Debates on emissions and climate change are dominated by inter-country inequalities, usually ignoring within-country inequalities. In this paper, we address the question of carbon space sharing in India across different classes after economic reforms were introduced in 1991. We establish using household consumption surveys that the elites in India are major polluters both in an absolute sense as well as in per capita terms. We find that inter-class component of emissions now explains 28.5% of total inequality compared to a mere 2.5% in 1994 at the onset of market-oriented reforms.

Having grown considerably in the past two decades, Indian cities have become highly unequal spaces - economically, spatially, socially and culturally. Both quantitative approaches and qualitative methods have been used to study and measure the rising levels of inequality and the extent of poverty of the cities. While both have their problems, this paper claims that notwithstanding their respective limitations, these two approaches have captured different dimensions of the complex Indian urban process, even if they have rarely made an effort to speak to each other.

Why would farmers keep their own land fallow as part of a voluntary “crop holiday protest movement” in a part of Andhra Pradesh is a question that has puzzled many. A field visit to the Konaseema region reveals that the dynamics of class contradictions in the area are also responsible for the nature of the movement that goes beyond the issue of remunerative prices.