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Abstract:
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"A unique debate in 1865 and 1866 between Leone Levi, a professor in Kings College, London, and the Duke of Argyll the then Secretary of State for India - revealed how enclosure in the Scottish Highlands led to de-population because it had foreclosed local options for sheep walks when the commons were enclosed for 'deer forests'. Even though this sounds like conservation in modern environment jargon it was a local problem with only a global solution out migration. This is one aspect of the significance of enclosure which the history of early and medieval times seems to have missed out. We can only surmise from this nineteenth century instance of enclosure and from contemporary experience of developing countries as to what happened in earlier enclosure when it destroyed the ecological foundation of a shared system of rights and obligations in seeking a livelihood and so dissolved the safety catch of a community network. Simultaneously it closed options for pastoral transhumance to access the regional grasslands across national boundaries of Europe. However the history of early and medieval times, with some exception, misses out on the real significance of enclosure. We can only surmise from contemporary experience of developing countries as to what happened in earlier enclosure when it destroyed the ecological foundation of a shared system of rights and obligations in seeking a livelihood and so dissolved the safety catch of a community network. Simultaneously it closed options for pastoral transhumance to access the regional grasslands across national boundaries of Europe. Therefore can the examples of enclosure in Europe ratify/justify a similar process in developing countries of the 21st century where modern globalisation closes boundaries of opportunity for dispossessed peasant- pastoral people? We need a window into the past contemporary India is a 'laboratory', for here persist those very institutions of the village community, like the complementarity of sedentary-transhuming use of common property resources which are reminiscent of Europe before historic enclosures got rid of them. Unlike Western experience, globalisation has only added to environmental uncertainties for India which necessitates local solutions and expanded scale of operations which have only pressurised institutions of common property resources. Factorise the demographic explosion on the sub-continent and we set the stage for putting India under a scanner here to examine enclosures of other kinds forest enclosure, national parks, dams and Special Economic Zones, urbanisation, land banks etc and remembering that developing economies have to solve poverty in situ - no global solutions here."
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