Villagers in Rajasthan reclaim common land with maps and petitions
HASTINAPUR: It took residents of Hastinapur village in the Indian state of Rajasthan three years of poring over maps, demarcating boundaries, and numerous petitions and visits to local officials to regain control of their traditional common land. But the wait - and the effort - were worth it, they say. The 35 hectares of land now registered to the community have changed the lives of the 50 families because they are now able to safely graze their cattle, meet most of their need of fodder and firewood, and supplement their incomes.
The lush green grounds teeming with native trees and scrub were once arid, encroached by a neighboring village. They are testament to the success the state has had with restoring the commons even as industrial demand for land rises. “Before we got back the land, the women had to walk some distance to graze the cattle, cut firewood, and we had to buy additional fodder,” Gopal Jat, a village elder, said as he sat in the shade of a leafy jamun tree.
“Now we can graze our cattle without worries, the women and children need not go anywhere else for fodder or firewood, and we earn some money from selling produce. It took time, but this is our land now, no one can take it from us,” he said. Commons make up more than a third of India’s total land area. They include grazing grounds, some forest land, ponds, rivers and other areas that all members of a rural community can access and use. They provide food, water, fodder, firewood and livelihoods to rural communities, particularly the poor, while also helping recharge groundwater and maintain the land’s ecological balance.
As the population grew and demand for land rose, commons were taken over for industrial and development projects, including roads, mines, power plants and homes. “Access to the commons and its resources has long been a customary right of rural communities,” said Shantanu Sinha Roy, a manager at advocacy Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) which helped Hastinapur regain control of its commons. “But that right has been increasingly denied. When communities regain control, their livelihoods improve, and the land regains its original character, with the soil and water conserved,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Insecure rights
The majority of land conflicts in India are related to common land, according to a study by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Common land in India has deteriorated by about half over the last five decades because of encroachments, insecure tenure rights for local communities and a lack of trust in communities in managing them, according to data from FES. Many were classified as “wastelands” or government land and diverted for quarrying, biofuel cultivation, mines and other commercial purposes, displacing and depriving local communities.