Natural common property resources and rural poor in Rajasthan

Common Property Resources (CPRs) are an important form of natural resource endowments in India, especially in Rajasthan. Broadly defined, CPRs include those resources that are used by the entire community without any exclusive individual ownership or access rights. In Rajasthan, especially in the desert west, CPRs included:

Community based grazing lands, including permanent pastures, uncultivable and cultivable wastelands, and fallow lands contributing to the grazing area of the village; Village forest and woodlands, including orans; Private croplands available for public grazing after the harvest of crops; community threshing and waste dumping grounds; community ponds and animal watering points; Migration routes and facilities; and Community facilities for stock breeding. To this we could add the rivers, rivulets and their banks and beds.

The CPRs are one of the means to adjust to the harsh production environment, and make useful contributions in terms of a] physical products (fodder, fuel, food, fibre; etc.,) b] income and employment generating activities; c] larger social and ecological gains in terms of resources conservation, ground water recharge and regeneration of renewable resources.

CPRs were managed through different institutional arrangements however, the focus and control of all these arrangements were local. For instance, in a study of Sikar district, Rita Brara found that regulations regarding access to the commons and sanctions against the contraventions were decided by a village committee of mukhias. The conventions evolved by this group of mukhias were accepted by the entire village.

The CPRs are now faced with a major crisis, as reflected by the shrinkage in their area, productivity decline and management collapse, in many parts of the state. The reason this has happened is three fold: a] the state investment in infrastructure, which have changed the exclusive, internal and symbiotic relations that the communities had with their resources- as the needs have been taken care of by the state development efforts; b] The state land policy has adversely affected the acreage under CPRs. By defining categories of land use-khatedari, charagaah, and siwai-chak- effectively a process of privatisation of common properties was set in motion. Although ostensibly to redistribute the lands to the poor, the land reform programme also involved giving up of CPRs; c] factors such as increasing demographic pressure, the role of the market and the environmental stress.

With the advent of the democratic politics and related socio-economic changes, the options of "exit" and "voice" of the common people has improved. Hence, appeals to higher orders of power have become the norm, leading to gradual disintegration ties of solidarity at the village level. The panchayats which were expected to step in and replace the traditional forms of authority and as custodians of the CPRs have singularly failed in their upkeep.

The panchayats became the legal custodians of CPRs under the Rajasthan Panchayat Act 1953. However the dominance of the written law over rights based on customary usage has adversely affected the fate of the commons in different ways. In Rajasthan all land is the property of the state, and this has given overarching powers to the state vis a vis the Panchayats in law suits regarding commons. This has given legal force to a process of Statization of the CPRs, often with the compliance of the dominant interests at the level of the Panchayat. The Gram Panchayat as the legal holder of rights and the necessary locus standi in the case of disputes over commons is a unit whose rights extend over many small and big villages, the jurisdiction in many cases covering the area of a whole panchayat samiti. In comparison with the community which manages the CPRs which are invariably local bodies at the village level it is an entity forged by record and State intervention. This has often led to a disjunction of aims and motives of both these respective parties having different types of relation with the CPRs. The Gram Panchayats in many instances have failed to represent the voice of the villagers who are `aggrieved parties' pointing to the mismanagement or unequal appropriation of fodder or fuel from the commons or the trespassing of the influential in the domain of the commons as the case may be.

This is inspite of the fact that the panchayats have legal powers to regulate the access to the CPRs. In fact, in many instances, the panchayats have been responsible for the erosion of CPRs, and have blatantly legalized illegal encroachments for political expediency. It is also clear from the literature that is available that wherever the panchayats have undertaken the upkeep and development of CPRs, the poor have rarely been the beneficiaries.

May be the questions of the role Panchayats can play in the changed context of the reallocation of resources for rural development and the empowering of people and the restoration of the sovereignty of the local groups women or otherwise in the context of the proposed democratic decentralization should take into account the rather ambiguous and poor track record Panchayats have had in the management of the CPRs partly of their own making and partly the way they got implicated in the way the process of the creation of property rights in commons by written law which the State initiated.

However, the advent of the New Economic Policy [NEP] with its emphasis on individual enterprise, and the market as a mechanism for allocating resources, negates the entire basis of the CPRs and the institutional mechanisms for sharing the CPR. This combined with the fact that the fiscal discipline required as part of the new economic policy would mean that the subsidies and the allocation for rural development are likely to be curtailed in future. In other words, on the one hand, it is likely that the state sponsored rural development is likely to be curtailed in the future, and on the other, the macro policies of restructuring the Indian economy may undermine the CPRs, and hence the sustenance which the poor draw from them. Hence, in a context where privatisation of resources is seen as a means to achieve efficiency and growth, do we need to consider CPRs at all? Restated, if privatisation and the parcelling of CPRs as private property, can be the basis of the future growth in the economy, and thus help in eradicating poverty, is it worth preserving the CPRs? On the other hand, if it is believed that the CPRs offer a safety-net of sorts to the poor in the villages, and given the fact that in the new dispensation, the allocation of resources for rural development is going to be reduced, can we think of development process centred around the common property resources, to be evolved in the rural areas ?

If it is indeed necessary to consider the latter option, what do the experience of the self-help groups and other CBOs suggest in terms of extent of participation. Also, with the recent constitutional amendment, promoting democratic decentralisation, can the management of the CPRs be the bedrock on which the new structure of Panchayati Raj develops? As mentioned above, the track record of management of CPRs by panchayats has been very poor. However, under the proposed democratic decentralisation, one-third of the total constituency is to be reserved for the women. Since, women depend on CPRs more, and given the fact that they have been deprived the most, can we envisage the involvement of the poorer women, in atleast one-third of the panchayats, in the management and control of CPRs, and in the process develop leadership and countervailing power?

A version of this paper appeared as

"The Importance of Common Property Resources in Rajasthan's Rural Economy", S.Ramanathan & Rahul Ghai, EXCHANGES, Issue No.8, March 1995, Action Aid, Bangalore