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• Prior appropriation rights have played a unique role in expansion of Greater Mumbai since the 1970s. • Institutions play a key role in the evolution of resource geography in large metropolitan regions in Asia. • Contestation around water has intensified given the new emphasis on urbanization and industrialization in India. Animating the contemporary politics of water governance in India is a combination of institutional path dependence and a neo-liberal restructuring that has extended the ability of Indian cities to establish new forms of water entitlement in rural and peri-urban areas. This paper explores the politics of rural–urban water conflicts that are occurring in this changing political context. Building upon Schlager and Ostrom's conceptualization of operational and collective choice rules, it examines the role of agrarian institutions (primarily in the form of land rights) in shaping the politics of rural–urban water transfers in Mumbai and Chennai, two of India's largest and fastest-growing cities. By doing so, it makes the case that Mumbai's ability to secure water entitlement has been facilitated by an institutional legacy of prior appropriation that has been applied in a context of weak and limited tribal authority over land and resources. Chennai by contrast has become far more dependent upon the commodification of water in the form of quasi-market and allocation contracts, reflecting the riparian rights of commercial farmers in the Chennai region. The paper generates theoretical and empirical insights about the ways in which variations in urban and agrarian institutions affect the politics of rural–urban water allocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper estimates slum residents’ willingness to pay for formalized land tenure in Pune, India. The results show that the legal assurance of slum residents’ occupancy of their lands could benefit them. Previous studies have discussed the legal and non-legal factors that substantially influence the tenure security of residents in informal settlements; however, it remains unclear how and to what extent the assignment of legal property rights through the formalization of land tenure improves the tenure security of residents in informal settlements and living conditions, even in the presence of other legal and non-legal factors that also contribute to their tenure security. To address this question, this study focuses on the city of Pune, India, where government agencies have formalized slums by legally ensuring the occupancy of the residents under the “slum declaration.” Applying a hedonic price model to an original household survey, this paper investigates how slum residents evaluate formalized land tenure. A spatial econometrics method is also applied to account for spatial dependence and spatially autocorrelated unobserved errors. The spatial hedonic analysis shows that the premium of slum declaration is worth 19.2% of the average housing rent in slums. The associated marginal willingness to pay is equivalent to 6.7% of the average household expenditure, although it is heterogeneous depending on a household’s caste and other legal conditions. This finding suggests that the assurance of occupancy rights is a vital component of land-tenure formalization policy even if it does not directly provide full property rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Three studies in India and Bangladesh use pro-WEAI to examine empowerment impacts of agricultural interventions and labor market changes. • Pro-WEAI shows potential in detecting empowerment impacts within the project lifespan. • Findings suggest the need for intentionality in designing women's empowerment projects. • It is important to collect data on both women and men to track progress toward both women's empowerment and gender equality. This introduction to a special section describes how a recently developed measure, the project-level Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) can be used to assess empowerment impacts of agricultural development interventions in India and Bangladesh as well as broader changes in rural labor markets. The special section comprises three papers. The first examines the impact of membership in self-help groups in five states in rural India on women's and men's empowerment and gender equality. The second presents experimental evidence from a pilot project in Bangladesh that provided trainings in agricultural extension, nutrition behavior change communication, and gender sensitization to husbands and wives together. The third investigates changes in women's roles within the jute value chain in the Southern Delta region of Bangladesh as household members migrate out of the study area and the availability of male labor declines. Although these papers focus on Bangladesh and India, pro-WEAI can be applied to impact assessments of agricultural development projects more generally. The three papers show both the usefulness of this new measure in detecting changes in empowerment indicators within the lifespan of a project and the value of having explicit empowerment objectives in agricultural development projects. The papers also demonstrate the value of having data on both men and women so that project designers can be more intentional about including both of them and monitoring outcomes for both to promote more gender equitable outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The paper evaluates an Indian maternal conditional cash transfer scheme. Launched in 2005, the program gives women cash transfers for receiving maternal and child health care services. Data are drawn from India’s District Level Household Survey to evaluate the program’s impact. Results indicate that the program had a limited overall effect: relative to the broader population, the targeted population experienced a 3 percentage point increase in medically supervised births, but no increase in ante-natal or post-natal care. We do however, find evidence of heterogeneity of impact. Women without any formal education and women in rural areas experience disproportionate gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Efforts by international development agencies to design gender-sensitive projects have sharpened their focus on women’s participation in community-level water governance. In some cases, such goals have enhanced women’s self-confidence and developed their skills despite having negligible impact on project outcomes. In others, they have simply been reduced to tokenism. This paper analyzes community-managed water supply projects for the urban poor in Madhya Pradesh, India, to provide a better understanding of the gap between women’s motivation to participate and their ability or agency to do so. It highlights how bridging this gap could be pivotal in strengthening women’s role in water governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]