|
Abstract:
|
"Common property resources (CPRs) can be broadly defined as those (non-exclusive) resources in which a group of people have co-equal use rights. Membership in the group of co-owners is typically conferred by membership in some other group, generally a group whose central purpose is not the use or administration of the resource (per se), such as a village, a tribe, etc. (Magrath 1986, Bromley and Cernea 1989). In the context of Indian villages the resources falling in this category include community pastures, community forests, waste lands, common dumping and threshing grounds, watershed drainages, village ponds, rivers, rivulets as well as their banks and beds. Even when the legal ownership of some of these resources rests with another agency (e.g. waste lands belonging to the Revenue department of the State), in a de facto sense they belong to the village communities.
"The first three of the resources mentioned above, being large in area and major contributors to rural people's sustenance, are more important. Unlike in high-income countries, in the case of developing countries CPRs continue to be a significant component of the land resource base of rural communities. This is more so in the relatively high-risk, low-productivity areas such as the arid and semi-arid tropical regions of India. Historically, (i) the presence of factors less favourable to rapid privatisation of land resources; (ii) community level concerns for collective sustenance and ecological fragility; and (Hi) dependence of private resource based farming on the collective risk sharing arrangements, constituted circumstances favourable to the institution of common property resources in these areas. CPRs in turn contribute to the production and consumption needs of rural communities in several ways. However, notwithstanding their private contributions, CPRs are faced with a serious crisis, as reflected by their area shrinkage, productivity decline, and management collapse.
"This paper, based on field studies of CPRs in the dry tropical regions of India, presents micro-level evidence on contributions of CPRs, their present crisis, and future prospects. The evidence presented here on different aspects of CPRs, especially their decline, user groups, productivity and management aspects etc. has been corroborated by other micro-level studies on the subject in different parts of the dry regions of India. (Iyengar 1988, Brara 1987, Chen 1988, Blaikie et al. 1985, Gupta 1986, Wade 1988, Ananth Ram and Kalla 1988 and Oza 1989)."
|