Where analogy did not work: the case of Teelin Bay again
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It is interesting to return for a while to Taylor's study of the Teelin Bay's fishermen community (Taylor, 1987). As we have seen earlier, Teeliners have successfully maintained an old rotation system of access to a small estuary of the Glen River in order to make salmon harvesting orderly and equitable. Co-operation under this system is deemed by the local fishermen so 'natural' that no formal sanction system exists to enforce it: norms of co-operative behaviour are well established and reputation effects are quite sufficient to deter free-riding. On the basis of the 'analogy doctrine', one would thus have expected that, when a priest came to the village in 1973 to convince its inhabitants to extend co-operation to the whole Glen River, he would have met with a positive response. In actual fact, things turned out differently: not only was the opposite reaction observed but Teeliners even displayed an attitude of resolute resistance to the priest's project.
Such an attitude cannot apparently be entirely or even chiefly explained by the fact that the realization of the project required the collective purchase by the community of Teelin's Glen River's fishing rights from a non-profit organization based in Dublin (known as Gael-Linn). The main reason for their paradoxical unwillingness to undertake concerted action about the water area concerned is apparently the lack of a tradition of co-operation in this portion of the customary fishing grounds. As a matter of fact, riverine salmon fisheries have long been a privately or institutionally owned and managed resource. In post-medieval times, landlords claimed such fisheries as adjoined their estates and they did not open them to the peasantry: 'locals might be employed to tend the landlord's weir or crew his net-boats, but unauthorized fishing was theft' (Taylor, 1987: 295). From this time onwards, there developed a tradition of poaching—'there were even a few individuals who would venture out at night and stretch a net across the entire width of the narrowest part of the river' (ibid.) - which came to be regarded by local fishermen as a sort of sport run at the expense of the landlord towards whom latent hostile feelings were thereby manifested. When the government took over ownership, this local cultural significance of poaching as an expression of hostility and opposition to outside authority persisted. In Taylor's words:
Poaching, however, was also a valued tradition. Just as the landlord's role was to police his holdings, the tenant's role was to poach. Old men spoke with undisguised relish about the good old days, when close watch over the waters made poaching a true challenge. Otherwise lawabiding men would wink and smile at their own reminiscences of successful expeditions and even of capture and confinement. Today, small fines and the lack of effective enforcement seem to have made poaching a somewhat less challenging sport, but sport it remains. Evidently the fact that the landlords are gone and Irish government or Gael-Linn's bailiffs are now the regulators makes little difference in the local perception of the 'sides'; it is still locals versus outside authorities. (Taylor, 1987: 300)
Given the above culturally rooted perception, Teelin fishermen have absolutely no trust in one another's readiness to put an end to poaching practices. 'The problem, as they see it, is that poaching, as long as it does not violate local rights of access as defined in the rotation system, is a "natural" local characteristic. No one could imagine giving it up' (Taylor, 1987: 300-1). They are none the less willing to admit that it would be better if everyone would stop poaching, yet, since lack of trust is pervasive, the only way they consider it feasible to establish co-operation consists of involving an external authority able to impose punishment in an unyielding manner. The situation therefore resembles an AG where a non-co-operative equilibrium prevails due to generalized absence of trust. To establish trust and move to a co-operative equilibrium, actors believe than an external agency must enter the scene.
Taylor's story of Teelin fishermen is fascinating because it shows how tradition can shape the conditions in which one would like to see people co-operate. In a portion of the water space which has long been open to locals, a long tradition of co-operation regarding access to fishing sites has imparted a kind of 'naturalness' to the co-operative behaviour displayed by the fishermen. But where there has been a long tradition of inveterate poaching for historical reasons, the minimum trust does not exist among the same fishermen to get concerted action started. In these circumstances, creating a new convention (institution) by analogy cannot work simply because different cultural norms prevail in the two resource domains exploited by them. History clearly matters.
Trust can be built: lessons from two success stories
It would actually be wrong to infer from the above account that collective action is impossible unless it is rooted in a long tradition of co operation. There is enough evidence to show that trust can sometimes be built over short periods of time provided that general surrounding conditions are favourable. Thus, for example, in her study of the Villa Santa co-operative of Honduran resin-tappers, Stanley argues that one of the chief factors behind the cohesion of the group which enabled it to successfully control a local forestry was the shared experience of migrating together from southern Honduras and participating in a strike to stop sawmill expansion. This collective action of forest protection—which involved the blocking of a road leading to local pine forests—'gave the co-operative an initial purpose, and served to bind members together' (Stanley, 1991: 765, 774).
The story of the Kirindi Oya and Gal Oya irrigation projects in Sri Lanka (started by the British in 1920) also deserves to be told in the present context. The factors responsible for water-poaching and the disintegration of the whole control system in the Kirindi Oya project are quite complex, yet they result largely from the large size of the group involved and from its social heterogeneity along several dimensions. Thus, according to Ostrom, among the internal factors accounting for Kirindi Oya farmers' inability to develop an effective set of management rules, the following are particularly worth singling out:
To remedy the above deficiencies, a new experiment was tried on the left bank of the Gal Oya irrigation project which, by the late 1970s, was considered as a 'hydrological nightmare' characterized by widespread social and ethnic tensions (between Sinhalese and Tamil farmers); pervasive water thefts; large-scale corruption exacerbated by the clientelistic politics of a central regime unwilling to enforce rules impartially; and deep distrust and continuous recriminations (Ostrom, 1990: 167). The new project scheme, designed by a team of experts from the Agrarian Research and Training Institute (ARTI) and Cornell University, was based on the central idea that, as far as possible, rules have to be laid down by the resource users themselves, organized in small, socially homogeneous groups in which confidence is first to be reestablished. To achieve that result, the ARTI-Cornell team chose to introduce 'human catalysts' in the form of institutional organizers (usually unemployed college graduates willing to live in the remote project area) who were to work directly with farmers and officials at the field-channel level with a view to facilitating their problem-solving capabilities. Once the few farmers (about twelve to fifteen) operating at that level are used to working together and have achieved concrete benefits from group action (e.g. repairing a broken control gate or desilting a field channel), the institutional organizers (IOs) would then help form a local organization and select, through consensus, a farmer representative. 'This representative could articulate the interests of the other farmers on his field channel at larger meetings and report back to the others what had happened in larger arenas' (ibid. 169).
The guiding principle followed by the ARTI-Cornell team was therefore that of building bottom-up organizations but only after having obtained the assurance that groups at the lowest level can effectively work together and have met with some initial success in collective action. In Ostrom's words: 'Mutual trust and reciprocity were nourished on a face-to-face basis prior to attempts to organize farmers into larger groups' (Ostrom, 1990: 172). The 'field-channel organization' (FCO) is the basic organizational unit of the Gal Oya project. FCOs are problemsolving units that operate mainly on an informal basis. A second tier of organization was built on top of the FCO at the level of the distributary channel. Named the 'distributory channel organization' (DCO), it involves between 100 and 300 farmers. A DCO's general assembly typically encompasses all farmers and committees made up of the farmer-representatives from the FCOs. As for officials, they are selected by consensus and are non-partisan. The third tier of organization, at the branch-canal or area level, followed after FCOs and DCOs had been established and linked. The fourth tier—a project-level committee playing the role of a forum in which farmers can directly participate in policy discussions—was initiated by the farmer representatives and the IOs.
In the opinion of Ostrom on whose work the foregoing account is based, the achievements of the Gal Oya project have been really impressive. Not only are water rotation procedures quite generally attended, but rotations frequently involve deliberate efforts by those located higher in the system to make water available to tail-enders, a noteworthy achievement in view of the fact that head-enders tend to be Sinhalese and tail-enders tend to be Tamils. Moreover, farmers began to work on clearing out the channels within a few months of the creation of an FCO and, at times, they have even participated in the clearing of distributory channels that were not cleared by officials because of lack of funding. Also, the level of conflict among farmers declined at the same time as better understanding and trust developed between farmers and officials of the Irrigation Department. Finally, the initial opposition of powerful farmers gradually disappeared and the day-to-day problem-solving regarding irrigation and agricultural problems could be taken away from politicized channels, an extremely important step given the spoils systems that had evolved in Sri Lanka (Ostrom, 1990: 169-72).
One of the most interesting lessons from this project is indeed that mutual trust can be gradually built up within the framework of small groups geared towards solving concrete problems of vital importance to members. If the Gal Oya irrigation scheme achieved the degree of success it did after so many years of disastrous failure in the whole region, it is undoubtedly because of its progressive bottom-up approach in which irrigators were initially placed in trustenhancing conditions (small groups formed at the most decentralized level of the field channel where a number of crucial but rather easy-to-solve problems continuously arise) with 'human catalysts' to help them overcome initial distrust.
In other Asian countries, like the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia, field facilitators have become widely used in irrigation projects (Bruns, 1993). The role of such outsider catalysts seems to have been equally determining in other circumstances, for example in successful forestry programmes (e.g. in West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir, and Haryana States in India) or in grazing schemes (such as the World Bankfunded Eastern Senegal Livestock Development Project) which have employed 'special change agents' who, by acting as motivators in the field, would favour the emergence of strong local user-organizations (Cernea, 1 989: 51; Swallow and Bromley, 1994b: 8).
There is obviously a crucial difference between the two above stories. In the story of the Villa Santa co-operative, trust has arisen from within the group itself, largely as a result of the sharing of positive experiences. It must be noted that the decisive experience of the strike also needs to be explained since the strike is evidently a collective action. It is a well-known fact, though, that it is much easier to unite against some external enemy (in this instance, a sawmill company) than to establish cooperation among individuals in the absence of any outside threat. Trust-building in Villa Santa co-operative has thus been a two-step endogenous process. First, an opportunity presented itself which enabled people to get together rather easily (all the more easily as they had a common background of migratory experience). Then, during a second stage, banking on the trust thereby established, they could undertake constructive (rather than purely defensive) actions aimed at managing a whole forest area. In the second story, that of the Gal Oya irrigation project, external agents have played a critical role both in educating irrigators ('human catalysts' have helped them to learn in the field how to build up trust through carefully monitored concrete actions) and in ensuring a high degree of participation of the beneficiaries in the whole project set-up.
Clearly, when mutual distrust prevails, outside intervention is inevitable (a point which Teelin's fishermen have well understood). It is not sure, however, that it is going to succeed. There are circumstances—such as in Indian villages ridden with caste prejudices—in which the initial conditions for village-level unified action are so unfavourable that attempts at fostering them are doomed to failure.
This being said, there is at least a common thread which unites the two above mentioned stories and ties them up in an interesting way with other theoretical considerations made before. As a matter of fact, the two experiences suggest that cooperation has more chance to get established when it is developed in a gradual way, starting with rather easy-to-meet challenges and then moving to more complex situations requiring more trust and collective discipline. This approach may have been followed spontaneously in the history of a particular community or it may have been purposefully pursued by some external agency as in the Gal Oya project. Note also that the above idea underlies efforts at promoting plays, festivals, and sporting activities before embarking upon more demanding collective enterprises (see above).
Leadership pattern: traditional or modern?
It is an often-stressed fact that success of collective action is frequently associated with effective, charismatic local leadership. Thus, for example, differences among Nepalese panchayats in terms of reafforestation achievements are 'quite largely attributable to the qualities of particular leaders' who are effective in organizing protection and in negotiating agreements with government agencies (McNicoll, 1990: 158, citing Mahot et al., 1987). Good leaders are needed to perform a number of pivotal functions which can be straightforwardly derived from the foregoing analysis in this and previous chapters: (a) to help people become aware of the real challenges confronting them; (b) to convince them that they can ultimately benefit from concerted action; (c) to show them the good example (see Chapter 5); (d) to mobilize a sufficient number of them for enterprises requiring co-ordinated efforts (see Chapter 5 again); and (e) to ensure impartiality and fairness in the designing and enforcing of rules and sanction mechanisms. Bear in mind that, in game-theoretical terms, the presence of leadership ensures that the game is played sequentially and, as we have argued in Chapter 5 and recalled in the third section above, co-operation is more likely to occur when sequential moves are possible.
Now, to be an effective leader, a person must have at least two basic qualities: first, he must be competent and able to understand the main stakes of what is going on, and, second, he must evoke trust in his good intentions, 'that his use of power should be seen not to be predatory and self-interested, but concerned with the welfare of the larger whole' of which both he and his followers are part (Wade, 1988b: 491). Many experiences tend to show that the existence of well-recognized traditional leaders is an important factor of success in village-based management schemes or in concerted actions in general. This is apparently due to the fact that they possess the above two qualities or, in case they lack some technical competence required for the effective working of the schemes, they delegate the related tasks to someone more competent (and generally younger) than they are.
In many cases, therefore, we can observe that traditional authority patterns continue to play a dominant role in CPR management schemes or projects, often behind the new formal institutional facades imposed from outside. For instance, among the Thakali and Bhotia communities of mountainous Nepal, common assets like irrigation water and communal forests are still run under the guidance of traditional systems of community governance and local leadership. Over the past few decades, writes Messerschmidt, the ethnic Bhotia communities have succeeded in preserving the ancient and customary role of headman (who is chosen from among the most influential in the village, by the consensus of all household heads) despite imposition of the caste-based panchayat system. 'The Bhotia consider the panchayat to be a foreign concept, but pay lip service to its requirements. They elect a chairman and a panchayat council, but beneath this façade the village headman remains in charge. He manages by consensus and is backed by strong tradition . . . the panchayat system serves only as the community mouthpiece to the outside' (Messerschmidt, 1986: 464).
In Botswana, likewise, 'the traditional ward structure with its chiefs and headmen still remains the recognised forum for community consultation and the central motor of community mobilization and organization from which even modern institutions derive their authority' (Zufferey, 1986: 14). Thus, the village kgotla is still the main village body dealing with customary law and general community issues; moreover, its decisions continue to be considered to "represent' the community (see above, Chapter 11). On the other hand, it is not rare to see the major executives of the village development committee (the official planning and co-ordinating body in the village community, introduced by the government in the late 1960s) to be close relatives of the chief. This is regarded by Zufferey as a positive feature in so far as the chief's relatives are found to command greater authority and respect in the community (ibid.: 36).
In general, traditional organizations rarely correspond in coverage and membership with modern community organizations imposed by central governments. The representatives on the councils, committees, and associations are usually not elected by a formal voting process but become members due to their social, economic, and lineage position in the community, clan, or tribe (Willmann,1993). This is clearly the case in the South Indian villages studied by Wade where, as we have seen, local councils are typically controlled by members from the dominant castes and the wealthier landowners. Frequently also, an important election criterion is experience and knowledge, tantamount to age (ibid.). In most areas, elders have an overriding weight and tend to make decisions on behalf of the assembly. The age criterion is often combined with the economic/social status criterion inasmuch as the elders sitting on village councils come themselves from the wealthiest and more important families (see McKean, 1986: 551 for Japan).
Traditional authority and leadership patterns present considerable advantages for villagebased collective action in general and for CPR management in particular. The prestige which customary leaders carry and the trust which they evoke may impart a great deal of legitimacy to their initiatives and decisions. In addition, the very fact that their (natural) authority is rooted in tradition tends to guarantee the continuity of the schemes based on it. Thus, for example, one of the main reasons why pastoral associations in eastern Senegal are more efficient among the Wolof and the Mandingo than among the Peul is that leaders of the former have more power and influence in matters of common concern besides the fact that they can rely on stricter and stronger traditional organizations, particularly above village level (Shanmugaratnam et al., 1992: 38). Among the Boran pastoralists of northern Kenya, on the other hand, the elected clan leaders (known as the jalaba) have limited decision-making powers and all herd owners can speak in the traditional assemblies concerned with questions of natural resource use and management. Yet, the leaders have 'en extensive capacity for mediation and conciliation' (Swift, 1991: 36), which appears crucial for reaching viable compromises in societies accustomed to the unanimity rule.
There are nevertheless serious potential shortcomings in this solution, too. The first and most obvious one is personal inadequacy (incompetence, partiality, self-interestedness, corruption, laziness, etc.) of traditional leaders. Thus, in the above-cited study of Botswana, Zufferey has observed that in some communities where CPR management schemes have fared poorly, lapses on the part of the traditional headman or his close associates are often at fault. In Moshopa, for example: 'The chief was reported to be a major problem in the community because of his basic lack of knowledge about the role and objectives of modern institutions, his failure to hold meetings as promised, and his lack of determination in defending community interests' (Zufferey, 1986: 38). In Kgagodi, the village development committee which was elected on the basis of traditional influences and status has been blamed for selecting projects 'that improve its own "self-image" rather than the living standards of the community' (ibid.: 46).
The situation is still more uncertain when, as documented in Chapter 11, corruption of the traditional elite is mounting. As has been appositely remarked by Colchester, 'as local leadership becomes less accountable and less responsive to community needs and rights, the opportunities for making land use decisions that increase personal gain at the expense of community security, both social and environmental, are widening' (Colchester, 1994: 87). Thus, traditional leaders often cannot resist the temptation of quick and easy rents when there arises the possibility of intensive commercial exploitation of local natural resources which were so far harvested only or mainly for subsistence needs.
Traditional leaders need not always be incompetent or mischievous, yet the customary source of their legitimacy or their tribal affinities may be at the root of special difficulties. In particular, they may be hesitant to call into question erstwhile rules of access that now prove too lax for an effective management of natural resources. This fact has actually been mentioned earlier while discussing the problems arising from absentee herd ownership in several African countries. Another striking illustration comes from Niger. In this country, with the assistance of foreign donors (including the World Bank), the government has embarked upon a project of pastoral development in response to the disastrous consequences of the 1969 and 1972-3 droughts. The so-called Projet de Développement de l'Elevage au Niger Centre-Est is based on a pastoral organization consisting of three levels. The lowest of these tiers is the GMP (Groupement Mutualiste Pastoral ) which is the unit for water management and collective water rights to GMP wells which were formerly public. We are told that the most important problem with these GMPs is 'the lack of a clear concept of membership by which to distinguish a member from a non-member, or to identify advantages exclusive to a member'. More precisely:
In a typical case, a GMP is formed on the basis of a tribal sub-group, but not all the members of the sub group need to become members of the GMP for it to be assigned collective water rights. Nevertheless, all of them, members and non-members alike, enjoy the collective right to the well. A GMP member is said to be entitled to a card. However, there is no prescribed membership fee although a few GMPs have collected a contribution of 500 CFA each from some of their members. (Shanmugaratnam et al., 1992: 30)
Regarding outsiders, the customary principle of allowing them free access to the well and the surrounding pastures for a few days after which they have to make some payment to the wellowner to continue to enjoy the rights of access, is still followed by the management committees of the GMPs. The problem is actually made more complicated still because many outsiders 'do not respect the authority of the GMP and attempt to by-pass it and use the well'. And this is in spite of the feet that the GMPs are dominated by traditional chiefs and their families (ibid. 31-3). This last observation takes us straight to the next potential problem associated with traditional leadership. Since it has already been discussed at some length (see above, Chapter 11), it needs only to be briefly mentioned here. Under the influence of rapidly occurring changes in macro-political structures—such as the introduction of the new village panchayat system (elected village councils) in India—the economic and technological environment, and values or beliefs, traditional authority of village elders or erstwhile feudal landlords is being increasingly questioned by at least certain segments of the rural population, most notably outsiders (as above), migrant workers, young age-groups, educated people, low social strata, and frustrated rival factions. In many cases, what tends to become more and more unacceptable are the old-fashioned, hierarchical, non-democratic, and rather secret mode of functioning of customary village institutions as well as their unbalanced membership.
There is apparently increasing evidence to show that, when traditional authorities are no longer performing or are deeply questioned, and/or when collective action is better taken at a lower-than-village level, co-operation has a better chance to succeed if group leaders are relatively young, educated persons who have preferably been exposed to modern values and ways through migration or similar experiences. Thus, from a study conducted in Tanzania, Putterman has concluded that 'there is mild support for a "modernisation" type hypothesis whereby "modernising" influences, rather than traditional ones, are considered to be conducive to collective labor participation. Education, migration, and previous participation in wage labor showed positive relationships with collective labor participation. These influences are also borne out at the village level' (Putterman, 1981: 393). The author ascribes this finding to the fact that education, migration, and wage employment history—which, incidentally, have the effect of increasing the village's social heterogeneity—tend to generate 'less parochial outlooks' (ibid.: 398). Similar results have been obtained by Sadan and Weintraub ( 1980) on the basis of their study of the factors of economic performance in Israeli co-operative settlements (which are composed of many immigrants with a traditional background). And Indian co-operative societies with relatively educated officers appear to be more successful than others (Seabright, 1993: 123).
The question as to why educated persons (typically with a history of exposure to the external world) turn out to be good initiators of co-operation deserves some attention. There are several possible explanations for this situation. In particular, educated persons may be better able to understand the advantages of co operation, especially so if these advantages are long-term or not easily perceptible for some reason. Another possibility is that educated persons are comparatively good at designing effective mechanisms for initiating and sustaining co-operation. More importantly, education is essential for the mastery of critical skills like bookkeeping and accounting, legal knowledge, correspondence in the official language, and so on. It also provides self-confidence in dealing with the government and the outside world (Shanmugaratnam et al., 1992: 10), which is especially useful when government agents behave in an arrogant or ruthless fashion. This ability to address authorities or external agents on a more or less equal footing, using their own language and modes of thinking, may go a long way towards explaining why educated leaders enjoy increasing legitimacy and prestige among rural dwellers.
Many case histories could also be cited in support of the above set of explanations. For example, in Ronkh village on the Senegal River, successful collective action has been undertaken by a group of rural youth which could rely on the effective leadership of an educated person who decided to put an end to his teaching career in town in order to settle back in his native village (Gentil, 1986: 206-16). Note carefully that this case is quite different from the one described earlier (in Chapter 11) in which migrant workers return to their native village in Botswana but only for short periods of time. Having no stake any more in the collective affairs of their community, they show a natural inclination to feel unconcerned by them and to withdraw from the village's public forum. For another thing, it is worth pointing out that, in the aforementioned experience of the Villa Santa co-operative of resin-tappers in Honduras, the idea of the co-operative actually took hold with the guidance of lawyers and university students from the capital city of Tegucigalpa (Stanley, 1991: 772).
The main lesson to be drawn from the foregoing discussion seems to be the following. Given the rapid changes that have transformed the Third World countryside during recent decades, the ideal case presents itself when collective action takes place under the impulse and leadership of dynamic persons who (a) have been exposed to the outside world in one way or another, and (b) do not squarely confront or antagonize traditional structures and authority patterns but find a tactful way to collaborate with them, at least where they have remained alive. The first condition guarantees not only that these new leaders have developed non-parochial outlooks, but also that they have acquired knowledge about the nature of present-day challenges and about ways of dealing with official authorities at the national or regional levels and, possibly, with external donor agencies (an almost indispensable prerequisite of successful collective action in the modern context). As for the second condition, it ensures that unnecessary tensions are avoided and that the social prestige of customary rulers and institutions is mobilized in support of the new co-operative ventures. (Failure to achieve this could actually result in the deliberate blocking of any new initiative by resentful and vindictive traditional rulers.)
Thus, referring to the leadership structure of Senegalese pastoral associations (called Groupements d'Intérêt Economique or GIE) which have achieved some success in improving the management of rangelands and in reducing the frequency of resource-use conflicts both within and between pastoral communities of eastern Senegal, an above-cited study notes the following. In many GIEs, younger educated men are replacing traditional leaders, but these younger leaders still consult the elders in important decisions. This is a positive feature since 'the participation of the elders in the decision-making lends authority to GIE boards ensuring that decisions are followed up at the village level' (Shanmugaratnam et al., 1992: 36). In the Pacific Islands, to take another example, we are told that many traditional leaders now accept the idea that their customary decisionmaking role must be given a stronger footing through the support of advisory groups of younger kin members with more formal education and wider experience of development matters. This evolution is apparently an important factor accounting for the success of local-level, communitycentred organizations for resource management in meeting new challenges from the wider world through institutional innovations (Hviding and Baines, 1994: 35-6).
In the worst case, customary institutions may have eroded to the point of disintegration, giving way to bitter and uncontrollable rivalries of a personal, factional, or class nature. In such circumstances, rural communities need to radically transform their social and political institutions to undertake the required collective actions. Fortunately, there are encouraging signs that 'communities can manage to recreate open, accountable and, crucially, equitable forums for making decisions about resource management' (Colchester, 1994: 88). If these possibilities do not materialize, local-level, spontaneous collective action cannot be relied upon, at least for the near future, and only outside intervention—such as supervision of CPR management schemes by expatriate staff perceived to be not only technically competent but also socially neutral (Lawry, 19896: 10) - can help to start it again on necessarily fragile grounds. The situation may not be much brighter if traditional leaders are so corrupt that they have lost all legitimacy (see above), or if they have little personal interest in CPR management and are mainly keen to avoid unpopular steps like enforcing rules governing CPR use, such has happened with so many new village panchayats in India (Jodha, 1992: 35). According to Jodha, this is because the legal and formal status of panchayats makes them 'a small scale replica of state authority' rather than a representative body of CPR users, particularly the poor villagers who crucially depend on CPRs for their daily livelihood (ibid. 69). The problem is, of course, seriously compounded when the government or other external agencies are only too willing to respond to the demands of opportunistic leaders for grants and relief that exempt their communities from genuine mobilization for the upkeep of village-level CPRs.