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Abstract:
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"While the choice regarding a form of institution for governing the
commons depends upon ideological, political, and social background of a given country state, its suitability is determined by factors important to sustainability, equity, and efficiency of commons. Apart from its effect on forest condition and optimum resource use, shared understanding of social norms plays a crucial role. In India management regimes based on collective action are promoted by NGOs, by government programs like JFM, and at times are self-initiated/organized. Are they equitable and efficient? What is the difference in forest management strategies adopted by user groups initiated through NGOs, JFM, and self organized groups? This is the main question that the present research attempts to answer. For this purpose the set of economically relevant conditions considered to be encouraging collective action (also known as critical enabling conditions for sustainability of commons) such as salience, benefit distribution, institutional acceptability, rate of discount, social capital, and monitoring are to be studied. With the use of multicriteria analysis technique comparison between the three institutional structure will be made. Resultant forest condition could be taken as an indicator of the success of the respective institution. Efforts will be made to evaluate the institutions on that basis. For this, the three methods to be used are: research instruments developed by IFRI, household survey, and qualitative methods like group interviews and discussions. The study site is Gadchiroli, one of the eleven districts of Vidarbha, in Maharashtra State (India) which has most of the forest of the state, but per capita income is 48 percent less than the State average. The study will be completed in 22 months."
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