NATIONALIZATION, PRIVATISATION AND THE DILEMMAS OF COMMON PROPERTY MANAGEMENT IN WESTERN RAJASTHAN

Since 1949, the Indian state of Rajasthan has experienced a series of land reforms and other policy interventions which tended to disregard the institutional needs of natural resource management in general and common property resource management in particular. Nationalisation of land and the creation of model forms of private property for agricultu ral expansion along with rising population densities have caused conti nuous decline in availability of common property resources and undermi ned possibilities for collective action in the arid zone of Rajasthan which occupies a major part of the state. This article reviews the pro blem of common property resources management in Rajasthan's arid zone from a historical-institutional perspective and provides a microanalys is based on a household survey in two sets of villages. It concludes b y highlighting the current dilemmas of common property resource manage ment and indicating possible directions for policy intervention.