Land, Leadership and Local Resource Management

Sustainable land management is essential for providing solutions to many problems of development especially in South Asia and the Pacific region, which house the largest number of poor and undernourished in the world. Despite the fact that the poverty rate is steadily declining in South Asia and the Pacific region, the existence of huge population having less than $1.25 a day still now, has made the region vulnerable to challenges on food, fodder, ecosystem and natural resources like river water. Land grabbing, legal or illegal whatsoever, has magnified those challenges to a great extent. On the basis of mainstream policy discourse, this book upholds that a successful land management encourages financial transactions, greater investment in land and empowerment of the women other than providing food security and ecosystem protection. All these can happen with the potentialities of political will of the leaders located mainly in the rural as well as local contexts and their capabilities in local resource management, which have been focused in this book. Initiating a discourse on land governance from a critical perspective, this book raises questions about the assumptions and methods of land governance and the nature of leadership in mobilizing local resources. This book highlights issues of land resources for women empowerment and for well being and progress, land market, displacement by land grabbing for mining, role of training institute in land governance, local leadership and resource management in the sectors of health care, education and civil service in India as well as in Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Philippines.

RABINDRANATH BHATTACHARYYA (b. 1961) is currently the Professor and Head of the Department of Political Science in the University of Burdwan. He has been teaching and guiding research at the post graduate level for almost three decades. His research area focuses on various forms of democratic governance including environmental governance across countries with special focus on poverty alleviation programmes and the role of different groups in that regard. He has been awarded Australian Government Endeavour Post Doctoral Research Fellowship, 2009 and AIC Australian Studies (Senior) Visiting Fellowship 2007 — 2008. He has been appointed as Australia Awards Ambassador by the Australian High Commissioner to India on 28.03.2014. He has co-edited two books. He has a number of papers and book chapters to his credit, published in both national and international journals and books. He has presented papers and chaired sessions in international conferences/seminars held in seven countries abroad.

AHMAD MARTADHA MOHAMED (b. 1968) is currently the Associate Professor in the Department of Public Management in the University Utara Malaysia. He has been teaching for more than twenty years. He did his Masters in Public Administration from Indiana State University, USA in 1996 and did his PhD in Public Administration & Law from Illinois University Carbondale, USA in 2004. He has served as academic administrators in many posts like Director of Quality and Strategic Planning, Dean (Student Development and Alumni), UUM Colgis, Dean (Student Development), UUM, Deputy Director, Quality Management Institute [IPQ] and Principal, Pernas Residential College. He has published a number of books, book chapters and papers in journals. His major area of interest in research is Politics and Administration.