Monoscapes - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 34

shortened their fallow periods. . . All over, peasants have been forced to burn dung
in their hearths for want of fuelwood, while there is insufficient manure in fields.
Groundwater levels are rapidly going down. 17
In recent decades, common property resources have been in steep decline in
India, even though they form a significant part of rural people's liveli-
hoods. As elsewhere, they have been neglected, over-exploited and
privatized, and to all but the poorest are often invisible. N S Jodha's 30-
year study of dryland villages illustrates just how drastic has been the
change in community pastures, forests and watersheds , community threshing
grounds, village ponds and rivers. He found that the poorest rely on
common resources the most, as these annually provide up to 200 days of
employment for each household, about one fifth of total income and four-
fifths of all fuel and animal feed. But for the most wealthy, they rarely
provide more than 2 per cent of income. In drought years, commons are
even more important, when the poorest derive 40 to 60 per cent of income
from these resources. 18
Tony Beck and Cathy Naismith have put a monetary value on these
common property resources, calculating that they contribute US$5 billion
per year to the incomes of the rural poor in India, worth about US$200
per household. Following Jodha's groundbreaking study, further research
has confirmed the fundamental value of these resources to rural people,
and particularly to the poorest. These studies indicate that the commons
contribute 12-25 per cent to rural livelihoods, and that the proportion
is greatest for the poorest households - women and children are especially
dependent upon them. They also confirm that the area and status of
common property regimes have declined steadily over the past 50 years,
as rights have been gradually removed and local institutions undermined. 19
In Jodha's villages, the area of commons has fallen by 40-55 per cent
per village since the 1950s. With population growth, this means that the
number of people relying on each hectare of common has increased
threefold. The sad truth is that these changes have been accompanied by
a collapse in traditional collective management. Over this period, the
number of villages with locally established regulations for rotational
grazing, seasonal restrictions and provision of watchmen fell from 80
villages to just 8. Transgressors of these norms and regulations were
formerly taxed, levied or fined in 55 villages; by the 1980s, it occurred
in none. Users' social obligations to invest in the collective upkeep of
watering points and fencing fell from 73 to just 12 villages.
It was once different. Gadgil and Guha tell us how pre-colonial
kingdoms in India set aside elephant forests and hunting preserves, and
how religion played a role in designing social mechanisms and obligations