TIF Collection

Madhav Gadgil's Articles in TIF

Making Forest Conservation Work for Forest Communities

The Forest Rights Act of 2006 was supposed to enable inclusive & sustainable forest management by giving forest-dwelling communities rights to forest resources. Yet, implementation has been poor…
▶19-Dec-2025
Vijay Edlabadkar, Madhav Gadgil

The Importance of Nomadic Pastoralism

Nomadic pastoralism makes positive contributions to the man-made, natural, human and social capital stocks of the country; pastoralists therefore play an important role in Indian society. There are…
▶02-Dec-2024
Madhav Gadgil

Pitting People against Nature

India’s conservation laws, based on pseudoscience, have criminalised people’s defence against marauding wildlife. Democratically-constituted local bodies empowered to protect nature will be a more…
▶08-Dec-2021
Madhav Gadgil

Ecology is for the People

The catastrophes in Kerala in 2018 and 2019 can be a lesson to move away from the paradigm of imposing both development and conservation from above; the state and the people must adopt new ways of…
▶23-Dec-2019
Madhav Gadgil

Gig Work

‘Twenty Rupees for Twenty Minutes’: What I Learned Working in India’s Gig Economy

A researcher becomes a ‘partner’ in a food delivery app for two months. What he experiences and learns from his fellow workers is that in the underbelly of India’s vaunted gig economy are low and…
▶28-Jul-2025
Kasim Saiyyad

Confronting Precarious Work

The precarisation of labour is written into the very logic of platform business models. Ignoring this, and focusing only on social security measures to protect workers, normalises exploitative labour…
▶07-Oct-2020
Kaveri Medappa, Rajorshi Ray, Mohammad Sajjad Hussain

Perils of the Gig Economy

The uncritical tone of the NITI Aayog’s recent report on the gig economy in India and its belief that platformisation will create an inclusive working environment is, at best, credulous, and, at…
▶25-Oct-2022
Asiya Islam, Damni Kain

Big Problems, Small Wins

Despite good intentions, much in the new Rajasthan gig workers act is built on weak foundations, which will make it difficult to implement. This makes it unlikely that the workers will actually get…
▶22-Aug-2023
Sabina Dewan

Air Quality

To Solve North India’s Air Crisis, Look Beyond Stubble and Fireworks

The air pollution crisis of the Indo-Gangetic plain runs deep. Quick fixes won’t work — it demands systemic change, bold reforms, and multi-pronged action.
▶22-Oct-2025
S.K. Mishra et al.

The Bad Science Choking India

Air pollution levels worsen each year, yet action is stymied by the government maintaining there is no correlation with deaths and diseases. As India embarks on a decadal review of its air quality…
▶10-Feb-2022
Bhargav Krishna, Anand Krishnan, Karthik Ganesan, Poornima Prabhakaran, Sagnik Dey

Gasping for Air, Bathing in Coal

The precarity of informal workers in India's coalfields point towards the need for discussions around 'just transition' to bring together climate justice and labour justice.
▶18-Aug-2022
Suravee Nayak

Ujjwala Yojana Needs to be More Ambitious to End Pollution in Rural Kitchens

The free LPG connection scheme has seen a huge increase in the number of poor rural homes with gas stoves; more needs to be done to make LPG affordable and encourage the use of this clean fuel,…
▶20-Sep-2019
Ann Josey, Ashok Sreenivas, Ashwini Dabadge

(Formerly known as) MGNREGA

Essay

The Continuing Relevance of MGNREGA

For more than five years the Government has been lukewarm towards the MGNREGA. Yet, in the midst of the ongoing slowdown this very programme is a potentially effective instrument that it can and…
▶17-Mar-2020
Sudha Narayanan

Costs of Centralisation in MGNREGA

The union government’s desire to ensure uniformity of the Management Information System across the country in overseeing MGNREGA has resulted in workers losing income, employment, and access to…
▶12-Jun-2023
Chakradhar Buddha, Venkata Krishna Kagga

Staking Claim to Entitlements under MGNREGA

There are internal constraints and structural barriers to women’s claim-making under MGNREGA. Supporting more egalitarian decision-making within the village, designing interventions that can help…
▶28-Aug-2024
Kalyani Raghunathan, Katrina Kosec, Jordan Kyle, Sudha Narayanan, Soumyajit Ray

Undermining the Legal Guarantee of MGNREGA: Right, Left, and Centre

Governments of every political dispensation have sought to hollow out India’s rural employment guarantee scheme. Only a mass movement that keeps the vulnerable at its centre can make the MGNREGA what…
▶07-Mar-2022
Sowmya Sivakumar