9789382993780

NEW NEW NEW NEW Size : 150mm x 230mm • Pages : xxii + 272pp

• Year : 2014 • Binding : Hardback • ISBN : 9789382993780 • Price ` 795.00 only

People and Life on the Chars of South Asia Dancing with the River Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt & Gopa Samanta Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt is a senior fellow in resource management in the Asia-Pacific Program at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. Her research focuses, on understanding the poor, experiencing agrarian and social changes.

Gopa Samanta is an associate professor in geography at the University of Burdwan.

People and Life on the Chars of South Asia Dancing with the River Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt & Gopa Samanta

Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Chapter 1: Introducing chars: Where lands float on water Chapter 2: Char jage: A char rises Chapter 3: Controlling the river to free up land Chapter 4: Bhitar o bahir katha: Inside and outside stories of chars and the mainland Chapter 5: Silent footfalls: People and the chars Chapter 6: Living with risk: Beyond vulnerability/ security Chapter 7: Livelihoods defined by water: Nadir sathe baas Chapter 8: Living on chars, drifting with rivers Appendix: Full census data for surveyed chars Notes Glossary References Index

With this book, Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and Gopa Samanta offer an intimate glimpse into the microcosmic world of ‘hybrid environments’.

Focusing on chars – the part-land, part-water, low-lying sandy masses that exist within the riverbeds in the floodplains of lower Bengal – the authors show how, both as real-life examples and as metaphors, chars straddle the conventional categories of land and water, and how people who live on them fluctuate between legitimacy and illegitimacy. The result, a study of human habitation in the nebulous space between land and water, charts a new way of Foundation Books is an imprint of thinking about land, people, and people’s ways Cambridge University Press India Pvt. Ltd. of life.

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01/2014