Introduction
Commons scholarship often emphasizes stability over change, but contested property-rights regimes in the Global-South (Agrawal, 2001) has led scholars to instead emphasize the significance of “doing commoning” and “becoming in common” (Nightingale, 2019). In contested spaces, rather than sitting neatly separated from each other, the politically dynamic processes of commoning are often closely intertwined with property rights themselves. Despite this, commons scholarship has tended to “focus on the stability (of institutions and resource systems) rather than attending to change and dynamics” (Agrawal et al., 2023). We go beyond this narrow focus in this paper.
We probe the political nature of the process of commoning by describing a case where the engendering of commoning under India’s ‘Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act’ (FRA) was potentially threatened by a parallel policy; a move that came to be resisted by Indigenous communities (ICs) and other actors. Recognizing that “the practices and performances of commoning need to be understood as power in action” (Nightingale, 2019, p. 30), we exemplify the role of power and its multiple theoretical dimensions (Partelow & Manlosa, 2023).
India’s FRA intends to undo colonial and post-colonial historical injustice by recognizing villages’ community forest resource (CFR) rights on customary forests and constituting village-level institutions for democratic forest management (MoTA, 2008). Enacted in 2006, the national provision sought to transfer management authority back to communities. In a step seen as oppositional to this, the Maharashtra State Forest Department (SFD) notified the Village Forest Rules (VFRs) in 2014. While other States had taken similar steps (Chakravartty, 2016), Maharashtra’s actions caught particular attention, given its relatively better performance on CFR rights recognition (Lele et al., 2020) and serving as the location of pioneering emerging community-led management (Sahu, 2020). Consistent with research pointing to the decommoning effects of government schemes (Green & Baird, 2016), the VFRs were seen as a threat to commoning efforts already unfolding under the FRA.
In this paper, drawing primarily on “insider-outsider” accounts (Dwyer & Buckle, 2009) – including one of the co-authors (SG) — we describe and trace key actions and events over six months immediately following the VFRs notification. Although power is a central feature of social processes, its use as an analytical concept remains relatively rare in commons scholarship (Partelow & Manlosa, 2023). We outline the role of power, through its various dimensions, in shaping polycentric governance in the forest commons. We describe how institutional authority vested in India’s dispersed and often dormant local governments (Gram Sabhas)1 was mobilized to counter the threat and communicate with the centralized institutional authority. We argue that while this case can help identify spaces to promote commoning and resist decommoning, it is essential that the existence or creation of these spaces not be taken for granted. They often need to be created by individual actions that demand not only creativity and expertise but also commitment for commoning.
Key Forest Policies: Conceptual and Statutory Distinctions
India’s forest policies have largely valued State control over recognition of community rights (Guha & Gadgil, 1989). Colonial forest laws, especially the Indian Forest Act 1927 (with roots going back to 1865), centralized State control and criminalized customary access. Categorizing forests as Reserve, Protected, and Village, the IFAs’ dominant logic was explicitly extractive. Customary access was criminalized, and forest dwellers were recast as encroachers on land they had historically inhabited and managed. As we elaborate on below, the IFAs serve as the foundational idea and basis for Joint Forest Management (JFM) and Village Forest Rules (VFRs), while the FRA operates with a fundamentally different architecture, driven by a very distinct premise and forest management promise.
Conceptually, policies on the distribution of ownership and responsibilities perform “the structuring role of values in rules and governance arrangements” (Agrawal et al., 2023). Even when formal rules are legally changed, they sometimes fail to displace dominant ideas, practices, and preferences already embedded in institutional and cultural memory. This is evident as the forest bureaucracy continues to find ways to retain control that they gained during the colonial period over customary forests that the FRA intends to devolve (Kabra & Das, 2022). The ensuing dispossessions have not been episodic but manifestations of violence emerging from policies that have worked against the collective rights of traditional dwellers, to criminalize their traditional livelihood practices for more than a century (Guha & Gadgil, 1989). In this section, we briefly describe salient elements of key policy changes, especially as they relate to questions of configuring village institutions with legal rights and democratizing forest management.
Joint Forest Management
Allowing a transactional role in managing forests, the Indian federal government allowed the creation of village-level Joint Forest Management Committees (JFMCs) in the 1990s to involve villagers in managing forests (Sundar, 2000). The villagers were expected to protect forests by following pre-decided practices imposed by forest officials in exchange for monetary incentives. In effect, this scheme facilitated providing labor for monetary incentives. Scholars criticized cases of forest officials for working with local elites and promoting the official interest in JFMCs, instead of adopting inclusive management (Barnes & Laerhoven, 2013). For instance, in Gadchiroli (a key site for this study as well), Ghate (2008) finds that forest officials overlooked the capacity-building needs of communities. Instead of guiding the communities in building robust local management institutions, they concentrated on investments in plantations.
Emergence of FRA
With a narrow focus on the question of environmental conservation, the Supreme Court hyper-centralized forest governance under its strict judicial oversight and invisibilized the existence of millions of forest-dwelling communities and their forest dependence under the Godavarman case (W.P. No. 202/1995). A 2002 executive circular misreading a Supreme Court order directed State governments to evict “encroachers,” triggering mass forced displacements with the potential scale threatening close to ten million Indigenous people (Kumar & Kerr, 2012). This galvanized a national mobilization by ICs and civil society organizations (most prominently the Campaign for Survival and Dignity) and ultimately led to the Forest Rights Act (FRA) of 2006. In contrast to the IFA, which grounded forest governance in the sovereignty of imperial government to support colonial interests and extractive utility, the FRA explicitly grounds it in historical justice, democratic decentralization, and rights-based governance, with India’s policymakers, through its preamble, explicitly acknowledging the “historical injustice” inflicted on forest communities by colonial and post-colonial forest laws. The FRA creates Individual Forest Rights, recognizing household land claims, and Community Forest Rights (CFR), vesting governance authority over customary territories in the Gram Sabha, formally bypassing the Forest Department.
However, implementation of the FRA has been slow and uneven across Indian States. Mendha (Lekha) village was the first village in India to receive CFR rights after much struggle and support from civil society. Despite threats from forest officials, it harvested bamboo from its customary forest and sold it in the local market (Madhukar, 2010). The Union Minister and the Chief Minister visited the village in 2011 to hand over transit permits, enabling unfettered access to bamboo markets (Menon, 2016). Its emerging practices, grounded in democratic forest management, generating local employment, and surplus revenue generation, inspired other villages in Gadchiroli and nearby districts (Sahu, 2020), attracting unprecedented media attention and visits (Gedam, 2024).
The Notification of the VFRs
In May 2014, deriving powers conferred by the IFA 1927 that statutorily supported a stronger role for the State in managing forests, the Maharashtra SFD notified the VFRs. The VFRs proposed the constitution of village-level Forest Management Committees (FMCs), effectively controlled by forest officials. Controversially, Rule 1(3) required that an interested Gram Sabha (GS) with recognized CFR rights could pass a resolution adopting the VFRs. While JFM, CFR rights, and the VFRs all purport to devolve forest management to the communities, they emerge from very different ideas of governance. Further, they vary in village-level committee compositions. JFM and the VFRs mandate forest officials’ role in the village-level committee. In contrast, CFR rights statutorily provide sole control to the GS. Given the very unequal power relations on the ground between the communities and forest officers, the VFRs were consequently seen as an instrument to transfer the devolved control over customary forest resources back to the SFD.
The FD officials justified the VFRs notification, arguing that the VFRs were needed for non-tribal areas in the State and that the VFRs did not work at ‘cross-purposes’ with CFR rights (Chakravartty, 2016). In opposition, FRA advocates argued that the government preferred the Forest Department to remain the arbiter over forest resources, highlighting that VFR-type instruments had predominantly been introduced in mineral-rich States despite the pendency of CFR rights claims on customary forests (Chakravartty 2016).
Power in polycentric systems
Polycentric systems typically characterize the governance of forest commons. How power operates in such systems is an active area of inquiry, especially necessitated by concerns of equity and justice (Agrawal et al., 2023; Morrison et al., 2019; Nightingale, 2019). Pointing to the limited work on the issue, Morrison et al. (2019, p. 2) argue for the need to re-conceive “polycentric governance not just as a structural solution or a diagnostic but also as a set of diverse institutions, agencies, and other social actors influenced by power-laden social relationships”. Further, they suggest adopting a more granular approach focusing on subjectivities and inter-personal relationships in studying the nuanced role of power in commoning. Recognizing the vertical and horizontal distributions of multiple administrative institutions, we distill power dynamics in interactions of institutions and actors in our study.
To understand how it operates, we use Morrison et al.’s (2019) conceptualization of power as the uneven capacity to influence the processes, goals, and outcomes through formal design, discretionary practice, and discursive framing. Power by design emanates from written and legislated statutes and constitutional frameworks, which legitimize designated authorities to deploy power to influence actions and behaviors of other State agencies or non-state agencies and actors. In polycentric systems, with multiple and overlapping jurisdictions, power by design can be contested and ambiguous compared to other governance contexts. The SFD’s exercise of authority under the Indian Forest Act 1927 to notify the VFRs, create the concept of ‘forest villages’ and design of the committee composition indicates its exercise of vested power by design.
In contrast to power by design, pragmatic power emerges from actions unfolding at the lower administrative levels, mostly among street-level actors and points to their influence. In addition to State actors, non-state actors can exercise power as well. For instance, like State actors, non-state actors may interpret problems, frame underlying issues in particular ways, build consensus, propose lines of action, or mobilize communities. In doing so, they exercise framing power. Such power is often less visible than the other two discussed forms.
Going beyond mechanisms of power, we additionally draw on Partelow & Manlosa’s (2023) relational typology to differentiate whether power dominates (over), enables agency (to), builds collective capacity (with), or develops internal capacity (within). While power over indicates the use of power to coercively generate or prevent specific behavior; power to reflects the power to pursue self-determined goals; power with speaks to the abilities to develop relationships, form coalitions, and work collectively, while power within reflects internal capacities of individuals and communities to be able to pursue personal needs, those of families, and communities (Partelow & Manlosa, 2023).
Even as the different ways of framing power conceptually provide space to understand non-state actors, the predominant influence of the State and its power in modern societies is indisputable. However, the State is not a monolithic entity. The idea of decentering the State (Rhodes, 2018), immediately opens up the possibilities of spaces for contestations: vertically (different levels: national, sub-national, and local), horizontally (across departments and ministries), and actors drawing from different sources of legitimacy (e.g. elected and administrative) This variegated composition of the State also lends itself to openings (and barriers) for actors both within and outside the State to try and influence outcomes. Further, the boundaries of the State have also come to become fluid. For instance, the Prime Minister’s Rural Development (PMRD) Fellows, relevant in this study, do not sit neatly within or outside the State configurations as we elaborate on below.
Methodology
Though the VFRs were applicable to all districts in Maharashtra, the study is centered in the Gadchiroli district (Appendix A) for two key reasons. First, among Maharashtra districts, it has made significant progress in CFR rights recognition and the emergence of management practices (Sahu, 2020). Therefore, its villages were most likely to be affected if Rule 1(3) were adopted. Second, one of the authors (SG) was closely working with the district administration as a Prime Minister’s Rural Development (PMRD) Fellow. As an insider, SG carefully observed emerging vital events relevant to constructing this case study and interpreting the role of power (Stake, 1995).
Data
The primary data for the case comes from SG’s interactions with RT (pseudonym for another PMRD fellow in Gadchiroli), observations of the chain of events unfolding in villages and the DC office, and discussions with government actors,2 civil society actors, and IC members. At the outset, the use of personal data in research raises ethical questions. In negotiating this question, we are guided by considering whether public benefits from such research outweigh the costs, particularly any potential harm to those in more vulnerable positions than us (O’Byrne & Holmes, 2008). While mitigating the risks by anonymizing them, we believe the public benefit of using personal data outweighs because it allows us to make power dynamics in understudied conflict-prone areas visible to contribute to the commons scholarship. Further, SG’s weekly and special reports submitted to the District Collector (DC), as well as public records, are data that are conceivably publicly accessible under India’s Right to Information Act.
Most of the primary data received from key actors is in the form of what is often labeled as hearsay. In agreement with Watkins and Swindler (2009) argument that hearsay ethnography can be useful to study how meanings are created and changed in situ, we use it (from RT’s accounts) to understand emerging conversations on the VFRs and how these conversations indicate evolving meanings among ICs and other actors.
Because conventional research in this conflict-prone context was infeasible, SG’s natural-setting observations complement documentary and interview-based evidence, while also creating empirical gaps. To avoid epistemic biases in social science research (Fricker 2007), we believe, it is crucial to resist the insistence on conventional methods and appreciate data collected from natural settings of conflict-prone areas that often serve as barriers to studying relatively inaccessible geographies and phenomena. As pointed out earlier, power in commoning activities is the least evolved or examined element of the commoning concept. Power dynamics can often only be felt or understood by an individual, as they are not easily observable from outside (Partelow & Manlosa, 2023, p. 279). Therefore, the accessed data in its natural setting allows us to understand how power manifests at the field level.
RT often informed SG during several instances of informal discussions and meetings about his interpretations of the VFRs, discussions with communities, and how they would affect recognized CFR rights. Fellows posted in Gadchiroli used to meet as and when the DC invited them to the district headquarters for progress review meetings or to participate in other departmental meetings. These formal interactional opportunities with various actors, including informal spaces over food and tea breaks, provided data on temporally unfolding actions. The primary data in this study is drawn from a larger study approved by the Institutional Review Board. Because of the use of SG’s experiences, we make our positionality explicit.
Positionality
Positionality is seen as revealing aspects influencing the choice of a study topic, access to field sites, researchers’ status, and methodological choices that might lead to biases in the study’s findings (Rowe, 2014). In the research design using the researcher’s experiences, positionality might also evolve simultaneously with data generation. Due to SG’s incidental presence as a fellow, he observed events as they unfolded. This incidental presence shapes the boundaries of our accessed data and defines empirical limitations. While the concept of insider-outsider has been criticized for creating binaries (Dhillon & Thomas, 2019), we find it useful to unpack our deviations from key aspects of the research and how those deviations might influence the analytical data used in this study.
SG’s fellowship identity legitimized his work with the Gadchiroli district administration. The DC assigned the fellows to different blocks. Their geographical jurisdiction varied, and they typically worked inside their jurisdictions. The fellowship identity made SG an insider to the workings of the district admin and other fellows. SG was an outsider in the research setting because of his professional background. Unlike other fellows and actors in the research setting, he had no formal education or experience in rural development. He was never involved in developing proformas for claiming public services, working with GSs, or elected panchayat functionaries.3 He engaged as a reflexive observer of actions undertaken by other actors. While his outsider status shaped what he could observe, interpret, and possibly influence in field activities, as an observer, he also built rapport and relationships with other State and non-state actors. Trust and rapport are critical aspects for natural conversations on the unfolding field events (Goundar, 2025). SG’s positionality might have shaped what data was shared with him by other actors. His passive and reflexive observations limit what he observed and analyzed in the study, but also reduce possible bias.
Key actors and institutions
RT: RT had been working in Gadchiroli even before joining the fellowship. In one of the review meetings, the District Collector4 asked RT to study and report back within a week. After studying the notification, RT concluded that the rules violated the provisions of the FRA and the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act 1996 (PESA). It is important to note that RT had a clear understanding of pre-existing laws and how the VFRs violated them and due to his widespread social networks, he actively engaged with civil society. While not sharing the IC’s social identity, RT combined legal-policy knowledge, Marathi/English drafting skills, social networks, rapport with communities and officials, and a commitment to the idea of social justice, enshrined in the Indian Constitution. As an example of his commitment: RT’s response to SG’s query on what he would do during his formal time-off was that he will not decide what he will do; the communities will decide, and if they want him to visit their villages for any issue, he will go there. Though he was a State-appointed fellow, he did not bind himself to particular ways of bureaucratic working. He saw people as an integral part of the making of the government. For him, his personal freedom was more valuable than an offered job position.
Civil Society Organizations: Although we don’t have data on the exact number of villages, they have reached in Gadchiroli, prominent Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) have been working in the district for several decades and have been instrumental in FRA implementation (Sahu, 2020). They have been closely connected with each other, creating a network of volunteers, panchayat functionaries, and paid employees across villages. Their network has been known to discuss and develop a collective understanding of emerging local policy issues (SG, a CSO founder) and how to respond. For instance, an IC leader shared a practice of “Adhyayana group” (study group) in his network.
…the meaning of study for us is to think about the questions that threaten our daily lives, and to resolve them (DT, an IC leader).
Governor’s Office: During the phase of conflicts over the VFRs, SP was a key supportive actor from the Governor’s office (RT). He held an administrative position that allowed him to exercise authority to engage with federal and subnational government actors on ICs’ issues.
Findings
FRA engendered commoning
CFR rights’ recognition began in August 2009 and started drastically affecting ICs’ practices in managing bamboo (Madhukar, 2010). Villagers started harvesting forest produce and carrying it to nearby markets (RS, an IC member). Pre-FRA, forest produce harvesting was carried out under the FD’s facilitation only. Unauthorized harvesting of forest produce would invite the filing of initial offence reports as per forest laws. Post-CFR rights recognition, practices involved the harvesting of forest produce, physically crossing checkpoints operated by forest officials to access nearby markets, and facing these officials and their inquiries. With CFR rights recognition, emerging practices indicated ICs’ subtle cognitive empowerment to face checkpoint guards even if caught carrying the forest produce.
As another example, when the FD started felling trees in Bodadha village (B1 Block),5 the villagers restricted the felling, arguing that, as per the FRA, it was their forest (RS, an IC member). In response to a forest guard demanding ownership evidence, the villagers showed the CFR rights title issued by a DC. Neither the forest guard nor the forester, to whom they reported the matter, was aware of the implications of CFR rights recognition. However, the Range Forest Officer was and promptly asked his subordinates present on the field to stop felling trees (RS, an IC member). Albeit anecdotal, this example illustrates how CFR rights recognition reconfigured prevailing practices and paved the way for newer ones. Similar instances of ICs’ resistance to tree felling by the FD were reported from the villages of B1, B3, and B4 Blocks in Gadchiroli (Pallavi, 2014).
The FD’s attitude
While on the one side, a feeling of community ownership of minor forest produce and empowerment was building among villagers (mainly in B3, B4, and B5 blocks (which share geographical boundaries)), forest officials were upset due to the transfer of control over forest resources into the hands of ICs (Menon, 2016). Forest officers started criticizing the district forest officer who signed the first CFR rights title in Gadchiroli (DT, an IC leader). He pleaded that while signing it, he never realized that merely signing the CFR rights title would lead to the loss of control of the forest officials and ICs’ assertion of harvesting rights. Because of the assertion of bamboo harvesting rights, as described above, Mendha (Lekha) village had become an epicenter of inspiration for neighboring villages, who were willing to claim CFR rights and replicate its success (KG and SG, CSO founders).
The celebrated success of CFR rights in shifting forest control is argued to have created anxiety among village-level forest officers about their own authority and employment sustainability (RS, an IC member), often leading to resistance. For instance, a forest officer in a sub-divisional level committee in Gadchiroli would not attend FRA meetings, delaying the claim recognition process in 2014 (Gedam, 2024). Likewise, a forest officer in the district-level committee would keep CFR rights claims verification pending for several months. Because of delays and non-cooperation from a forest officer in the district-level committee, the DC ordered disciplinary actions on multiple instances in 2010–11.
Proactiveness and misinformation for the VFRs
Spurred by VFRs, proactive district-level forest officers finalized the action plan for implementation and developed standard formats for adopting the GS resolution (RT). The formats were distributed to village-level forest guards with oral instructions to ensure the adoption in their jurisdictional villages (RT). With top-down command, field-level forest officials were the first to introduce the VFRs provisions to villagers. A forest guard working in B1 Block shared that the rules were intended to facilitate the villages that have received CFR rights recognition (GK, a forester). Importantly, he did not share how the village-level committee composition will change and how the FD can influence forest management with the adoption of the VFRs.
Further, there were instances where village-level forest officers engaged in misinformation to promote VFRs. For example, forest officials reportedly promised grants, jobs, and dramatic village development if villages adopted the VFRs (Bhattacharya, 2015). Building on these efforts, the FD had planned to gather mass resolutions from the GSs on August 15, 2014, India’s Independence Day, when GSs are mandatorily convened for its celebration.
Mobilization to resist the VFRs
The conflict over forests because of FD’s denial of villagers’ self-rule in Gadchiroli has a history spanning several decades (Sahu, 2020). The Gond tribe’s slogan from Mendha (Lekha) village summarizes the significance of desired self-rule in their villages.
Dilli-Mumbai mawa Sarkar, mawa nate mate Sarkar (In New Delhi and Mumbai (federal and State capitals), our government, but in our village, we are the government).
RT began by helping villagers in two blocks (B3 and B5) understand the misleading nature of the information being shared by forest officials. Subsequently, a key local Indigenous leader (HW) got involved, and villages in his ilaka (A unit of IC’s traditional administration, an area similar size to a sub-block) were informed about the potential threat associated with the VFRs. HW flagged the clause allowing the FD to dissolve village FMCs and take complete control over forests if they were not happy with it (Bhattacharya, 2015). Another civil society actor criticized the forest officials’ offer of gaining timber control after the adoption of the VFRs as a ‘lollypop’ to lure villagers. Village-level volunteers, panchayat functionaries, and employees of CSOs started alerting one another about the potential adverse effects (RT). RT believed that villagers had started understanding the centrality of the GS resolution in potentially undoing the gains of recognized CFR rights.
The mobilization led to a meeting among village leaders to discuss VFRs in the B1 block in May 2014. The existing familiarity with FRA enabled CFR rights (Madhukar, 2010) helped communities gain a better understanding of how resolutions adopting the VFRs would end up negating the CFR rights. During this meeting, civil society actors volunteered to spread awareness about the VFRs to other villages. Over the next few weeks, IC members started organizing village meetings and inviting civil society actors, including RT, to educate them on the VFRs (RT). In response, the district FD officials organized a press conference to allay the villagers’ apprehensions and argued that the VFRs would help the communities recognized with CFR rights. However, by then, many villages had recognized that the VFRs were inimical to CFR rights (RT).
Defending the self-rule
RT collaborated to draft a resolution in consultation with IC leaders and civil society actors. Out of collaborative and consultative actions, a GS resolution format in Marathi was developed (Appendix B) and shared with ICs across villages for adoption. The Marathi resolution format represented an instrument that aggregated GS members’ documented voices and legitimized them by invoking the GS’ institutional authority to communicate with institutions located at multiple administrative levels.
Analysis of the format shows that it expressed Indigenous perspectives in the context of competing laws on forest tenure reform. Though there are several constitutional authorities, the GS resolution was addressed to the Maharashtra Governor. The resolution template emphasized the traditional rights of ICs on their customary forest resources, and that the FRA and the PESA already recognized these rights. It highlighted the aggressive implementation of the VFRs by the FD’s field officials to convert villages into ‘village forests’ without adequately taking communities into confidence. Emphasizing communities’ close existence with forests and their collective dependence for their livelihood, it highlighted that the VFRs violated prevailing laws and recognized rights. Finally, it urged the Governor to exercise his constitutional authority to protect ICs from the threat emerging from the VFRs.
Facilitating actors, including RT, further developed a cover letter to be attached to each resolution passed by the GS. The cover letter provided a brief background of the Marathi resolution. The choice of addressing these resolutions and cover letters to the Maharashtra Governor further appears to be deliberate. As stated, a key public administrator (SP) in the Governor’s office had suggested RT to get him as many GS resolutions on the VFRs as possible to take the emerging issue with the federal ministry (RT). The cover letter indicated how respective GSs passed the resolutions and that the person indicating his/her name on the cover letter only forwarded the resolutions through posts or emails on their behalf. The format of the cover letter has been given in Appendix C. As the government actors typically communicated in English, the cover letter was drafted in English to facilitate understanding among State and federal-level actors. It alerted the Governor about the FD’s attempt to regain control over forest resources through the VFRs, disregarding laws recognizing ICs’ traditional rights and promoting self-rule. The external actors forwarding GS resolutions did not merely represent communities’ voices but their belief that the VFRs violated other laws and urged the Governor to nullify the VFRs. The English cover letter is another instrument that facilitates the communication between the voice of the GS’ institutional authority in Marathi and the power centers working in English.
Having understood the importance of taking a paper fight with the proper legal procedures, new villagers in Blocks (B3 and B4) started promptly convening GSs, which were reportedly attended by several villagers (RT). Around 300 villages had passed resolutions against the VFRs (RT) by July 2014, demanding annulment of contentious Rule 1(3). Most of the resolutions were from the four blocks (B1, B2, B3, and B4) of the northern region and constituted around half of the Block villages. The regular flow of copies of village-level resolutions protesting the provisions of the VFRs also started reaching the offices of the DC, the State Forest and Tribal Departments, and the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA).
Resisting the resistance
After getting hundreds of GS resolutions at various administrative levels, the government offices became aware of the communities’ bottom-up mobilization and their protests. The crescendo of this social mobilization and protest reached such a level that district-level forest officials again called a press conference to defend the VFRs, suggesting that these rules are pro-ICs and pro-forest (RT). However, community members formed more robust views that the FD was trying to equivocate, and the notification was an attempt to regain control over lost forest resources due to recognized CFR rights (RS, an IC member).
Federal government steps in
Probably spurred by the GS protest resolutions over almost two to three months, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) issued a letter to Maharashtra’s Chief Secretary, the top-most bureaucrat of the State government, stating that the VFRs’ implementation be kept in abeyance until further orders due to suspected legal violations of the FRA and its rules (Appendix D). Importantly, the letter was sent on 13 August 2014, two days before the forest officials planned activity of getting GS resolutions adopting VFRs in Gadchiroli.
MoTA’s stance on keeping the VFRs in abeyance resulted in an immediate face-off with other federal ministries. The Ministry of Rural Development wrote a letter on 19th August 2014, asking MoTA to review its order dated 13 August 2014 (Menon, 2016). However, the letter led to no change in the stand taken by MoTA. Later, the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change issued an office memorandum to MoTA on 29 August 2014 asking it to withdraw its abeyance order. However, MoTA did not withdraw the order and maintained that anything related to the FRA is solely its legislative authority as a nodal ministry.
The SFD issued a circular on 17th September 2014, agreeing to keep the VFRs in abeyance. (Appendix E). The SFD’s Principal Secretary and other like-minded civil society actors organized a meeting the next day, i.e., on 18th September 2014, in their office in Nagpur (180 km away from Gadchiroli) to clarify doubts among ICs about the VFRs (TNN, 2014). RT, who attended the meeting, observed that the SFD had strategized to only invite CSOs supportive of the VFRs to portray that the VFRs received wider support.
After months of political upheaval at the federal level, MoTA cleared its stance on 5th December 2014 by issuing an office memorandum (Appendix F). It concluded that the VFRs primarily pertain to the encroachment upon the field of law already occupied by the federal legislation that essentially supports CFR rights recognition to promote democratizing forest management. It stated that the SFD has failed to follow the procedure prescribed in the Indian Constitution’s Article 254. It asserted that Presidential assent is necessary to change the federal government’s law by the State government on matters listed in the concurrent list. The office memorandum put to rest a month-long struggle of ICs against the VFRs. However, the mobilization might have extended further, almost until 2015, when MoTA modified its position and emphasized the harmonious construction of provisions in the VFRs and the FRA, meaning letting the VFRs operate in areas outside of PESA and CFR rights recognized villages (Chakravartty, 2016).
Discussion
The general expectation of a stable external policy environment in the commons literature potentially diverts attention from contestations around formal policies and property rights, especially those occurring away from sites of central authority. We have described dynamic forest policies aiming to alter the village-level institutions and associated power structures. Examining the policy text alone, the changes may not suggest decommoning processes. However, a critical political examination of the resistance to them helps illustrate the perceived threats to commoning.
Despite encouraging community management practices and revenue performances that were also celebrated by parts of the State administration, the SFD adopted a policy instrument that threatened to reconfigure and potentially derail the emerging practices under the FRA. One possible institutional explanation for this paradox comes from the argument that the State is not a monolithic entity with necessarily uniform policy preferences (see Sikor & Lund, 2009). Different preferences can be traced to the distribution of power by design. For example, the FD continues to remain empowered by the IFA 1927, which legitimizes its policies aimed at strengthening State control of forests. While statutorily creating a legal counterweight against prevailing forest laws, the FRA not only recognizes historical injustice and intends to undo it, but also shifts power over customary forests to respective GSs. The implication of FRA enactment is that centralized and monopolistic control over recognized customary forests could no longer be exercised. Therefore, what was at stake because of the threat emerging from the VFRs was the intent of preserving FRA’s undoing of historical injustice and democratizing forest management, secured after decades of IC’s exclusion and struggle. This was not the only case in which the FD appeared to subvert deeper democratization by using apparently democratic means. Examining the case of tiger conservation, Kabra and Das (2022) argue that the FD swiftly amended the Wildlife Conservation Act 1972 and constituted an institutional barrier in the form of the National Tiger Conservation Authority in 2005 as a response to the emerging political support for the enactment of counter-hegemonic FRA. The authors argue that post-FRA, the FD strategized and used a mix of subtle coercion and incentives that “tapped into the frustrated aspirations of forest dwellers to assemble volition without having to resort to open coercion” to continue to sustain the regime of dispossession in the name of conservation. By emphasizing “voluntary” JFM under the VFRs, the FD seems to work with a similar playbook.
Policy Catalysts
The role of RT can be conceptualized as a policy catalyst who voluntarily engages, builds communities’ capabilities needed to invoke institutional authority, and transforms them in the process. Importantly, the relation between institutional forms and user preferences is often mediated by policy catalysts in the case of forest commons. As a fellow, RT was not mandated to work on the VFRs. However, he carried a policy preference for democratic forest management because of his understanding of the larger constitutional framework, village-level experiences living with ICs, and his beliefs. He was able to make social connections with ICs, spread awareness in local languages, and mobilize them to claim their rights, aggregating latent power by design vested with GSs. He was able to craft proformas in Marathi to begin formal conversations with government actors occupying authoritative positions and seek their support (help them deliver on what was expected from them). He carried a unique blend of commitments to social issues, abilities to mobilize communities, empathy for their sufferings, and the ability to talk to powerful government actors confidently and authoritatively as an empowered citizen. Such an umbrella of abilities and values enables grassroots-level policy catalysts to reify power by framing issues appropriately. Framing power is typically seen as negative and manipulative (Morrison et al., 2019), but we have shown that it can be used to build capabilities and guide the direction of bottom-up collective resistance to assert rights and converse with centrally located authoritative power.
Working with power
Banking on individual capacities and enabling beliefs can build other’s capabilities and mobilize them. The ICs possessed the institution of GS, which was legitimized under the FRA and PESA as an institution for self-rule. RT and civil society actors’ mobilization and collective resolutions unleashed GSs’ embedded institutional authority to communicate with centers of authoritative power. Importantly, the GS’s institutional authority can be used to strengthen or weaken commoning processes based on how external power manipulates its collective decisions. How the interactions of GSs’ institutional authority and that of other authority centers unfolded in the case are unclear due to empirical gaps. But for a powerful government actor to take cognizance of grassroots-level resistance and act, the number of resolutions matters. Gregorio (2012) reported that the similarity of values (value homophily) is likewise a critical force that coalesces actors from diverse identities for networking in environmental movements. Our findings reaffirm this assertion and highlight a possible value homophily in RT and SP, indicating the significance of creating a network of actors to channelize the power of ICs’ institutions.
In response to the top-down exercise of authority, examples of bottom-up resistance are scarce in the commons scholarship (Morrison et al., 2019). Data limitations do not allow us to delve into the details of mobilization and institutional interpretations. However, the case suggests that bottom-up mobilization drawing on embedded institutional authority can be effective as a countervailing power. RT and other actors read the VFRs and interpreted them, considering other enabling laws. The process of interpretation involved a great deal of discretion and the influence of values and beliefs in framing the issue to be shared with ICs and serves as a clear example of framing power that emerges from the way issues are framed, communities mobilized, and guided a line of action (Scoones, 2016). Like Chambers (2006), we show how power emerging through mobilization can be constructively harnessed to protect preferred institutions and resist the adoption of adverse institutions.
Distributed power centers
The forest policy influencing ICs in India is characterized by the existence of authoritative power at multiple administrative levels. Tussles among federal ministries present how they can differ in interpreting the same policy. While MoTA drew from its authoritative power on the FRA as a nodal ministry, other ministries relied on overlapping subjects like rural development and environment. On the question of the VFRs, whereas the SFD drew power from IFA (1927), its legitimacy remained contested because of India’s unique constitutional structure that mandates presidential assent in case a subnational law is found to be inconsistent with an existing federal law on concurrent list subjects. However, challenging subnational policy, inconsistent with a pre-existing federal law, might also require a bottom-up mobilization and the supportive power of institutional authority to even invite attention and actions by a federal authoritative power. This linkage is mediated by policy catalysts with value homophily with the issue under conflict. Paradoxically, our case also points to the importance of top-down program designs (like that of the PMRDF in our case) in creating institutional spaces for such actors. Examining how top-down efforts like these can potentially strengthen bottom-up initiatives is crucial for ‘enlightened’ centralized actors who may carry similar aspirations for deepening democracy. This finding has practical implications because it teaches how to counter adverse policy efforts that can emerge from entrenched interests seeking to derail the democratization of forest governance. We plot a sequence of key events concerning the VFRs temporally to illustrate how stances on the VFRs changed at the State and federal government levels (Appendix G).
Conclusion
Exogenous changes in property rights regimes might be more frequent than thought in the commons literature. Adopting such changes can even gradually restore State control in the forest sector, putting IC’s demand of democratizing forest management at stake. Commons scholars also need to pay attention to variations in property rights regimes, associated managing institutions, emerging management practices, and performances in the forest commons. This focus will create an array of factors nestled in property rights regimes associated with democratic, equitable, and sustainable forest management. This focus is much-needed in developing countries characterized by rare cases of ‘pure’ commons cases (Turner, 2016) and the existence and influence of authoritative power located at multiple administrative levels, often drawing from colonial-era laws.
In response to top-down changes in property rights regimes, bottom-up resistance can emerge under enabling conditions. Catalytic actors with policy preferences and abilities to aggregate scattered power through mobilization and guiding the line of actions can construct framing power to invite intervention from the federal authoritative power on perceived injustice. For the effective intervention of the federal authority, the mobilized action should clearly point out rights violations and be legalized by drawing on the authority embedded in the institutions of marginalized communities.
Our case reminds us that polycentric systems define the governance of commons; it comprises entities with potentially divergent policy stances on the same policy enacting their subjectivities. This leaves the ICs vulnerable due to the likely effects of periodic changes in institutional actors, their interpretations, and varying policy preferences. For policy interventions, the distribution of authoritative power that shapes democratizing forest management is crucial, particularly in developing countries with colonial histories. Laws promoting democratic forest management may become ineffective if other government arms attempt to centralize control, resulting in policy conflicts. We contribute by illustrating how power operates in arenas of polycentric governance that might not always be visible. While top-down exercise of power is common, bottom-up framing of ‘power with’ rarely emerges from marginalized actors, who mainly do not speak or understand the official language. The outcome of conflicts depends on the existence of authoritative power at different levels, the key support of policy catalysts, and the unleashing of embedded institutional authority. Governments committed to the emerging global trend of adopting rights-based approaches in forest management for ICs must reevaluate their policy landscapes, particularly if colonial laws continue to pose any institutional barriers. By removing such institutional barriers, they can show their commitment in fact to democratizing forest management. Lastly, we acknowledge the empirical limitations of this study, particularly in stitching together key events across different administrative levels to develop our narrative. Despite these limitations, we hope the lessons learned are valuable and will invite attention to the dynamic nature of property-rights regimes and advance scholarship on the role of power in commoning.
Additional Files
The additional files for this article can be found as follows:
Appendix E
The State Forest Department’s circular suspending the VFRs. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/ijc.1604.s5
Appendix G
A temporal sequence of events (CSAs: civil society actors). DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/ijc.1604.s7
Notes
Acknowledgements
We are thankful to Indigenous community members and other actors for sharing their experiences.