Common property resource (CPR) management has long been a significant arrangement in many parts of rural Southasia, playing an important economic and environmental role at the grassroots. The importance of research on this subject recently received recognition through the 2009 Nobel Prize for Economics conferred on Elinor Ostrom for her work on CPRs (see box: Rucha Ghate on Elinor Ostrom). N S Jodha, who worked until recently at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu, and ex-President of the International Association for Study of Commons, is one of the pioneers in this field, having devoted over 30 years of work to the subject. He spoke to Himal about the importance of CPRs in rural Southasia, the gradual decline that they have been experiencing and the need to rehabilitate them, as well as the role of the state, the market and the communities themselves in the process.
What kindled your interest in rural common property resources (CPRs)?
My childhood years were a kind of preparation for this evolving interest, though of course there was no conscious process at the time. My home village is in the desert region of Nagaur district in Rajasthan, where CPRs are a vital survival resource for communities. Seeing how the community relied on the commons in lean years was a kind of preparation to help me understand CPR issues more easily.
After completing my MA in economics in 1964, I worked for some years at the Central Arid Zone Research Institute in Jodhpur. Over the course of working in arid, marginal areas, the importance of CPRs gradually became evident. Of course, they were not known as the 'commons' at the time. In the 1970s, I worked for some time at the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Hyderabad, and then for a few years at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Africa. In 1980, there was a massive drought in East Africa, but people were able to survive because of the commons, which helped crystallise some of my thinking. Returning to ICRISAT, between 1982 and 1985, I led a Ford Foundation-supported study on CPRs covering 90 villages in arid and semi-arid zones in 12 districts of six states in south and west India. Through this study, we were able to show that CPRs continue to be a significant component of the land resource base of rural communities.