of involuntary land acquisition for subnational governments and multilateral institutions. He teaches courses on gender, environmental history, social impact assessment and environmental governance. His research has appeared in the Economic and Political Weekly, Political Geography, Oxford Development Studies and Summerhill: IIAS Review.