Traditional food systems of many ethnic communities in India directly depend on their symbiotic relationship with the surrounding natural resources and the local socio-ecological and cultural dynamics. However, in the light of development activities resulting in drastic socio-ecological changes, these communities are oftentimes found stranded with over-simplified and unsustainable food systems. Using an ethnographic methodology, we present the case of Gaddis – an agro-pastoral community of Himachal Pradesh in India. In this paper, we documented the on-going trade-offs in traditional livelihoods of the Gaddis and their land use patterns that cause a significant transition in the traditional food systems. Based on our observations, we argue that mapping the shifting political ecology of resources enables a better understanding of transitioning food systems and the consequent eco-cultural changes. While doing so, we emphasize the need for revisitng the existing praxis of tribal development in India with an urgent focus on holistic socio-ecological approaches.

This paper investigates governance reform which aims to ‘move the state’ closer to people, arguing that greater attention needs to be paid to two questions: how does political decentralisation affect the ways in which authority is exercised? And what spaces does it leave open for poor people’s agency? It focuses on West Bengal, an Indian innovator of decentralisation through panchayati raj (‘rule by local councils’) in the late 1970s, investigating the everyday practices through which rural political space was being managed through in-depth qualitative evidence gathered from two panchayats towards the end of the Left Front government’s long rule (1977–2011). This work indicates the ways in which patronage, coercion and surveillance were melded by those exercising political power in the Bengali countryside, and the limited political opportunities which these practices left open to the poor. The ostensibly democratic structures of panchayati raj thus coexisted with the informal exercise of power and the rep...