Skip to main content
Project

Land Conversion, Social Impacts and Legal Remedies: What’s Working?
 

India
Project ID
108933
Total Funding
CAD 230,000.00
IDRC Officer
Navsharan Singh
Project Status
Completed
End Date
Duration
24 months

Programs and partnerships

Governance and Justice

Lead institution(s)

Project leader:
Manju Menon
United States

Summary

India leads the way in terms of a well-established and abundantly used framework of laws and policies concerning people’s rights over land and citizens’ rights to information. However, the implementation of these laws leaves much to be desired.
Read more

India leads the way in terms of a well-established and abundantly used framework of laws and policies concerning people’s rights over land and citizens’ rights to information. However, the implementation of these laws leaves much to be desired.

Approaches to find effective and just remedies for affected communities are being explored through civil society interventions. Paralegal support to communities is emerging as a promising model, and its impact is being studied more systematically.

This proposed research builds on a previous IDRC-supported project that used paralegals to collect data on the lived experiences of communities in regards to the impacts of land use change in India. It will develop a framework to generate legally-actionable evidence of non-compliance to existing legal frameworks. The project will create a knowledge base on how long-standing impacts can be addressed through collaboration between communities and administrative bodies.

The overall objective of the project is to inform, develop, and disseminate learnings from the ongoing legal empowerment interventions by distilling the most effective strategies for helping communities, women, and vulnerable groups claim and secure their rights to manage communal resources, with the goal of creating greater ground-level impact.