Every week, families in Hastinapur volunteer to patrol the village’s charagah zameen (common pastureland). Located in the Bhilwara district in southern Rajasthan, Hastinapur is among several villages across India where people have come together to revive and govern common lands.
Rajasthan’s Panchayati Raj Act has a specific provision for a charagah vikas samiti (pastureland development committee) in every revenue village. It is a constitutional body, headed by the ward panch, with the responsibility of managing, developing, and conserving this land.
Since charagah is essentially open, public land, its boundaries aren’t clearly defined, which leads to conflict between villages. In Hastinapur, upon formation of the committee, the villagers first demarcated the land that belonged to them. The revenue department then did its own survey and informed the village about their share of land.
Following this, the charagah vikas samiti, with support from the Foundation for Ecological Security (FES), fenced off the land with cactus bushes to protect it from encroachment. A three-month ban was imposed on grazing so that the grass and trees could be revived. The samiti also presented proposals to the panchayat to grow diverse, traditional varieties of trees on the land; to dig a pond under MGNREGA; and to build a drainage system so water could collect and nourish the soil, trees, and grass.
“Now, not only does the charagah land provide grazing grass for livestock, but surplus grass is also sold and the money is invested into the development of the charagah,” says Paras Banjara, the director of the Olakhaan Trust and a social-cultural activist from Rajasthan. He highlights a key point about the governance of commons in India: When the protection of commons is vested in the people who have been managing these resources for centuries, when local governance institutions facilitate community stewardship, and when administrative mechanisms don’t become an obstacle in this process, that is when commons thrive.
Legal and institutional frameworks that guide commons governance
The framework for community decision-making for commons was strengthened with the 73rd Amendment to the Constitution in 1992, which established panchayats as the primary units of local self-governance and as custodians of common assets. The PESA Act of 1996 expands the scope of Panchayati Raj to areas under the Fifth Schedule (Scheduled Areas and Scheduled Tribes).
Since then, several legislations have reinforced community rights and collective resource management including the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005, the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, and the landmark Forest Rights Act, 2006.
While these national laws provide broad recognition, the governance of common lands ultimately varies across states—while land and water are state subjects under the Seventh Schedule, forests fall under the concurrent list and are jointly managed by states and the Centre. As a result, some states have passed unified laws or policies dedicated to village commons, while others have embedded recognition within a patchwork of laws.
Odisha, for instance, which is under the Fifth Schedule, records different categories of communal land such as gochar (grazing), rakshit (protected), and sarbasadharan (common land). However, the state is yet to institute PESA rules, leaving the collective custodianship of communities and panchayats vulnerable.
Moreover, while the implementation of laws upholding people’s rights to commons has been uneven across states, existing legal provisions to protect commons have been weaponised to target vulnerable communities including landless, nomadic, and tribal groups that are dependent on these lands for their survival. For instance, the Supreme Court’s Jagpal Singh v State of Punjab judgement, which was aimed at protecting commons from encroachment, has been largely used to evict poor and marginalised communities from public lands—while the aspect of conservation that informed the ruling has been sidelined. “These communities have primary rights over commons; however, they are the ones who are now being displaced. When ‘anti-encroachment’ drives are conducted, it is Dalit and nomadic communities that are most impacted and deprived of their access to commons,” Paras notes.
Even in instances where PESA and FRA have been implemented, other legislations undercut their provisions. For example, Rajasthan’s Land Revenue (Allotment of Land for Setting up of Power Plant Based on Renewable Energy Sources) Rules, 2007, allow ‘government land’ to be leased for renewable energy projects, leading to the diversion of pasturelands.
Despite these challenges, there are strong examples of communities leveraging legal provisions to assert their rights over commons and establishing collective systems of governance and conservation.
Governance from the ground up
Here are some examples of what community-level governance looks like, within a village and beyond.
1. The commoning of land through gramdan
Dating back to over seven decades, gramdan involves the collective placing of all village land, including private landholdings, under the ownership of either the gram sabha—an institution of participatory self-governance comprising all registered voters in a village—or a trust-like body such as a gram samiti. At present, gramdani villages are registered in seven states across India. While some villages have seen a decline in the system due to complex factors such as lack of clarity about the laws and administration, efforts by gram sabhas to collectively govern village resources are still underway.
2. The preservation of traditional governance systems
Different systems of community-led governance preserve commons across India. In the Lachen and Lachung villages in Sikkim’s Mangan district, it is the dzumsa (meeting place), not the gram sabha, that protects the communal sacred groves.
Hishey Lachungpa, a river activist who is also part of Lachung’s village assembly, explains, “The dzumsa system is headed by the pipon, who is selected from within the village and takes decisions with the consensus of the villagers. They ensure that the sacred grove remains undisturbed by maintaining the area’s fence, so no one enters the premises, plucks anything, or disturbs it in any way.”
The dzumsa system also prevents the village’s forests and pastures from being overused. Fixed schedules are set for people to graze their livestock so that all households have access to grazing areas without depletion of land.
3. A gram sabha of gram sabhas
Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district has been a site of sustained struggle for Adivasi communities. In 2009, the district’s Menda Lekha village became the first in the country to gain community forest rights (CFR) under the FRA. In 2014, Maharashtra also notified the PESA rules, formally empowering gram sabhas to safeguard natural resources including land.
In 2017, gram sabhas across 90 villages in the district came together to form a maha gram sabha, a federation for collective decision-making on matters including the production, auctioning, and sale of tendu leaves, which are a major source of livelihood for tribal communities in the region.
A similar system has been set up in Odisha’s Kalahandi district. In 2018, eight gram sabhas from Madanpur-Rampur block of Kalahandi formed a regional federation called Kanabada Bakabada Anchalika Gram Sabha Mahasanghto collectively assert their rights. Over time, more gram sabhas joined, and the federation grew to approximately 120 active members, all with recognised community forest rights.
The concept of federating gram sabhas is recognised under the FRA, specifically in the 2012 Amendment (Rule 2.1D). The Kalahandi Gram Sabha Mahasangh (KGSM) operates at the district level, with seven block-level federations and the village-level gram sabhas collectively overseeing more than 40–50,000 acres of community forest area. Membership of the KGSM is divided equally between men and women, who are elected to the body through the block federations and gram sabhas. The federation serves three main purposes:
- Standardising processes: The KGSM has developed clear operating procedures so any gram sabha seeking to exercise its rights can follow a structured pathway, reducing delays and confusion.
- Strengthening bargaining power: By aggregating volumes of non-timber forest products (NTFPs), for instance, federated gram sabhas can negotiate better prices and ensure fairer trade for people in the village.
- Building governance capacity: Since state-mandated training and capacity building for gram sabha institutions has been largely absent, the federation provides an internal mechanism for accountability and self-regulation in gram sabhas’ functions including basic financial management.
However, to become a member of the KGSM, a village must first have its formal CFR title—a complex process for communities that have long governed these forests on their own. In cases where titles are issued, they are either not distributed to the communities or not accompanied by any explanation of their significance or guidance on how to use them.
This remains one of the major challenges faced by gram sabhas—not just in Kalahandi, but also across the country.
Johnson Topno, executive director at PHIA Foundation, says, “In states such as Jharkhand, efforts to make gram sabhas aware of FRA and PESA have been inadequate and, as a result, CFR recognition has been tough.” In fact, since PESA essentially grants rights to gram sabhas over how minerals are mined in Jharkhand, its implementation is riddled with bureaucratic hurdles in the coal-rich state, and the guidelines to implement the act have not been finalised.
Sital Kumar, a programme manager at Seva Niketan, an organisation which has been working in Kalahandi since 2003, says, “Recognising this gap, Seva Niketan and the leaders of Odisha Jungle Manch began mobilising communities—informing gram sabhas what the CFR titles entail, the responsibilities attached to them, and the opportunities they created.”
Given the different technical and bureaucratic requirements of laws related to commons, a lot of the work of community-led governance begins with access to information and strengthening collective ownership so that communities are ultimately able to effectively govern commons.
From access to ownership: What do communities need?
1. Mapping and verifying common areas
When it comes to claiming common forest areas, communities often do not have access to land records. “In the absence of formal documentation, claims of ownership or use of land that are based on oral cultural traditions or traditional forms of proof are often dismissed,” Johnson points out.
In Kalahandi, the gram sabhas faced a similar hurdle. Sital says, “The CFR titles granted in 2010 were part of Form B of FRA. Under this, rights are recognised on the basis of traditional village boundaries identified through collective memory, oral traditions, and physical markers such as particular trees or stacks of stones. These boundaries may not be recorded in official revenue or forest maps.”
Under FRA, gram sabhas only need to provide a sketch map to claim their rights. But the 2012 Amendment to the act introduced GIS mapping for precise acreage. The Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) therefore initiated a system of joint verification, in which the forest and revenue departments would assist gram sabhas in preparing GIS maps. While their role was to provide technical support, officials used the clause to restrict community rights by creating maps through different datasets—drastically shrinking the forest areas claimed by communities, especially when forests lay outside village limits. Moreover, although MoTA is the nodal agency for FRA, the majority of forest governance happens through the forest department, undermining gram sabhas’ powers.
In Kalahandi, the villages conducted independent GPS mapping using mobile phones. Community members walked the entire perimeter of their traditional forest, sometimes trekking 13–15 kilometres over hills and ridges, to record boundary points.
While GIS mapping can be fraught with errors, the resulting maps gave gram sabhas a concrete estimate of forest acreage, which they could use to claim their land and governance rights. This was particularly essential as forest officials would often cite the much smaller areas that were under joint forest management as customary forest areas. In other cases, including in villages that were not part of the federation, officials would simply produce blank papers before the gram sabha, collect signatures, and later insert arbitrary figures.
The forest department’s intervention isn’t just restricted to CFR claims but also extends to provisions such as transit permits that are needed for the sale of NTFPs. For instance, it took a gram sabha in Odisha two years to secure its first transit permit. Two more years passed before a second gram sabha managed to do the same, notes Sital. Thus, collectivisation becomes even more pertinent for gram sabhas to deal with such issues.
2. Strengthening collective ownership
In Gadchiroli, Maharashtra, the auctioning and sale of tendu leaves is done through the maha gram sabha. Siyaram Halami, an activist from the Gond Adivasi community and a member of the maha gram sabha from Korchi block, says, “Earlier, royalties from the sale of forest produce were under-reported by the forest department to undermine the communities’ share of earnings. The maha gram sabha has organised the collection and auctioning of tendu leaves such that the benefits accrue directly to households in the form of wages and money from the sales.”
Similarly, in Kalahandi, when 20 villages harvest bamboo together, the KGSM helps in the sale and sets revenue-sharing norms with the community such as how much should be allocated as wages for labour, how much should remain with the gram sabhas, and how much should be used to conserve the forest.
Consider tendu leaves in Kalahandi. Under the old system, the forest department paid INR 3.40 for 50 leaves, while selling the same bundle onward to private businesses at INR 7. This meant people in the village received barely 7–8 paise per leaf, even though buyers down the chain were paying nearly double. With the gram sabhas in control, the monopoly of such departments is broken, and villages can sell directly in the open market at competitive prices.
3. Managing livelihoods and conservation together
Along with improving the NTFP trade, gram sabhas in Kalahandi invest in forest conservation and development work. The use of machines in the collection of tendu leaves is limited so as to create sufficient livelihood opportunities and to stem youth migration.
In one of the villages in Lanjigarh, bamboo sales brought in close to INR 16 lakh in a single year. Gram sabha set aside INR 1.4 lakh for bamboo regeneration, paying both men and women equally at INR 300 for a day’s work—providing livelihoods to the villagers and restoring approximately 200 acres of bamboo clumps.
Elsewhere, where cash was scarce, Sital notes that gram sabha members in one of the villages volunteered to restore degraded land overrun by weeds and grasses. They cleared the area and planted fruit trees, hoping that elephants and wild boar would feed on the forest periphery instead of raiding crops in the fields.
In Gadchiroli, the maha gram sabha is working on livelihoods intensively, even becoming the implementation agency for MGNREGA.
Across India, forest-dependent and rural communities have led sustained efforts to protect their rights to use and manage commons—be it through pushing for the implementation of existing laws or under traditional forms of governance. In cases where community-led governance has flourished, it has not only allowed villages to safeguard their resources from extraction, but also provided avenues for livelihood support and conservation. Sital emphasises, “We have understood that it is vital for communities to approach laws such as FRA and PESA from a place of agency and ownership—people already have the right to conserve and govern; it is a matter of its recognition.”
Juhi Mishra and Sidharth Bhatt contributed to this article.
—
Know more
- Read more about community stewardship of commons across India.
- Learn about the various supreme court and high court judgments on common lands.
- Read about why commons are the missing link in India’s climate action policy.
