R.J. Gordon, a twentieth century American economist once claimed “ An asset that is everyone’s property is in fact no one’s property.” (Dasgupta, 2005) He meant to say that resources to which access is open is more prone to be misused and exploited. I began my research on common property resources with the same question in mind.
Is a common or a publicly owned asset more prone to resource exploitation or does it actually help in environmental conservation?
Historically, Common Property Resources originated as a product of stressed environment. It was a sustainable strategy developed by human beings to manage and co-operate with the elements of nature with lesser greed and abuse with a larger sense of understanding, coordination, belongingness and equal allocation.
Common property resources (CPRs) can be explained in simple terms as a society’s response towards high risk low productivity environment. They are institutional arrangements evolved by communities to collectively manage and use their resources.
CPR includes a community’s natural resources of which every member has equal access and usage facility with specified obligations. The most peculiar feature, as the name suggests, is that no single person has property right over them although formal ownership might be with some agency, de facto owned by village communities or government bodies.
Common property resources are usually found in arid regions with low productivity, erratic rainfall, frequent droughts and low fertility. In India, these are usually found in dry tropical regions. CPRs have evolved in India as rural people’s strategies for adjusting to the harsh and stressful environment.
There are series of events that lead to the rise of common property system in a high risk low productivity region. Low fertility and unstable production capacity of such regions lead to restricted population growth. The change in demographic structure is largely due to migration of people to other more productive regions. This results in market wise isolation of these regions as it does not attract technical and institutional interventions. This isolation acts as a disincentive to privatization and private ownership of land in these regions which finally lead to common property regime. This can also happen subjectively within a particular sector of the economy like agriculture. Erratic rainfall and low productivity makes private cultivation risky for farmers which leads to common ownership based cultivation by communities of farmers.
IMPLICATIONS AND IMPERATIVES OF CPRs IN DRY REGIONS
VILLAGE LEVEL: At the village level low population pressure and market isolation has led to a lack of technological and institutional interventions in dry regions. This is found in the case of agriculture especially as there is less incentive for people to experiment with advanced technology to enhance productivity as technological investments would require higher investments and if it does not result in better harvests it would only create a vicious cycle of debt burden for individual farmers. As a result farmers resort to public based ownership.
COMMUNITY LEVEL: Heterogeneity, fragile resource base and inadequate private resource strategy are the main reasons at the community level to switch to common property regime.
FARM HOUSEHOLD LEVEL: For a typical farm household, community ownership facilitates risk management, diversified production centered on biomass and land extensive farming techniques for better harvests.
MAJOR COMMON PROPERTY RESOURCES IN RURAL INDIA
To examine the contributions of community based resource ownership in the context of India, it is important to understand three major resources that are commonly used in rural India which are pasture lands, water bodies and forests. It is necessary to understand composition, level of allocation, benefits and drawbacks of each of these systems.
PASTURES:
In rural India, pastures and wetlands usually existed as commons and these belonged to Panchayats. Considering a particular case study from Himachal Pradesh, it was found that until 1974 pastures were owned by local administration bodies formally, yet they were used and managed by village communities in rural India
The communities had their own set of rules and regulations regarding its usage. As grass growth of the region was seasonal in nature, customary regulations were imposed on the access to grassland over a period of time. Access was prohibited in rainy season so that it could be collectively harvested in September. Informal regulations were based on mutual agreement within communities.
IRRIGATION CHANNELS:
Irrigation channels are the second most important Common Property Resource used in rural India. The major source of irrigation by far is mainly the age old method of directing water from various springs, streams or rivers.
Traditionally the construction, investment and daily maintenance works were done by communities themselves. Irrigation user group represents 72 per cent and 83 per cent respectively of Dhamla and Chauras sampled agriculturists and, there is still no alternative to khuls for irrigation in these areas, especially during Rabi season for vegetables. . But now the old system is no more. Financial help is provided by government to which the villagers make small contributions.
Access to the irrigation channels was being used as a tool to subordinate the poor or as a measure of bondage by the rural elite during peak dry seasons. Especially in the case of chaura community , there were evidences of large Rajput households with better proximity to water source wielding special powers like that of resolving disputes between village community individuals.
Thus people themselves began demanding pure governance or government management to ensure access to water for all with equal rules. In this scenario, heterogeneity of the user group served as a challenge to the legitimacy of Common property resources, although in terms of cost effectiveness, bringing government to the issue is not the best option. As it would take much more time and formal procedures when government undertakes renovation or repair works of such canals. Also the government cannot understand the needs of a village, best methods of water management etc. as much as the local people understand the terrain, water usage and availability. But as a matter of fact only government can ensure equal distribution of resources in such situations.
COMMUNAL FORESTS
The collective advantages of community preservation and usage include prevention of soil erosion, landslides, control of flood water in the streams etc. Forests form the third major common property resource in India although legal ownership might be with some government entity.
The sacred element associated with the management of common property resources is an indispensable feature. People assert divine sanction to nature and therefor consider their obligation to protect and preserve forests as legitimate. This can be especially seen in the case of tribal groups.
Human action on nature is still ruled and framed by religious beliefs which co-exist and interfere with power structures. Forest deities are worshipped and rituals and festivals are conducted as a tribute to them.
Sacred groves are one of the finest instances of traditional conservation practices. They have also formed centers of cultural and religious life for people over much of the old world. Apparently due to greater plasticity of Hinduism which itself evolved absorbing numerous cults, including many tribal ones, instead of vanquishing them as done by other major religions, a large number of sacred groves remained in our country.

‍