om e 's Ali a - Land ss De elo en - Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, India Office

6
Women’s Alienation
The traditional forms of protection,
based on family and community
groups, are fast receding and
institutions created over the years
for public protection are fast
becoming redundant.
There has been a very significant
increase in open unemployment
rates; people are unable to find
any kind of a job be it part time, a
subsidiary job or even very small,
low-paying one-off jobs. Another
offshoot of this aggressive growth is
unprecedented migration in search
of livelihood, from rural to urban
areas, and from rural to rural areas.
Not only has there been a ‘migration
explosion’ in the last two decades or
more, but also women are moving
more than ever before. Overall,
women are the worst sufferers.
As mentioned above, the current
development paradigm is aggressively
reducing the ability of small-scale
producers to survive, resulting in
the collapse of rural employmentgeneration.
The aggressive growth
model being pursued violates the
fundamental legal obligations of the
State, regarding non-transferability
of tribal land, for the benefit of
corporate sector. Projects belonging
to the mining, industry, power,
information technology (IT) and
other sectors are causing total
disruption of livelihood, cultures and
the physical environment.
Over the years people have developed
sustainable systems of utilising
and maintaining natural resources.
Communities, rather than individuals
and governments, have been central
to such a system. Principles of
conservation and moderation, rather
than exploitation and profit, have
driven these systems. Free market
economics, rooted in the concept
of individual profit rather than in
community sustainability, does not
just disrupt such a system but creates
new, inequitable and exploitative
relationships between people and
nature. It also creates a new system
of governance distancing people
from their natural resources and the
governed from those who govern. In
the process, the rights of the former
are taken over by the latter, including
the right to make decisions related
to the use of natural resources. The
rights of the people in any community
are not very clearly defined and
are often articulated broadly in the
Constitution or legislations and
customary sanctions.