Her Work and its Contribution to tHe tHeory and PraCtiCe of Conservation and sustainable natural resourCe ManageMent Policy Matters iuCn CoMMission on environMental, eConoMiC and soCial PoliCy issue 19 aPril 2014

POLICY MATTERS 2014: REMEMBERING ELINOR OSTROM

18

under different 

Government of 

India and State 

policies and 

programmes. 

Programmes for 

decentralization, 

based on a 

prescriptive top-

down approach 

without 

understanding 

local social-

cultural 

dynamics or 

the economic 

and ecological 

conditions, have 

failed to meet 

expectations. 

Although there 

has been a 

shift in the policy paradigm towards more 

participatory forms of development and 

natural resource management since the 

1990s, as reflected in the 73rd amendment 

of Constitution enabling a greater role for 

Panchayati Raj

 Institutions, JFM arrangements, 

and recent Acts such as Mahatma Gandhi 

National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 

(MGNREGA) and Forest Rights Act, several 

challenges remain in the institutional arena 

level in order to realize the potential of this 

shift. 

The Supreme Court of India, in a recent 

landmark ruling (Jagpal Singh and Others 

vs State of Punjab and Others (Civil Appeal 

No. 1132/2011 @ SLP (C) No. 3109/2011), 

recognized the importance of the commons, 

stating that “Since time immemorial there 

have been common lands inhering in the 

village communities in India…. These public 

utility lands in the villages were for centuries 

used for the common benefit of the villagers of 

the village such as ponds for various purposes 

e.g. for their cattle to drink and bathe, for 

storing their harvested grain, as grazing 

ground for the cattle, threshing floor, maidan 

for playing by children, carnivals, circuses, 

ramlila, cart stands, water bodies, passages, 

cremation ground or graveyards, etc. These 

lands stood vested through local laws in the 

State, which handed over their management 

to Gram Sabhas/Gram Panchayats. They were 

generally treated as inalienable in order that 

their status as community land be preserved.” 

This ruling clearly recognizes the diversity of 

Indian commons, a finding supported by Lin 

Ostrom’s deep appreciation of institutional 

diversity (Ostrom and Nagendra 2011). 

Indeed, at a meeting in Delhi in early January, 

India’s then Minister of Environment and 

Forests, Jairam Ramesh singled out the 

most powerful insight that he thought Lin’s 

research had to offer Indian policy—that 

institutions are diverse, and that institutional 

monocultures are to be avoided (Foundation 

for Ecological Security 2011). 

India has a rich diversity of traditional 

and indigenous institutions for commons 

management, including Van Panchayats, 

gramya 

jungles and community forestry. Van 

Panchayats

 are long standing village forest 

institutions in Uttaranchal, with a documented 

history of existence over a century, that have 

been very successful in the protection and 

sustainable management of village forests in 

the Kumaon hills. Gramya jungles are village 

forest institutions recognized in the state 

of Odisha, consisting of village forest areas 

managed for communal and developmental 

purposes within the village boundary. 

Similarly, there are a variety of long standing 

indigenous community institutions that have 

evolved locally to manage forests in different 

parts of the country, such as the Mundari 

Khuntkatti 

in Chotanagpur, indigenous 

Community Forest Management in Odisha and 

Maharashtra, sacred groves (Devara Kaadus 

and Gunda Thopus) in Karnataka. 

In most instances, these indigenous 

institutions have been insufficiently 

recognized by formal administrative rights, 

with national programs largely focused on 

approaches such as JFM. For instance, in 

parts of the Aravalli hills in north India, an 

important ecoregion which harbours highly 

biodiverse forests critical for ground water 

recharge, forests have been traditionally 

protected by local communities through 

Ostrom 

believed that 

in a country 

like India, 

with a federal 

system of 

governance, 

polycentricity 

was critical 

for effective 

management 

of the 

commons...

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POLICY MATTERS 2014: REMEMBERING ELINOR OSTROM

19

their belief in sacred spirits and yet are 

now threatened by urbanization spreading 

outwards from the Indian capital, Delhi. 

Ostrom believed that in a country like 

India, with a federal system of governance, 

polycentricity was critical for effective 

management of the commons, combining 

the greater fiscal and administrative 

capacities of the government with the local 

knowledge and monitoring capacity of local 

communities (Narayanan 2012).

A major challenge for polycentricity in 

India is that effective formal and informal 

institutions have not been crafted to protect, 

develop and manage common lands. For 

instance, Joint Forest Management (JFM) 

has largely failed in providing access 

to non-timber forest products for local 

communities. Panchayati Raj Institutions 

have, on the whole, shown limited capacity 

to manage and develop common lands 

and to prioritize MGNREGA and other 

developmental funds for restoration and 

protection of the commons. At times, 

these have also come into conflict with 

community-led initiatives. In Orissa, south 

Gujarat and south Rajasthan, for instance, 

Foundation for Ecological Security (2012) 

found that access to forest lands seems 

to have improved as a result of informal 

claims and contestations with the forest 

department, rather than through formal 

institutional recognition. 

In the Indian context, differences in policies 

at the federal (national), state and local 

levels are also critical, with land-related 

policies strongly influenced by state 

interventions. Further, even when state 

policies are in place, bridging the gap 

between legal policies and field programmes 

is critical to achieve actual impact on the 

ground. The key, therefore, is to move 

from a piecemeal approach towards the 

management of natural resources to long-

term policy and programmatic action. 

Progress is slowly being made in a number 

of states. A collaborative arrangement 

between the Rural Development Department 

of Government of Andhra Pradesh and NGO 

networks has been established in 2009 

for strengthening the efforts to conserve, 

develop and protect common lands through 

community involvement under the National 

Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme 

(NREGS). The Government of Rajasthan 

was the first to formulate state-specific 

commons legislation, ‘The Draft Rajasthan 

Common Land Policy (2010)’, which it 

followed up by developing ‘Operational 

Guidelines on the Implementation of Grazing 

Land Development under MGNREGA’, both 

with the involvement of the Foundation 

for Ecological Security. The Supreme Court 

of India, as a result of the Jagpal Singh 

and Others vs State of Punjab and Others 

decisions mentioned previously, directed the 

state governments to 

draw up schemes to 

evict encroachments 

on common lands 

and restore them 

to Panchayats 

and Gram Sabhas 

(village institutions). 

Following the apex 

court’s direction, 

there have been five 

high court orders 

either admitting 

cases against the 

taking over of 

village commons 

or rescinding such 

takeovers. Twenty-

nine judiciary 

pronouncements 

and twenty-nine 

government orders 

on commons have 

been issued since 

the apex court order 

last year (Mahapatra 

2012). The 12th 

Plan of the Planning 

Commission of 

India has also 

recognized the 

importance of the 

commons, creating 

a working group on 

‘Natural Resources 

Large scale 

changes are 

needed, whilst 

keeping in 

mind the 

central pillar 

of Ostrom’s 

vision— self-

governance of 

the commons 

at a local level 

that permits 

flexibility, 

adaptation and 

innovation, 

with the 

ultimate goal 

of ensuring 

equitable and 

sustainable 

access to the 

commons for 

all citizens.

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