Commons and Individuals: Is Forest Rights Act Changing Debates Around Forest Commons?

Abstract

"This paper tries to re-visit the debates around commons established since the 1960s specifically focusing on their governance and control interface between state and community. The paper endeavours to analyse different forms of protections for individual and common rights and offers a discussion on how security of commons are linked to secured individual land rights. It also presents a comparative analysis of commons debate of the 60s that focused mostly on breaking commons for individual rights and benefits; and the probable focus, especially after the Forest Rights Act, on creation of commons by squeezing individual domains. Therefore, tries to draw and establish a link between individual and common domains and creation of commons and sustaining state control. Thereby initiating a debate on concepts around ‘fuzzy zones’, vanishing frontiers’, ‘new commons’ focusing on critical questions like, how are they formed, why are they formed and who benefits, who legitimizes them and in whose interest, is common good is a move to defy common rights, how the new commons serve as a threat to the traditional common, etc."