Uncommons in the Commons: Community Initiated Forest Management in Central India/ Rucha Ghate

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Uncommons In The Commons delves into the intriguing question of why CPRdependent communities, often surrounded by similar circumstances, responddifferently and adopt different strategies when faced with similar problems. Inthis respect it closely studies five truly "uncommon" forest dependentcommunities, where each one has come up with its own unique solution to itscommon problems. Heavy forest dependence and absence of territorial rights overthe forest made the "circumstances" similar for all the fivecommunities. Yet, they not only differ in their perception of the problems, butalso in the solutions they found and the paths they followed for reaching them.While Saigata and Mendha have protected and rejuvenated their respective forestsat their own initiative and with subsequent help from the formal institution(the Forest Department), Lakhapur chose to do so without State assistance. Thefourth study village, Maral Mendha, preferred to remain totally uninfluenced bythe successful attempt by its neighbour Saigata. The book, apart from thoroughly analyzing theprocess of formulation and working of community forest associations (wheneverthey existed), tries to identify the factors responsible for success insome, failure in some others and altogether lack of initiative in still others.The uniqueness of each village provides the necessary number of specimensrequired to make the study a complete research work.