2. ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK: SUSTAINABLE LIVELIHOODS

A livelihood comprises the capabilities, assets, and activities required for a means of living. A livelihood is sustainable when it can cope with and recover from stresses and shocks and maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets both now and in the future, while not undermining the natural resource base.^[2]

A sustainable livelihoods approach is a holistic method of addressing development issues that centers the discussion on people's livelihoods.^[3] Sustainable livelihoods is a chameleon-like concept that can serve many functions: it is at once an established development objective, an analytical tool used to understand the factors influencing a community's ability to enhance their livelihoods, and a method of eradicating poverty.^[4]

The sustainable livelihoods approach seeks to increase the sustainability of the lives of poor people through promoting six core objectives:

• More secure access to, and better management of, natural resources;

• More secure access to financial resources;

• A policy and institutional environment that supports multiple livelihood strategies and promotes equitable access to competitive markets;

• Better nutrition and health; improved access to high quality education, information, technologies, and training;

• A more supportive and cohesive social environment; and

• Better access to basic and facilitating infrastructure.^[5]

In facilitating these objectives, development activities should be:

• People-centered;

• Sensitive to locally relevant criteria such as caste and gender;

• Multi-level (i.e. link local perspectives to higher policy level considerations);

• Conducted in partnership between public and private entities; and

• Sustainable.^[6]

Underlying the sustainable livelihoods approach is the theory that people draw on a range of capital assets or poverty reducing factors to further their livelihood objectives.^[7] Assets are categorized as social, human, natural, physical, financial, and political, and may serve as both inputs and outcomes.^[8] Various vulnerability factors over which people have little or no control (such as environmental disasters and political unrest) impact the assets. Assets are also filtered through policies, institutions, and processes that determine the degree to which the people's livelihood objectives are realized.^[9]

Within this framework, land can play multiple positions. Secure access to land can be a livelihoods objective. Land is also a natural asset through which other livelihood objectives, such as gender equality and sustainable use of resources, may be achieved. In addition, land can be a route or opportunity through which a multitude of other assets become accessible.^[10] See Table 1.

TABLE 1: SUSTAINABLE LIVELIHOODS ("SL") APPROACH TO LAND RIGHTS^[11]

A simple example illustrates how a sustainable livelihoods approach focuses on the relationships among the assets that a household has, develops, and relies upon to meet its livelihood objectives. Clear title to a small amount of land around a house may allow a household to expand its assets include a cow. The skills learned by the family in caring for the cow increase the family's human assets. The family consumes the cow's milk, improving nutrition and thus adding to the family's human assets. The cow or the house plot may serve as collateral for a loan to purchase more land, adding to the family's financial assets. Family members who graze the cow on common land may interact with other villagers with whom they had no prior contact. The grazing group relationships are a social asset that may provide a forum for exchanging valuable information or entering into work sharing agreements from which all participants benefit. The family's relationship with other villagers - like the cow, the milk, and the additional land - diversifies the family's assets, and helps protect the family, its assets, and its livelihood objectives against vulnerability factors.

The sustainable livelihoods approach also recognizes that policies, institutions, and processes influence access to and use of assets, which ultimately impacts livelihoods. India's land laws, policies, and land reform distribution processes may impact whether the family has a plot large enough to maintain a cow and whether it is able to add to its land holding. The panchayat may identify the family as qualifying for a government house plot programme. A credit market will allow the family to obtain a loan, and formal and informal village governance groups may dictate whether common land may be used for grazing. These institutions play a critical role in supporting and adding to assets and livelihoods.

The story could easily go the other way: the same policies, processes, and institutions can dilute and destroy assets and opportunities. A family may possess a house plot but not have title to it because a boundary dispute lingers in the Revenue courts. The plot may not be large enough to maintain a cow. The panchayat may mistakenly omit the family from a list of beneficiaries for a government programme. The family may obtain a loan from a moneylender because it has no collateral and needs to pay dowry and wedding costs for a daughter, and if the family is unable to pay back the loan, it could lose the house plot.

Analysis of existing institutions, policies, and practices and how they create, support, or undermine assets is, accordingly, an essential component of sustainable livelihoods analysis. The discussion that follows identifies key land issues in light of livelihood objectives and considers the extent to which institutions, policies, and processes assist - or constrict - the rural poor's ability to attain those objectives. The discussion of each issue concludes with the identification of opportunities for tangible actions designed to make land rights real for India's poor.