India - Common Property Resources & Village Facilities, NSS 54th Round : Jan 1998 - June 1998

India Common Property Resources & Village Facilities, NSS 54th Round : Jan 1998 - June 1998

Socio-Economic/Monitoring Survey The importance of common property resources (CPRs) and their management have been acknowledged by policy makers and researchers. In recent years, official policies and schemes have been initiated for promoting peoples' participation in management of these resources. A number of studies have been undertaken by scholars to assess the size, contribution and nature of these resources and the institutional arrangements for their management. But these are mostly of the nature of case studies and do not provide comprehensive estimates either at the national or state level. The study on common property resources conducted in the 54th round of NSSO is the first nationwide survey on the subject. The state and national level estimates on the size, utilization and contribution of CPRs that the survey is expected to generate will help for building up the much needed database.

In this survey, the study on CPR has been conducted for obtaining information on availability of CPRs and their utilization. Broadly speaking, information on 'availability' has been collected in the Village Schedule 3.3 and that on 'utilization' in blocks 8 to 12 of Schedule 31.

The information collected in the village schedule pertained to the entire area of the sample village. This practice has been followed even when hamlets groups are formed for the household survey.

Common Property Resources (CPRs) are resources accessible to and collectively owned/held/managed by an identifiable community and to which no individual has exclusive property rights. Terms like “accessible”, “collectively owned/held/managed”, “identifiable community” and “exclusive property rights” are briefly explained below:

Accessible: Accessibility to a resource is determined either by legal status or by convention. If the community has a legal right of ownership or possession on the resource, it is clearly accessible to the community. Besides such legal rights, customarily accepted user rights on the resource will also be treated as "accessible" to the community.

Collectively owned/held/managed: "Collectively owned or held" presumes a legal status. Thus, a resource collectively owned or formally (by legal sanction or official assignment) held by a community would decidedly be a common property resource. A resource nominally held by a community would be treated as "collectively managed" only when a group of people who has the right to its use is governed by a commonly accepted set of rules -- in most cases unwritten.

ID Number DDI-IND-MOSPI-NSSO-54Rnd-Sch3pt3-Jan1998-June1998

Two approaches are to be followed for collection of data on CPR. For the size of CPR, information will be collected only for the CPRs within the boundary of the village which are formally (i.e. by legal sanction or official assignment) held by village panchayat or a community of the village. These will be henceforth referred to as CPRs in de jure sense. For data on collections from CPRs, the coverage of CPR is extended to include CPRs held, whether formally or nominally, by the panchayat or a community of the village. It will also include resources which are de facto used as common resources like revenue land not assigned to the panchayat or any other community, degraded forest land, or even private land in use of the community by convention. The common use of private property may be confined to particular seasons like cultivated land between crops, submerged fields used for fishing, etc.

Besides information on CPRs this schedule is also meant for collecting data on availability of various facilities in the village. The schedule consists of the following blocks.

Block 0: Descriptive identification of sample village.

Block 1: Identification of sample village.

Block 2: Particulars of field operations.

Block 3: Availability of various facilities.

Block 4: Particulars of common land in the village and nearby forest.

Block 5: Particulars of common water resources in the village.

Block 6: Particulars of collection from forest and other common village land (commons).

COVERAGE OF COMMON PROPERTY LAND RECOURCES (COMMONS) IN DE JURE AND DE FACTO APPROACHES

In the de jure approach, the common property land resources will be understood as all, which are used as common land and are under the formal (i.e. by legal sanction or official assignment) control of the village panchayat or a community of the village. Thus, de jure CPR land will include all permanent pasture & grazing land, village forest & woodlots, common threshing grounds, dumping grounds and village sites. In addition, it will also include all other land of a government department which are formally held by the panchayat or a community of the village.

Within a village there are also other types of common land. These are classified by land use as barren and uncultivable land, long fallow, cultivable waste and area under non-agricultural use. All these categories of land are owned by the government, except where the ownership is otherwise defined. These land are administered by the revenue departments. In de facto sense, these categories of land also belong to village communities, as the local people has usufructuary rights over them. Usually, these are nominally held by the village panchayat. Again, vasted lands, i.e. those declared surplus under the land ceiling and state acquisition (zamindari abolition) acts, are nominally held by the village panchayat, and often used like any other common land in the village. Thus, these categories of land will be treated as de facto CPR land.

All land owned by the households or held by them on long-term lease of 30 years or more will not be considered as CPR, unless such privately owned or held land are pooled and used as a common resource. Land under institutions like schools, medical centres, hospitals, and all other land for non-agricultural uses (by standard classification) will, however, be excluded. But land under a water body, if for common use, will be included in de facto CPR land. Moreover, collection of leaves, fuelwood, etc. from the road-side trees will also be included.

The survey covered the whole of the Indian Union except

(i) Ladakh & Kargil districts of J & K,

(ii) 768 interior villages of Nagaland situated beyond 5 kms. of the bus route &

(iii) 195 villages of A & N Islands which remain inaccessible throughout the year.

The survey used the interview method of data collection from a sample of randomly selected households and members of the household.

Name	Abbreviation	Affiliation	Role
Computer Centre	MOSPI, CC	M/O Statistics & Programme Implementation	Documentation of the study

2012-07-15 Version 1.0 (June 2012)

DDI-IND-MOSPI-NSSO-54Rnd-Sch3pt3-Jan1998-June1998