Customary Rights of Farmers in Neoliberal India

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophy K. Joseph
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Green Revolution ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Rural Space ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Customary Rights ◽  
The Impact

The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmer’s Rights Act, 2001, promises to balance the intellectual property rights of plant breeders and farmers under one umbrella legislation. However, there remain several grey areas and the rights of farmers, in reality, are still tenuous. Though the rights framework was foregrounded on an understanding between non-governmental organizations and industry, there is lack of clarity at both conceptual and procedural levels. In this context, Sophy K. Joseph analyses the impact of legal policy reforms during the ongoing Second Green Revolution on farmers’ customary rights and livelihood. The author discusses how the extension of private property rights to plant varieties, seeds, and other agrarian resources changed the demographic composition of the rural space, with increased migration of cultivators to the cities. The book argues that the transition from state interventionism (during the First Green Revolution), to state abstention (in the Second Green Revolution) has dramatically influenced India’s conventional agrarian practices and traditions. This work maps the evolutionary process of neoliberal economic and legal policies and its interference with primary concerns such as food security, food sovereignty, and agrarian self-reliance of the country.

Property rights and domestication

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dean Lueck ◽  
Gustavo Torrens
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
Evolutionary Economics ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Renewable Resource ◽  
Wild Animals ◽  
Hunting Strategies ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Archeological Evidence

AbstractThis paper combines the property rights approach of Barzel with models from renewable resource and evolutionary economics to examine the domestication of wild animals. Wild animals are governed by weak property rights to stocks and individuals while domesticated animals are governed by private ownership of stocks and individuals. The complex evolutionary process of domestication can be viewed as a conversion of wild populations into private property, as well as a transition from natural selection to economic selection controlled by owners of populations and individuals. In our framework domestication is not the explicit goal of any economic agent, but it emerges as a long-run outcome of an innovation in hunting strategies in a hunter–gatherer society. Our formal model also suggests that the domestication process moves slowly at first but then proceeds rapidly, and is aligned with the archeological evidence on domestication events.

scholarly journals Pomiędzy relacyjnością a ambiwalentnością. Rozwój idei własności i wolności w warunkach politycznych samodzierżawia rosyjskiego w XIX wieku jako lejtmotyw w twórczości naukowej Richarda Pipesa

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-169
Author(s):  
Mikołaj Tarkowski
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Scientific Activity ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

The article illustrates that property rights, including in particular property and the relationship between property rights and the category of freedom in the nineteenth-century Russian Empire, was one of the most important areas of scientific activity of Richard Pipes. For centuries, both the institution of freedom and property were highly politicised. Based on Richard Pipes’ findings, it can be concluded that the relationship between ownership and freedom manifested itself in the feature of relativity or ambivalence, depending on the time and individual parts of the Russian Empire. In the 19th century, the former mainly influenced the development of the monetary economy, while the latter strengthened the idea of samoderzhavyie in the political system. Richard Pipes noticed the sources of the antinomy between the idea of freedom and property in nineteenth-century Russia in the dynamically developing economic life and the “stillness” of the autocratic political power system. Following this concept, the article presents the doubts appearing among the St Petersburg ruling elite as well as provincial officials related to establishing the personal freedom of peasants in Russia, which finally took place in 1861. The system of tsarist autocracy in Russia, which was developing throughout history, noticed significant links between property and freedom. A good example of this process was the confiscation of land property. In this regard, the article mentions political premises, the impact of the phenomenon of “paradox and tragedy,ˮ as well as the socio-economic calculations carried out in the field of confiscating private property in the western governorates of the Russian Empire, after the January Uprising of 1863.

Property Systems and Environmental Regulation

2019 ◽  
pp. 702-718
Author(s):  
Christopher P. Rodgers
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Environmental Regulation ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Private Property Rights ◽  
Property Holding ◽  
The Impact

This chapter examines the impact of property rights on environmental regulation. It first considers a range of property paradigms and how they relate to environmental law, including entitlements-based models of property and resource allocation models of property, before turning to ‘public’ and ‘private’ conceptions of property. It takes note of the fact that environmental protection is a ‘public’ or communal interest, but assimilating public interest objectives into systems of property law based on notions of private right has been problematic, especially for Western systems. The chapter also analyses the interactions between ‘public’ interest and ‘private’ property rights; the role of customary law and cultural norms in the organization of property holding and resource use, using the Maori case as example; and how property structures foster environmental stewardship.

Transitioning towards circular systems: property rights in waste

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 219-234
Author(s):  
Katrien Steenmans ◽  
Rosalind Malcolm
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Legal Perspective ◽  
Communal Property ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Property Regimes ◽  
Rights Issues

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact that property rights can have on the implementation of circular waste economies, in which waste is reused, recycled or recovered, within the European Union’s Waste Framework Directive. Design/methodology/approach A theoretical lens is applied to the legal definition as well as production and treatment cycle of waste to understand the property rights that can exist in waste. Findings This paper argues that even though different property rights regimes can apply to waste during its creation, disposal and recovery, the waste management regulatory and legal system is currently predominantly set up to support waste within classic forms of private property ownership. This tends towards commodification and linear systems, which are at odds with an approach that treats waste as a primary wanted resource rather than an unwanted by-product. It is recommended that adopting state or communal property approaches instead could affect systemic transformative change by facilitating the reconceptualisation of waste as a resource for everyone to use. Research limitations/implications The property rights issues are only one dimension of a bigger puzzle. The roles of social conceptualisation, norms, regulations and policies in pursuing circular strategies are only touched upon, but not fully explored in this paper. These provide other avenues that can be underpinned by certain property regimes to transition to circular economies. Originality/value The literature focused on property rights in waste has been very limited to date. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to consider this question in detail from a legal perspective.

Farmers’ Rights versus Intellectual Property Rights

2020 ◽  
pp. 123-163
Author(s):  
Sophy K. Joseph
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Traditional Knowledge ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Plant Genetic Resources ◽  
Economic Incentives ◽  
Benefit Sharing ◽  
Private Property Rights ◽  
Prior Informed Consent ◽  
Knowledge Protection ◽  
Customary Rights

At the outset, the conventional IPR norms fail to protect the traditional knowledge of the farmers and their contributions through their limited contours of criteria-based protection and rigid rights framework. This chapter extensively analyses theories that support IPRs over plant genetic resources and observe the fall-outs of such theories in addressing customary rights of the farmers. While there are economic theories to support private property rights, it is also important to discuss theories that advocate inclusionary rights regime. Theories ranging from libertarian to egalitarian accommodate rights of farmers to resume their traditional activities without any restrictions. Non-conventional IPR norms that tried to accommodate the principle of inclusion though biodiversity and traditional knowledge protection is also analysed with its limitations. Principles such as state sovereignty, prior informed consent, and equitable benefit-sharing have not found much enforcement so far in the developing countries. This chapter further argues that the economic incentives that the farmers have been provided with compared to the benefits of multinational breeders are not equitable or justiciable under the realm of rights framework.

scholarly journals State or Private Ownership? A Survey of Empirical Studies

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michaela Tichá
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Transition Economies ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Institutional Environment ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Banking System ◽  
Private Ownership ◽  
Legal Standards ◽  
The Impact

State or Private Ownership? A Survey of Empirical Studies This paper focuses on property rights and performance of enterprises. The objective of this paper is to summarize existing knowledge from empirical studies dealing with the question of whether private property and privatization of enterprises encourage firms to increase their performance measured as growth of profitability, labor productivity, investments, costs effectiveness, etc. On the basis of empirical studies, it is also determined what the influence of institutional frameworks of property rights and privatization is on the firm performance. The first part of the paper reviews results of studies on the non-transition economies privatized by 1990. The second one evaluates the impact of private ownership on performance of enterprises from transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe, and the Former Soviet Union. The results of the studies suggest that private ownership is an important but not sufficient determinant of firm prosperity, subsequently resulting in overall rise of wealth of nations. The positive impact of private ownership on economic performance can occur only in an appropriate institutional environment with relevant legal standards (righteous and enforceable contracts, the protection of shareholders and creditors, adequate banking system, functioning bankruptcy courts, capital market supervision, etc.).

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