Property Rights and Development: Privatisation Process of Rural Common Property Resources in Dry Regions of India

Abstract

"This paper deals with the changes associated with the process of rural development in the dry tropical regions of India, which have adversely affected the communities' control and management of their common property resources (CPRs) or rather customary arrangements relating to community resources i.e. Common Property Regimes. The collective rights and obligations are central to the management and sustainable use of local natural resources represented by CPRs. In the dry regions of India (and most other parts of dry tropics as well), such rights and obligations in the past has been in the form of conventions, as well as customary rules and practices, with very little formal codification in legal documents. This is so because the CPRs represent a part of the institutional adaptations, evolved and inherited by village communities, against the strains and stresses generated by agro-climatic conditions in the dry tropics. Due to the absence of formal, legal codification and de-jure rather than de-facto nature of community rights vis a vis CPRs, it is much easier for the modern state to disregard them while extending its authority to the areas and spheres which traditionally formed the mandate of local communities. This seems to have happened in the case of CPRs and the community rights, in the dry region of India. This paper illustrates the situation by commenting on the state interventions which have disrupted the community management of CPRs and have made them open access resources with all the resource degradation and associated consequences."