"When the Land Slips Away: Ecology, Planetary Health and the Welfare State in Attappadi, Kerala"
Speaker : Dr Sudheesh R.C
Assistant Professor, National Law School of India University, Bengaluru
Chairperson : Prof Carol Upadhya
Honorary Visiting Professor, NIAS
@ :carol.upadhya@nias.res.in
Date : Thursday, 16th July 2026
Time : 3.30 - 5.00 PM
Venue : Conference Hall-II, NIAS
Abstract: This presentation examines the relationship between land alienation, ecological degradation, and the failure of the welfare state through the lens of planetary health. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research in Attappadi, Kerala, the presentation argues that the persistent infant mortality and malnutrition in Attappadi cannot be understood solely as a biomedical or behavioural problem. Instead, they must be located in a longer history of colonial and postcolonial interventions in the local ecology, land alienation, and erosion of local food systems. The presentation puts forward three interrelated provocations. First, the planetary health scholarship needs a historical pivot. Focusing on emissions or current human interventions in ecology misses the long, incremental devastation they cause to local environments. Second, planetary health must engage more closely with the land question. Land rights are often equated with tenure security, titling, formal ownership, and issuance of documents, overlooking Indigenous understandings of territory, or, as in Attappadi, the ooru. To put it in more provocative terms: clear titles cheat. Third, the presentation addresses the politics of evidence contained in planetary health research, probing where ethnographic data stands when evidence is usually understood as proof of causal links. The presentation brings together political sociology, planetary health, and environmental history in conversation to explore what land sovereignty and reparations mean for Indigenous communities standing up against ecological destruction.
About the speaker: Dr Sudheesh R.C. is Assistant Professor of Social Sciences at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, where he teaches courses in sociology and anthropology. His work spans the state, land, political ecology, and the welfare state. His works have appeared in the Journal of Peasant Studies, Journal of Agrarian Change, Antipode, and Development and Change.
This presentation draws on the project ‘Planetary Health and Relational Wellbeing’, funded by the British Academy. Besides the presenter, the project team includes Principal Investigator Dr Ipshita Basu, Reader in Global Development and Politics at the University of Westminster, and research assistants Mary K. Lydia, Anusha Joshy, Reshma K.R., Sivan K.C., Arun P.A. and Manikandan C.