Sudhir Chella Rajan teaches at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Madras. He has worked on emergent policy dilemmas in automobile pollution regulation in California, the politics of power sector reform in developing countries, conflicts in relation to energy access and climate change policy, the patterns of social change needed in transport in the United States for fair climate policy, ethical approaches to addressing ‘climate refugees’ and sea level rise, new interpretations of the resource curse in resource-rich developing countries, changes to the periurban landscape in South India and on ideas of grand corruption in environmental and everyday discourse. His latest book is A Social Theory of Corruption, from Harvard University Press in 2020.
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, Jan 18, 2022
Migration is frequently driven by the need to improve social and economic opportunities or to fle... more Migration is frequently driven by the need to improve social and economic opportunities or to flee conditions of political insecurity. The increased risks of environmental hazards, including climate change, have intensified the push to migrate. Nevertheless, the relation between climate change and forced displacement is not direct and is complicated by globalization, local ecological conditions, and deteriorating domestic institutions. Significantly, the muddy situation means the question “did this person migrate because of climate change?” may never be fully answered. On the basis of ethical arguments, in this Perspective article we propose a framework with both strong and mild responses to address cross‐border migration. The strong version acknowledges that it is impossible to separate out fully the climate‐induced causes of migration from others and using climate attribution studies for this purpose is potentially harmful. This implies designing an open door policy for asylum seekers as the impacts of climate change unfold, bearing in mind that host countries having the most responsibility for climate change ought to be the most welcoming to them. In the mild version, the international community designates vulnerable zones, areas where significant land area is susceptible to overwhelming loss and damage. Such countries would include most small‐island states, those that are severely drought‐prone and those with substantial low‐lying deltaic areas. In both the mild and strong versions, asylum seekers are provided rights of free passage to host countries under nonrefoulement, so that they are not forced to return to their unliveable or unviable home countries and face continuing harm.
GTI is a global network of engaged thinkers and thoughtful activists who are committed to rigorou... more GTI is a global network of engaged thinkers and thoughtful activists who are committed to rigorously assessing and creatively imagining a great transition to a future of enriched lives, human solidarity, and a healthy planet. GTI’s message of hope aims to counter resignation and pessimism, and help spark a citizens movement for carrying the transition forward. This paper series elaborates the global challenge, future visions, and strategic directions. GTI Paper Series
The landscape of the Attappady Hills in the Nilgiri range of Kerala, South India, is home to seve... more The landscape of the Attappady Hills in the Nilgiri range of Kerala, South India, is home to several Adivasis or indigenous peoples and settler communities, and has had intermittent cycles of agrarian crisis and sufficiency, according to colonial accounts from the early 20th century. Since the 1970s, rapid sedentarization of hunting-gathering communities, expanding capitalist markets, conservation projects, and sizable development interventions have contributed to agrarian and nutritional distress. There is a simultaneous process of adopting capitalist market forms and holding on to communal structures, along with manifestations of patriarchy, and resistance through gender struggles within the household and through community mobilization. Adivasis in the region seem to be undergoing processes of being simultaneously alienated from the forest and rediscovering connections to their land and the non-human world. By highlighting the material aspects with relational ecological ties and p...
Each World Resources Institute report represents a timely, scholarly treatment of a subject of pu... more Each World Resources Institute report represents a timely, scholarly treatment of a subject of public concern. WRI takes responsi-bility for choosing the study topics and guaranteeing its authors and researchers freedom of inquiry. It also solicits and responds to the guidance of advisory panels and expert reviewers. Unless otherwise stated, however, all the interpretation and fi ndings set forth in WRI publications are those of the authors.
Why resort to theory at all? William James has an answer which is helpful: "theories are ins... more Why resort to theory at all? William James has an answer which is helpful: "theories are instruments and hooks to interpretation, not answers to enigmas, in which we can rest… Pragmatism unstiffens all our theories, limbers them up and sets each one at work." (James 1907). Our best guess is that allowing for pluralism, eclecticism, "making do" with the materials we find, and sharing them widely in conversation might actually give us productive results. At least, we can all claim as our common legacy a vast stock of conversational knowledge since antiquity. If nothing else, it sets up a form of democratic practice, which can at least give us the reassurance of having tried.
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, Jan 18, 2022
Migration is frequently driven by the need to improve social and economic opportunities or to fle... more Migration is frequently driven by the need to improve social and economic opportunities or to flee conditions of political insecurity. The increased risks of environmental hazards, including climate change, have intensified the push to migrate. Nevertheless, the relation between climate change and forced displacement is not direct and is complicated by globalization, local ecological conditions, and deteriorating domestic institutions. Significantly, the muddy situation means the question “did this person migrate because of climate change?” may never be fully answered. On the basis of ethical arguments, in this Perspective article we propose a framework with both strong and mild responses to address cross‐border migration. The strong version acknowledges that it is impossible to separate out fully the climate‐induced causes of migration from others and using climate attribution studies for this purpose is potentially harmful. This implies designing an open door policy for asylum seekers as the impacts of climate change unfold, bearing in mind that host countries having the most responsibility for climate change ought to be the most welcoming to them. In the mild version, the international community designates vulnerable zones, areas where significant land area is susceptible to overwhelming loss and damage. Such countries would include most small‐island states, those that are severely drought‐prone and those with substantial low‐lying deltaic areas. In both the mild and strong versions, asylum seekers are provided rights of free passage to host countries under nonrefoulement, so that they are not forced to return to their unliveable or unviable home countries and face continuing harm.
GTI is a global network of engaged thinkers and thoughtful activists who are committed to rigorou... more GTI is a global network of engaged thinkers and thoughtful activists who are committed to rigorously assessing and creatively imagining a great transition to a future of enriched lives, human solidarity, and a healthy planet. GTI’s message of hope aims to counter resignation and pessimism, and help spark a citizens movement for carrying the transition forward. This paper series elaborates the global challenge, future visions, and strategic directions. GTI Paper Series
The landscape of the Attappady Hills in the Nilgiri range of Kerala, South India, is home to seve... more The landscape of the Attappady Hills in the Nilgiri range of Kerala, South India, is home to several Adivasis or indigenous peoples and settler communities, and has had intermittent cycles of agrarian crisis and sufficiency, according to colonial accounts from the early 20th century. Since the 1970s, rapid sedentarization of hunting-gathering communities, expanding capitalist markets, conservation projects, and sizable development interventions have contributed to agrarian and nutritional distress. There is a simultaneous process of adopting capitalist market forms and holding on to communal structures, along with manifestations of patriarchy, and resistance through gender struggles within the household and through community mobilization. Adivasis in the region seem to be undergoing processes of being simultaneously alienated from the forest and rediscovering connections to their land and the non-human world. By highlighting the material aspects with relational ecological ties and p...
Each World Resources Institute report represents a timely, scholarly treatment of a subject of pu... more Each World Resources Institute report represents a timely, scholarly treatment of a subject of public concern. WRI takes responsi-bility for choosing the study topics and guaranteeing its authors and researchers freedom of inquiry. It also solicits and responds to the guidance of advisory panels and expert reviewers. Unless otherwise stated, however, all the interpretation and fi ndings set forth in WRI publications are those of the authors.
Why resort to theory at all? William James has an answer which is helpful: "theories are ins... more Why resort to theory at all? William James has an answer which is helpful: "theories are instruments and hooks to interpretation, not answers to enigmas, in which we can rest… Pragmatism unstiffens all our theories, limbers them up and sets each one at work." (James 1907). Our best guess is that allowing for pluralism, eclecticism, "making do" with the materials we find, and sharing them widely in conversation might actually give us productive results. At least, we can all claim as our common legacy a vast stock of conversational knowledge since antiquity. If nothing else, it sets up a form of democratic practice, which can at least give us the reassurance of having tried.
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Papers by Sudhir Chella Rajan