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Common property resources (CPR) in India

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 Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. CPR institutions
  3. Types of CPRs in rural India
  4. CPRs before and after independence
  5. CPRs and Rural Poor
  6. CPR and poverty among women
  7. Urbanization and CPR

Introduction

There are various approaches to define common property resources (CPRs). The priority given to the type of access to the CPRs is what unites these definitions. To consider everything that isn't private property as common property would be harsh. Another strategy uses a specific definition of "common property" and "free rider" or "open access" resources. The lack of guidelines for the administration of these resources is a defining characteristic of the latter category. According to proponents of this strategy, "a resource only becomes common property when the group of individuals who have the right to its collective use is well-defined, and when the rules governing their use of it are set out explicitly and adhered to by everyone." This point of view contends that the existence of common property implies the existence of an institutional framework for resource management.

CPR institutions

The majority of indigenous communal institutions from the past are through various stages of transition. They are even close to failing in other places. The foundation of the institutions was a set of social structures that have evolved over time. The processes of change have been greatly influenced by colonisation. Whether required by national law or not, new community institutions are emerging to assure resource management. Thus, India's history of resource usage or abuse is frequently the story of the development and dissolution of local organisations.

Types of CPRs in rural India

All resources intended for the common use of the villagers in rural India are considered common property resources. Village woodlots, pastures, grazing grounds, protected and reserved woods, wasteland, communal threshing grounds, watershed drainage, beaches, ponds, tanks, rivers, springs, streams, canals, irrigation channels, etc. are examples of CPRs.

Common water sources

Indian villages typically use a variety of water sources, typically of different kinds, to suit their water needs. These sources offer water for irrigation, feeding and washing cattle, fishing, and other household chores in addition to drinking, bathing, and washing. Few of the water sources that the locals use are privately owned. The majority of water sources are intended for communal usage. These are either owned by a caste, religion, or occupation-based group, a community based on a traditional social structure, or a community of people from a certain geographic area. For instance, in a community, the potters would use one pond while the fisherman might use another. There are additional water sources that were created by government agencies or are under their purview. All of these sources can now be regarded as common water resources, regardless of whether they are managed by a community or local organisation. Communities constructed waterbodies in Maharashtra's eastern Vidarbha region for a variety of uses, including bathing, drinking water, irrigation, fishing, etc. A "Pankar" was chosen by an unofficial village committee to oversee maintenance and fair water distribution.

Common Village Land

Within a village's boundaries, certain lands are considered to be common property. Custodianship of common property lands would be held by the village panchayat or community (through legal authorization or formal assignment).

The following list of common village land categories is provided:
  1. Village panchayat grazing land/pasture land: In regional dialects, these are variously referred to as gauchar, gochar, gairan, gomol, etc. In the classification system used in official land-use records since colonial times, this is a clearly defined category of land. The primary component of CPR lands has typically been grazing and pasture grounds. Area designated as permanent pasture or grazing land has been mapped for many villages. By virtue of legal sanction, the peasants gained access rights to the permanent pasture. Such areas were used to cultivate village woodlots in accordance with the rules of social forestry plantings. However, these did not instantly become common property, and some communities lost their common lands as a result of legal reforms. Historically, a number of regulations, mostly created and implemented locally, were used to safeguard the sustainability of CPRs. Marginal lands of the communities were frequently designated as village commons to forbid their use for arable cultivation and permit a less intensive usage for trees or grazing. A large portion of the cattle required for dryland agriculture were fed by grazing and fodder from non-arable CPRs as demands on the available cultivable land rose. Traditional pastoralists who travelled by nomadic means also utilised the grazing pastures. If given permission by village authority, other nomadic communities could use some of the communal grazing pastures as well.
  2. Village forest & woodlot (not under Forest/Revenue Department) and van panchayat forest.: All of the land classified as village forests, woodlots, plantations, etc. falls under this category. This also includes the village's forest area, which is technically under the control of the village panchayat or village community even though it may legally belong to the forest or another State department (such as PWD or Revenue). This group also includes the forests in the highlands of Uttar Pradesh's Van panchayats, which are formally controlled by village groups.
  3. Village sites and threshing floor: The land that the villagers use collectively for various economic operations, such as
     (a) processing agricultural products (threshing, drying, grinding, etc.),
    (b) storing grains and other agricultural products, firewood, etc., and
    (c) usage for other household enterprises, is included in these.
  4. Government forest: In India, woods are divided into three groups based on their legal status: Reserved Forests, Protected Forests, and Unclassified Forests. Additionally, all state-owned areas designated as forests by a statute or managed as forests, whether or whether they are actually forests, are included in the definition of forest land. In most places, sacred groves are also common resources for property.

Coastal beaches

Many places along the coast are regarded as village common lands. They are just as important to farming communities as common lands are. Large common areas near the beach are necessary in fishing towns for a variety of fishing-related activities. Space is required for boat and fish net maintenance, catch landing and sorting, etc. Additionally, fish cleaning and drying are done in coastal areas. A rise in non-fishing activity along the shore, particularly tourism, puts both uses directly at odds. The common spaces that fishing villages could use have been diminished by industries, resorts, and other beachside activity.

CPRs before and after independence

Pre-colonial periods, the rural inhabitants had unfettered access to a significant portion of the nation's natural resources. Local governments, village elders, etc., primarily controlled these resources. But as state control over these resources was gradually increased between the 1850s and independence, the community management system weakened. As a result, the villagers' access to resources from common property has significantly decreased over time. Losing control also resulted in a lack of enthusiasm for preserving the resources. Despite this, it has been seen that common property resources continue to be crucial to the rural population's way of life and economy. The colonial administration's actions, beginning in the middle of the 19th century, were aimed at establishing official control over the wealth the woods represented, and as a result, the emphasis moved to commercial forest management.

With the designation of "reserved" and "protected" woods between 1880 and 1927, the state took ownership of common resources. Villagers were denied access to shared forest resources when the Indian Forest Act was passed. Early legislation gave the Indian Forest Service a great deal of power and restricted private property to land that had been consistently farmed. Due to forest reservations, many locals lost their rights to visit the woodlands. Additionally, those "rights" of access and withdrawal that were at the time recognised by law were gradually diminished, degraded to "privileges," or eliminated by later legislation and practises. While the rights of an estimated 300 million rural resource users were increasingly in question by 1980, over 23 percent of India's total land area was under state management (Lindsay, 1994; Poffenberger and Singh, 1996). As a result, save from a few rare instances, community management systems gradually fell apart.

This control by the central government was further increased in the post-independence era with the abolishment of the princely states and the seizure of their forests. Today, villages only have legal access to a limited number of certain types of land, such as "pastures and grazing lands" and "village forests," which fall within the purview of the village or village panchayat, in practically all regions of the nation with the exception of India's north-east. All other types of land, including those that cannot be farmed, arable wastelands used for non-agricultural purposes, and woodlots, are owned by the State Revenue Department or the Forest Department.

CPRs and Rural Poor

It has been quite challenging to define common rights. The majority of lands and resources acquired state or private property in the nineteenth century as local rights were gradually lost as nationalisation advanced, regardless of who the real users were. Rights for individuals or communities were curtailed or lost.

We can have a better understanding of what transpired with CPRs in India thanks to a fundamental research by Jodha (1986, 1990) on changes in availability, management, and use of CPRs between 1950 and 1980. According to Jodha (1990), the implementation of land reforms significantly eroded the status of common property regimes (which led to abolition of several levies and taxes on CPR users). Common land use control declined when elected village councils took over from the traditional village hierarchy. expanded finance, animal subsidies, and marketing links for CPR-related items, as well as increasing private land ownership (mainly milk, wool, meat, fuel, and other forest products). In 1980, only 10% of the towns that had used rotational grazing, seasonal limits, and watchmen in 1950 still doing so; in contrast, the usage of penalties, taxes, and fees had completely disappeared.

A significant portion of the high inputs of green manure needed to maintain upland agricultural production came from forests used as CPRs in hilly locations. Grazing animals and gathering fodder for them continue to be important aspects of the agricultural economy. They continue to be the source of the substantial amounts of wood required for heating, cooking, and building houses. Springs, which are still governed by some type of common property management, are a very important common water source. The preservation of shared water resources is a crucial issue in terms of land usage at lower altitudes when irrigation makes it possible to practise lucrative agriculture.

The primary function of CPRs in the arid, rain-fed plains that make up the majority of India has been to support the highly erratic levels of private agricultural production. As a key source of fodder, food, and marketable goods during the prolonged time of little or no crop output or a lack of stored supplies from the previous harvest, vegetation on common property grounds near settlements assisted farmers in defending themselves against the risk of low rainfall. This function is particularly crucial during protracted droughts. Indeed, people are turning once more to CPRs as a result of the climate's rising dryness and the decreased production from underproductive fields. T

The rural poor who had access to other forms of production were primarily interested in communal lands. However, these have been greatly diminished as a result of invasion and the widespread redistribution of land to individuals under land reform programmes. The surviving community places are used by everyone and have mainly suffered severe degradation. As a result, there has been a significant impact on the variety, quality, and volume of products collected. However, CPRs continue to be a major source of dependence for the rural poor. In his investigation of villages, Jodha discovered that between 84 and 100 percent of low-income households relied on CPRs for supplies of food, fuel, and fodder (compared with no more than 20 percent of richer households). Additionally, 14 to 23% of the income of low-income households came from the sale of goods derived from CPRs (Jodha, 1990). They have been most negatively impacted by the disappearance of CPRs.

Sub-marginal lands have typically been retained by wealthier farmers, who maintain the majority of them under private fallow and use them as private grazing grounds. The propensity to privatise the crop by-products that supply seasonal fodder is growing as the need for fodder rises and the common lands are reduced. Because there aren't enough decent grazing fields, sugarcane waste is frequently used as fuel and fodder. Thus, there are large differences amongst households in the relative significance of CPRs in dryland settings. The wealthiest are more interested in privatising them, whereas the poor are far more reliant on them. Conflicts over the proper use of CPRs have risen in tandem with the increasing social difference within communities.

CPR and poverty among women

Women are more reliant on CPRs than males in poor households, even among the poor, making them the largest stakeholders in CPR conservation. The majority of women in low-income homes are in charge of obtaining food, fuelwood, water, and fodder. Consequently, women's lives are made more difficult by the decline of village CPRs. When forests deteriorate, it takes longer to gather sufficient, high-quality fuelwood. The absence of common water sources forces the ladies to look further and walk farther to find drinking water. Lack of fodder has a greater impact on women in low-income households than it would have on men because keeping cattle and goats provides additional income for women. Men have many options available to them, including migration, physical labour, and pay work. Women, however, who are responsible for a variety of tasks, particularly those related to raising children, rely mostly on local resources. Understanding this unique connection between the development of CPRs and the eradication of poverty, all programmes make considerable effort to guarantee that women participate adequately. Their suggestions for resource management are taken into account. In many locations, rural women have claimed their rights over resources by organised movements.

Urbanization and CPR

Rural settings are the main focus of most CPR investigations. Urban regions do, however, also offer resources that are utilised by a variety of user groups. However, in the majority of cases, throughout the progress of urbanisation, they are transformed into government lands for a variety of uses. Urban resources include things like public parks and gardens, hills within city bounds, naturally occurring and artificial tanks, and waterbodies, to name a few. These are frequently known as urban commons. It is poorly understood how rural commons change following urbanisation.

The issue of urban commons is shown by the case of Bengaluru, a city in the Indian state of Karnataka. Kalyananagara was another name for Bengaluru (city of lakes). Many of the lakes were turned into residential complexes, shopping centres, bus stops, and sports stadiums as a result of the pressures of a quickly expanding city and the demand for land. The less wealthy towns exploited the several remaining lakes for swimming, fishing, etc. On the demand of wealthy urban inhabitants, these places were soon changed into enclosed spaces like gardens and parks. The lakes' management and use were not open to the lakes' traditional users. Many lakes today have decreased ecological value as a result of the city corporation being responsible for their maintenance.

Preservation of CPR in India

Some local management systems have at least partially survived. Jodha (1990), who based his research on an examination of 176 distinct common pool resources for which there was evidence of at least one instance of local interest in preserving the CPR, discovered that village-level factors associated with the preservation of common property management include small size, isolation, and maintenance of traditional social sanctions. More precisely, the administration of CPRs was found to be significantly influenced by distance from market centres, smaller and more visible CPRs, less occupational change, less factionalism, less socio-economic disparity, and less reliance on state patronage.

CPRs have long been a significant source of forest goods for trade, food for hard times, medicinal plants, and other products for local use in the forest belt of central India, where the population is primarily tribal. Conflicts between state and local claims have been common because these forest products also contribute significantly to the state forest departments' profits. The Forest Rights Act permits the assertion of community resource rights over places where the government has placed a forest under its jurisdiction. The efforts of Jodha rekindled interest in CPR administration and research. CPR management has begun to be used into programmes to eradicate poverty by development planners. To ensure access for the rural poor to create livelihoods, a variety of local institutions were encouraged, and where appropriate, the more established ones received legal protection.
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