COMMONS IN THEORY: ASSUMED COMMONS IN PRACTICE

Abstract

ABSTRACT For the last two decades there has been a distinct trend in India towards devolution: especially in the case of protection of forests through Joint Forest Management. There has been considerable discussion and divergence of opinion on the form of “rights” on natural resources both among the policy makers and the civil society. While some talk about ethical and proprietor rights to use natural resources others propose management or stewardship rights over the resource. Most policies of the colonial era—especially that of the forests—continued to be operational after independence. “Control” had been the major focus of the Forest Act mainly to facilitate revenue generation through timber management and the same continued till the 1990s. With inadequate provisions for the communities to meet their basic needs, local communities took control of the protection, regeneration and management of the resources. The protection by communities over many years, irrespective of tenure; has now been translated into claims—forcing the government to change and adopt the Joint Forest Management (JFM) policy. The introduction of JFM has led to the strengthening of the communities' claims for entitlement over the resource and the recognition of Community Forest Management1. While Joint Forest Management is the participatory forest management introduced by the State as a step towards devolution of forest management, Community Forest Management refers to the self-initiated forest protection groups with their own rules and regulations based on their natural surroundings. In this case, the commons are “assumed commons” and not commons in reality because the tenure of the land lies with the Government. The forests continue to be managed by the Forest Department and the revenue lands by the Revenue Department. In spite of the claims of the Government, in reality the policies today are far from what is required for the resources to be used and managed as commons. This paper attempts to put India's forest policies in a perspective of a wider “understanding of commons”, explains the concept of “assumed commons” and proposes a framework for the devolution of natural resources to the local communities based on the experiences of working with the self-initiated forest protection groups in India—especially the community forest management in Orissa.