Common Property Resources and Normalization of Encroachment: An Ethnographic Account

Abstract

The article enquires into the construction of encroachment (of village pond) as an acceptable regular practice in the day-to-day discourse of village life, violating the norms of collective usages of common water bodies. Violation in this case is the outcome of a peculiar social understanding that emerged over a period of time (a) by ineffective functioning of state apparatus and the subsequent proliferation of corrupt network and (b) by the arrival of new technologies of development which replaced the collective action for local resource management and reversed social trust to support violation. While on the one hand this process led to obliteration of distinction between the agent and the victim of violation as a free rider condition exist vis-à-vis encroachment; on the other hand there is an increased sense of vulnerability to the effects of violation. The perception of encroachment in the village community as natural and unavoidable reality gives social legitimation to this violation which affects all.