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Abstract:
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"For millions of Indians who dwell in ecologically fragile environments community owned and managed resources provide basic subsistence. In the absence of benefits from common pastures and woodlots, poor households may starve, lose their livestock, or be unable to cook their food. In recent years community owned and managed resources - the source of sustenance, fodder and fuelwood for millions of Indian households - have been threatened by a constellation of adverse factors: government policies, local political rivalries, increasing pressures from a larger population, encroachment of market forces, and most important, declining local institutions. In this study, I place the influence of institutions - defined as sets of rules that guide human behavior--at the core of my analysis.
"My dissertation explores the role of institutions in influencing resource use in poor societies. It does so by examining the factors behind the emergence and creation of institutions, and the manner in which institutional rules affect human behavior. With respect to the emergence and creation of institutions, I propose - and illustrate through case studies - the importance of three factors. Considerations of efficiency, environmental risks, and local political rivalries, I argue, underlie the formation and maintenance of institutions. When analyzing the relationship between resource use and institutions, I adopt a property rights framework. I show that different bundles of property rights over resources, allocated among competing groups in villages, powerfully affect how resources will be used and benefits distributed.
"In particular I focus on the resource management systems in rural communities. More specifically, the subjects of my analysis are a group of migrant shepherds; a village in semi-arid Rajasthan; and six villages in the Middle Himalayas. In each, the institutional arrangements are geared to the utilization of natural resources that resemble collective goods."
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