A Tale of Five Villagers' Livelihood Strategy and Common Property Resources: An Empirical Study of Rural Households in Eastern Himalayas

Abstract

"In Arunachal Pradesh the eastern Himalaya state of India, there are three types of property rights structure on land and forests viz., Government (public), private and community which influence the quality and richness in terms of forest coverage among the Indian States. It is being done through multiple channels of influences. Now, it is being widely recognized that participatory, decentralized and local level managements of natural resources through long-enduring community-based institutional arrangements may have some advantages over state-controlled and market-based alternatives. This is because, the survival of the communities living on forest fringes or within forests depend their daily needs on the community forests. However, institutional arrangements evolve along with changes in the structure of socio-economic and political economy. During transitions from common or community property rights regime to private property regime the institutional structures of community-based institution for natural resource management are expected to change as well. The implications of these changes will not be uniform across the different rural classes, primarily because as theoretical and empirical evidences suggest, privatization of commons is often accompanied by increasing inequality in the distribution of resources."