Navigating Commons in India’s Mixed Economy: A Historical Perspective

When India gained independence in 1947, it inherited an economy shaped by colonial extraction and an urgent need for self-sufficiency. The path chosen was a mixed economy – a system that balanced state planning with private enterprise. But while this model drove industrial growth, it also set in motion a long and often painful conflict over who controls India’s forests, rivers, grazing lands, and other common property resources (CPRs). This tension between development and community rights over the commons is one of the defining stories of post-independence India.

India’s mixed economy and the question of common resources 🔗

India’s economy is a developing mixed economy that combines public sector dominance in strategic areas with private enterprise across others. After independence, the state and the business class reached a compromise, drawing from both Keynesian ideas of state intervention and the Soviet model of centralized planning, while stopping short of full socialism. This led to the Industrial Policy Resolution of 1948 and the Planning Commission, established in 1950, which became the backbone of India’s Five-Year Plans.

Within this framework, the government sector directly played a major role in production, accounting for nearly half of capital formation in the economy for several decades. The primary stated objectives were economic growth, social justice, and self-reliance. But achieving these goals required land, water, forests, and minerals – and many of these were commons that rural and tribal communities had depended on for generations.

What are the commons, and who depends on them? 🔗

Common property resources refer to natural resources – forests, rivers, grazing lands, fisheries – that are shared and used collectively by communities. For tribal (Adivasi) populations and rural peasants in India, these commons are not peripheral. They are central to livelihoods, culture, and survival. Forest dwellers, the majority of whom are Scheduled Tribes, have historically depended on minor forest produce for their subsistence, while also practicing settled and jhum (shifting) cultivation.

The relationship between Adivasi communities and these commons is deeply embedded. The term “Adivasi,” meaning “first inhabitants,” is associated with indigeneity claims and shared experiences of forest loss, land alienation, and repeated displacement since independence in the name of development projects.

State control over forests: colonial legacy, post-independence continuation 🔗

India’s approach to forest commons did not begin fresh in 1947. The colonial-era Indian Forest Act of 1927 had already declared forests as state property, stripping tribal communities of their customary rights to manage and use these lands. This framework was not dismantled after independence – it was retained and expanded. Prior to 1988, the forest management objectives were commercial forestry and revenue generation, with communities largely excluded from decision-making.

In practice, this meant that the post-independence state treated forest commons as a national resource to be managed for economic output, not as community heritage. Until the 1980s, the focus was on commercial forestry and people were excluded from forest management, leading to forest degradation on the one hand, and conflict between the Forest Department and local communities on the other.

Industrial development and the erosion of commons 🔗

The push for rapid industrialization under the Five-Year Plans brought new pressures on common lands. Dams, mining operations, steel plants, and infrastructure projects were built in areas that had been commons for generations. Many tribal areas were transformed into industrial zones, leading to the destruction of forests and natural resources, displacing communities and threatening their way of life.

The scale of this displacement is staggering. In India, around 50 million people have been displaced due to development projects over 50 years – including 16.4 million by dams, 2.55 million by mines, and 1.25 million by industrial development. Despite constituting only 8.6% of India’s population, Scheduled Tribes account for approximately 40% of all individuals displaced due to development projects – a statistic that reveals how disproportionately the burden of industrialization has fallen on those most dependent on the commons.

The consequences go beyond physical displacement. Development-induced displacement leads to loss of homes, livelihoods, social capital, biodiversity, and cultural heritage. Forced relocation breaks apart community networks, disrupts traditional agricultural and forest-based livelihoods, and erodes cultural identities built over centuries.

Tribal and peasant resistance: movements against resource exploitation 🔗

Communities did not accept this erosion of the commons silently. Across India’s resource-rich regions, tribal and peasant movements emerged to challenge the development model that displaced them without consent or adequate compensation.

The Chipko movement 🔗

One of the earliest post-independence assertions of community rights over forest commons came through the Chipko movement in the Garhwal Himalayas in the 1970s. Originating in the Garhwal Himalayas, the Chipko Movement involved villagers – mainly women – hugging trees to protect them from commercial logging, drawing from Gandhian methods of non-violence and traditional forest management practices. It was a direct challenge to the state’s assertion that forests were revenue assets, not community resources.

The Narmada Bachao Andolan 🔗

Perhaps the most visible confrontation between development and commons came through the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), launched in 1985. The NBA was an Indian social movement spearheaded by native tribes, farmers, environmentalists, and human rights activists against large dam projects across the Narmada River, which flows through Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Gujarat. According to the NBA, the dams would force the displacement of about a million people, largely poor peasants and tribals, while causing immense ecological damage through the inundation of forests.

Led by activist Medha Patkar and social reformer Baba Amte, the movement adopted Gandhian methods – hunger strikes, long marches, and satyagrahas. It forced the World Bank to withdraw its US$450 million loan from the Sardar Sarovar project in 1993 and brought the issue of displacement-based development to international attention. The NBA insisted that people whose rights to local resources cannot be protected due to development should be compensated and resettled – framing displacement as a question of economic justice.

Jungle Bachao Andolan and mining resistance 🔗

In Jharkhand, the Jungle Bachao Andolan protested against the government’s replacement of natural sal forests with commercial teak plantations – a policy that ignored ecological and cultural values in favour of timber revenue. In Odisha, anti-mining movements emerged in Lanjigarh and Kalinganagar, challenging mining-based industrialization that had grown rapidly since independence and displaced tribal communities from mineral-rich lands. These movements questioned the idea that extracting resources from tribal lands for national economic growth was a neutral or inevitable process.

Joint Forest Management: a collaborative response 🔗

By the 1980s, the failures of purely state-controlled resource management were evident – forests were degrading, communities were alienated, and conflicts were intensifying. The government response came through a significant policy shift: Joint Forest Management (JFM).

JFM emerged against a backdrop of two centuries of centralised bureaucratic control over forest management in India. Centralized control during the 19th and 20th centuries failed either to conserve resources or to contribute substantially to the well-being of local populations. The concept had early experimental roots in the Arabari forest of West Bengal and Sukhomajri in Haryana during the 1970s. At Arabari, forest officer Ajit Kumar Banerjee negotiated with eleven local villages and formed an ad hoc Forest Protection Committee – an idea that proved transformative.

Rooted in the National Forest Policy of 1988, JFM encourages cooperation between state forest departments and forest-dependent communities by ensuring shared responsibilities, costs, and benefits. The formal JFM programme was launched through a Government of India resolution on June 1, 1990. JFM promoted agreements between the Forest Department and a village community to jointly protect and manage adjacent forest land and to share responsibilities and benefits.

How JFM works on the ground 🔗

At the village level, Joint Forest Management Committees (JFMCs) are constituted – democratic bodies where all adult village members can participate. Communities commit to protecting forests from illegal grazing, fires, and logging. In return, they receive access to fuelwood, fodder, non-timber forest products (NTFPs), and a share in timber revenue. The JFM programme is currently implemented by over 106,000 JFMCs, covering 22 million hectares of forests across 28 states and union territories.

Successes and limitations 🔗

JFM has had several positive impacts: improved forest condition, increased income and livelihood opportunities for participating communities, and a dramatic change in the attitude of communities and the Forest Department towards each other and towards forests. The Arabari experiment in West Bengal and watershed restoration projects in Rajasthan are often cited as examples of successful community-state partnerships under JFM.

However, JFM is not without significant criticism. Power imbalances between forest bureaucracies and communities, inadequate benefit-sharing, and the exclusion of women and marginalized groups have limited its impact in many areas. The JFM programme was launched in 1990 as a populist state response to popular forest struggles – which means its success depends heavily on how genuinely communities are empowered, not merely incorporated into a government scheme. The Forest Rights Act of 2006 represented a further step, formally recognizing tribal communities’ rights over forest lands and resources that JFM alone had not fully secured.

The ongoing tension in a mixed economy 🔗

The management of commons in India’s mixed economy has always involved a fundamental tension: the state needs natural resources for industrial development and revenue, the private sector seeks them for profit, and communities depend on them for survival. By 1956, many states had vested common lands with the state government through Zamindari Abolition Acts, consolidating state authority over resources at the expense of customary community rights.

The 1991 economic liberalization, which significantly boosted the private sector, added another layer to this conflict. As the liberalization of India’s economy gave the private sector a significant boost, industries seeking minerals, land, and forest resources intensified pressure on commons that had already been weakened by decades of state-led extraction. The result is that tribal and peasant communities continue to navigate a development model that was built, to a large extent, without them.

India’s experience with commons in a mixed economy shows that neither pure state control nor market-driven privatization has served the communities most dependent on these resources. Frameworks like JFM and legislation like the Forest Rights Act represent important corrections – but they work only when communities have real decision-making power, not just nominal participation. The history of India’s commons is ultimately a history of who gets to define “development,” who bears its costs, and who shares in its benefits.

What do you think? Can India’s mixed economy genuinely balance industrial growth with the rights of communities who depend on common property resources – or does the structure of the economy itself make that balance impossible? And how should the success of frameworks like Joint Forest Management be measured: by forest cover restored, or by the degree of real autonomy returned to local communities?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_India
2. https://www.globalpolicyinsights.org/changing-economic-models.php
3. https://vajiramandravi.com/upsc-exam/evolution-of-indian-economy/
4. http://www.igidr.ac.in/pdf/publication/PP-057.pdf
5. https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/forest-policy-and-tribal-development
6. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-024-03166-3
7. https://vajiramandravi.com/current-affairs/joint-forest-management/
8. https://www.fao.org/4/XII/0774-A1.htm
9. https://sleepyclasses.com/tribal-movements-in-india/
10. https://compass.rauias.com/current-affairs/tribes-displacement/
11. https://www.dalvoy.com/en/upsc/mains/previous-years/2025/general-studies-paper-i/tribal-development-india-displacement-rehabilitation
12. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361275884_Impacts_of_Development_Induced_Displacement_on_the_Tribal_Communities_of_India_An_Integrative_Review
13. https://www.granthaalayahpublication.org/journals/granthaalayah/article/download/6337/6244/35556
14. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narmada_Bachao_Andolan
15. https://rightlivelihood.org/the-change-makers/find-a-laureate/medha-patkar-and-baba-amte-narmada-bachao-andolan/
16. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/environmental-movements-of-india/narmada-bachao-andolan-nba-save-the-narmada/86B51F094B8028AF70A69A5347DBED39
17. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629625000313
18. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344909002274
19. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Forest_Management
20. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21681376.2022.2084446
21. https://blogs.lukmaanias.com/2025/05/23/post-independence-land-reforms/
22. https://groww.in/blog/mixed-economic-system-in-india