Prof T. B. Subba is Professor and Head, Dept. of Anthropology, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong.

List of Tables, Figures and Maps
Foreword by Jacques Pouchepadass
Introduction
List of Abbreviations

PART I: CONSERVATION OF NATURE
Introduction
Joëlle Smadja

One
Megalithic Landscapes, Cultures and Identity in Northeast India
Raphael Rousseleau

Two
Transforming Rural Livelihoods through Ecodevelopment in the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve
Sarah Benabou

Three
Wildlife Conservation and Tribal Livelihood in the Brahmaputra Floodplains
Emilie Crémin
Four

Effects of the 1996 Timber Ban in Northeast India: The Case of the Khamtis of Lohit District, Arunachal Pradesh
Nicolas Lainé

PART II: NATURE’S GOVERNANCE
Introduction
Frédéric Landy

Five
Women, Self-Governance and Local Political Representation in Bastar, Chhattisgarh
M. A. Iqbal and Samuel Berthet

Six
Forest Conservation, Public Goods and Incentives in the Central Himalayas
Carine Sébi

Seven
Unpacking Policy Discourses and ‘Scientific’ Management of Forests in Meghalaya
Sanjeeva Kumar

PART III: TRANSORMATION OF NATURE
Introduction
Loraine Kennedy

Eight
The Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor and Some Issues of Environmental Governance
David Kong Hug

Nine
The Gosikhurd Dam Project and Transformation of Rural Social Space in Vidarbha, Maharashtra
Joël Cabalion

Ten
Consequences of Road Construction in Padum, Zanskar Valley, Northern Himalaya
Salomé Deboos

About Ajei
Contributors

‘Confronted by the rapid transformation of nature and the social relations in which it is embedded, social science analysis must swiftly innovate or run the risk of being rendered out-of-date. Nowhere is this clearer than in India, a country that has witnessed remarkable and unprecedented changes in the values, processes and initiatives around ecology and environment, where the concepts and arguments proposed even two decades ago now seem inadequate and ineffectual. This volume is a valuable contribution towards refreshing the discipline. By bringing together new scholarship by young researchers from France along with review essays by senior academics, it offers fresh information and insights about environmental and social change and, in the process, demonstrates that the future of this field of study is in promising hands.’

Amita Baviskar
Sociologist, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi

‘This is a valuable volume as it not only presents the reader to carefully crafted local studies of environmental conflicts in India by a new generation of researchers. It also introduces us to French language scholarship in environmental history, which is often unavailable to readers for the language barrier. The contributions well represent a broad span of core themes in human–nature conflicts in India, from the effects on local societies of conservation policies and contrasting notions of the ultimate usage of natural resources, to policy research covering thirty years of modern Indian developments.
This new generation of emerging scholarship is much desired at a time the environmental history increasingly and by necessity is influenced by interdisciplinary scholarship, bringing climate history and landscape analysis into the frame of social and political history. While the individual studies centre on crucial environmental problems in India, from the ancient to the present, the questions are truly global.’ 

Gunnel Cederlöf
Professor of History, Uppsala University, Sweden