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Property Rights and Institutional Arrangements of a Man-Made Wetland in
Dryland Area of West Bengal, India
Article in Wetlands · September 2020
DOI: 10.1007/s13157-020-01360-y
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2. WETLANDS IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD
Property Rights and Institutional Arrangements of a Man-Made
Wetland in Dryland Area of West Bengal, India
Sourya Das1
& Bhagirath Behera2
& Ashok Mishra3
Received: 2 April 2020 /Accepted: 12 August 2020
# Society of Wetland Scientists 2020
Abstract
The property right is one of the most vital factors determining the sustainable governance and utilization of the wetlands. The
paper analyses property right issues and institutional arrangements of a rural man-made wetland in dryland areas of West Bengal,
India. It uses Participatory Rural Appraisal, Key-Informant’s Interview, Focus Group Discussion, and household interview to
accomplish this objective. The wetland, being located in the dryland landscape, serves as the primary freshwater source for
surrounding communities and is used for multiple purposes. However, the conflict among the stakeholders on property right has
caused the dissolution of the traditional local institution. Lack of regulation on water and fish extraction from the wetland affected
essential human activities like household use, irrigation, and fishery. Moreover, conflict among the stakeholders adversely eroded
any form of collective action for maintenance and renovation of the wetland. The study suggests that decentralized conflict
resolution through dialogue is the pre-requisite for encouraging collective action and development of institutional arrangements
which are vital for the restoration and sustainable utilization of the wetland.
Keywords Wetland . Property right . Institution . Conflict . West Bengal . India
Introduction
In the dryland landscape, wetlands are immensely important,
yet threatened natural resources. These wetlands provide dif-
ferent ecosystem services like habitat support for biodiversity,
water for different livelihood activities, soil production, nutri-
ent cycling, microclimate regulation, groundwater recharge,
and various types of cultural services. However, excessive
extraction of water for irrigation purposes often hampers other
provisioning, regulating, and supporting services, especially
for the dryland wetlands (MEA 2005a, b; Russi et al. 2013).
In developing countries, management of wetland often suf-
fers due to the challenges of policy and institutional arrange-
ments. Wetlands face a range of property right issues, like
ambiguity in the clear definition of the boundary, multiple-
resource characteristics, multiple numbers of users, and indi-
visible nature of the resource, which may lead to conflict
among the stakeholders, and these conflicts may ultimately
result in mismanagement (Adger and Luttrell 2000; Sekhar
2004; CAS 2017; Porter et al. 2020). Moreover, wetlands in
the developing world suffer due to the priorities of other sec-
tors like agriculture, power, and fisheries. Dealing with these
challenges requires more explicit integration of the issues of
wetland management into different types of policies like en-
vironmental policy, water policy, and other related policies
which happen very rarely in most of the developing countries
(Kassenga 1997; Ramsar Convention Secretariat 2013).
However, good policy and institutional measures can also
malfunction due to the opportunist political interventions
(Maconachie et al. 2009).
The problems of Common Pool Resource (CPR) manage-
ment are very relevant to the wetlands (Russi et al. 2013).
There are two strong but opposite arguments on the
* Sourya Das
souryadas.2005@gmail.com; sourya.das@wotr.org.in
Bhagirath Behera
bhagirath9@gmail.com
Ashok Mishra
amishra2001@yahoo.com
1
WOTR Centre for Resilience Studies (W-CReS), Watershed
Organisation Trust (WOTR), Pune, India
2
Departments of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of
Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India
3
Departments of Agricultural and Food Engineering, Indian Institute
of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India
Wetlands
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-020-01360-y

3. management of commons, i.e. Tragedy of the Commons by
Hardin (Hardin 1968) and Institutional Design Principles by
Ostrom (Ostrom 1990). According to Hardin, people deplete
shared resources since they only think about their self-interest,
leading to the problem of the “free-rider”; thus CPRs can only
have two solutions – either government regulation or privati-
zation (Hardin 1968; Marwell and Ames 1979). However,
scientists like Wade (Wade 1994), Ostrom (Ostrom 1990),
and Baland and Platteau (1996) challenged this argument.
Through several case studies, they showed that, under certain
conditions, users could manage the common resources suc-
cessfully without government interventions or privatization.
The most notable is the set of conditions that were proposed
by Ostrom (Ostrom 1990), which is known as “Institutional
Design Principles”. These principles can be summarized as (1)
well-defined boundaries; (2) congruence between appropria-
tion and provision rules and local conditions; (3) collective-
choice arrangements; (4) monitoring; (5) graduated sanctions;
(6) low-cost conflict-resolution mechanisms; (7) minimum
recognition of rights; and (8) nested enterprises. A compara-
tive analysis of several cases throughout the world suggested
that Ostrom’s argument was more valid for small-sized locally
managed commons (Araral 2014). In these cases, institutions
can play a significant role in conflict resolution and can pro-
mote collective action for sustainable utilization of the CPRs
(Ostrom 1990).
Wetlands of the dryland landscape are very much prone to
property right related conflicts due to a huge amount of pop-
ulation pressure (Cline-Cole 1988; Kolawole and Scoones
1991; Scoones 1991; Maconachie et al. 2009). In the case of
traditional wetland agriculture in Ethiopia and tank irrigation
of south-India, the degradation of wetlands was mainly attrib-
uted to the weakening of the traditional institutional arrange-
ments (Palanisami 2006; Dixon 2008; Maconachie et al. 2009;
Kumar 2016). However, there are not many studies that ex-
plicitly documented the institutional arrangements of wetland
in the dryland context, especially in Asia. This study tries to
feel this gap. It traces the evolution of the property right struc-
ture and institutional arrangements in the context of human –
wetland interactions. Moreover, it also tries to incorporate the
perspective of different users regarding its sustainable
utilization.
Methodology
Study Area
Barabundh wetland is situated in the Indpur Development
Block in Bankura district, West Bengal1
(Fig. 1). The geo-
graphical area of the wetland is 19 ha (WBLLRD n.d.) and
can be categorized “Water Storage Areas” under the “Human-
Made Wetlands” type (Ramsar Convention Secretariat 2013).
It lies between the latitude of 23° 07′ 30.94″ N and 23° 07′
52.34″ N and the longitude of 86° 51′ 44.80″ E to 86° 51′
28.31″ E (Fig. 1). It is located in the “Undulating Red and
Lateritic Zone2
” according to the agro-climatic classification,
and the “Rarh Upland3
” according to the physiographic clas-
sification of West Bengal (TARU 2010). The area surround-
ing the wetland is entirely rural; the primary occupations of
the residents are agriculture, livestock rearing, working as
farm labour, and stone mining (Das et al. 2015).
Data Collection and Analysis
The property right and the institutional dynamics of the wet-
land were assessed based upon intensive discussion and anec-
dotal evidence with stakeholders. We performed both qualita-
tive and quantitative analysis based on the “Institutional
Design Principles” by Ostrom (1990) with different types of
data collected with the help of various data collection tools
like Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), Key-Informant’s
Interview (KII), transect walk, Focus Group Discussion
(FGD), in-depth interview4
(Narayanasamy 2009), and house-
hold interview (see Table 1). The entire fieldwork was done
from February to April 2011.
Results and Discussions
We have constructed the history of the Barabundh wetland
based on the data gathered by intensive discussions with the
villagers. The wetland is a private property, which was con-
structed by the Zamindars (Landlords) in the early twentieth
century. Over time, it experienced different types of changes
in governance and management (Fig. 2).
Property Right Structure of the Wetland
Several Panda5
families came from Orissa and settled at the
Gunaida village of Bankura district in the early part of twen-
tieth century. These families became owners of a vast area of
agricultural land. They also possessed land around the
1
West Bengal is a state of India.
2
Undulating Red and Lateritic Zone- This region is slightly undulating with
different grades of laterisation in the process of soil formation. The water
retention capacity of the soil is very low (TARU 2010)
3
Rarh Upland- This region is formed of ferralitic soils. The dry weather
condition prevails here.
4
The selection of the Key-Informant’s and different small groups was done
based on the initial assessment made through transect walk and PRA.
Stakeholders were purposively selected based on the assessment done through
PRA, KII, FGD, and transect walk and interviewed on the institutional dy-
namics of the wetland.
5
Panda- Upper caste Brahmins (Hindu priests) originated from the state of
Orissa in India.
Wetlands

4. Barabundh wetland (around 25 km from Guniada village).
They constructed a large pond at Bandeuli village for securing
water for the surrounding area and named it as “Barabundh”.
Two of their representatives used to stay in Bandeuli village
for the management of landlordship. However, as the number
of panda families increased, all the common resources needed
to be governed and managed under an efficient institutional
arrangement. They formed a “Gramin Soloana6
” at the
Guniada village for that purpose.
The pond was also started to be governed by the “Gramin
Soloana” of Guniada village. With the passage of time, panda
families converted this institutional arrangement into an effec-
tive system to efficiently manage the wetland (Fig. 2). Pandas
used to lease out the pond to fishery entrepreneurs but also
allowed the other local villagers to take a little amount of fish
for household consumption. In return, local people maintained
the condition of the embankment. These residents were from
different social backgrounds such as Santal7
and other social
castes like Bhuiyas8
and Bauris.9
Their occupations were
mainly confined to the collection of forest products, livestock
rearing, and working as agricultural labourers. Only the
Pandas used the Barabundh for irrigation and livestock rearing
purposes. The decisions regarding the use of the wetland,
distribution of benefits, and other conflict resolutions were
taken during the meeting of “Gramin Soloana”. Several rules
evolved during the governance by “Soloana” for managing
the wetland, considering the local conditions and need. The
Pandas used to regulate the withdrawal of water from the
wetland in such a way that a minimum level of water in the
pond used to be maintained for household activities and fish-
ery. They also used to allocate a portion of the profit from
agriculture and fishery for the common interest of the owners
and allowed non-owners to use the wetland in exchange of
their effort for the maintenance of the embankment. There
were different types of punishments for violations of rules like
catching juvenile fish, water theft, and fish theft. Under the
effective monitoring by the Pandas and the local villagers, the
entry of free-riders was very difficult.
However, as time progressed, some of the local vil-
lagers felt that they were cheated by the Pandas and
should have a greater share of benefits from the wetland.
They filed a case in the Bankura Judge’s court against the
Panda families in 1971. However, the case was defeated
in the tribunal. Historical land reform10
in West Bengal
was enacted in 1977 where most of the lands of the Panda
families were distributed among the local villagers.
Therefore, villagers needed this wetland for irrigation pur-
poses. In the meantime, the residents of Bandeuli village
(around 70 numbers of local villagers) managed to collec-
tively buy the share of the wetland of two Panda families.
Since wetland was an indivisible property, the entire wet-
land became the common property of 60 numbers of
Panda families, and 70 numbers of local villagers. After
that, the local community declared that they were also the
owners of the wetland, and thus the wetland cannot be
used by Pandas alone. The Panda families were compelled
to allow the local community to withdraw water for irri-
gation. However, Pandas did not agree to the equal right
over the wetland, since other villagers had a very small
share on that resource. One of them said, “They have a
very little share of this pond, so they cannot claim equal
rights”. On the other hand, other villagers claim that all
the villagers have equal right over the resource. One of
the Santhal villagers said, “I think, we (all the villagers)
have equal rights over the resource, and the solution to
the existing problem should be done on that basis.”
However, the management of the wetland by “Soloana”
was not possible due to this conflict.
The wetlands began to be used by all the villagers of
Bandeuli for multiple purposes like irrigation, fishing, house-
hold activities, and collection of different products like fuel-
wood, leafy vegetables, and fodder. Entrepreneurial activity
on fishery was stopped completely. In the new circumstances,
all the rules, regulations, the system of monitoring, and pun-
ishments became defunct. Some of the residents of two nearby
villages named Belaruma and Keliapathar also started using
the wetland for bathing and washing during the time of water
scarcity.
Presently, the Panda family members staying at Guniada
practically do not get any benefit from the wetland (Fig. 3).
According to the land records, presently the numbers of
owners of Barabundh wetland are 227, among which 86 are
Panda families, and the rest of the 141 families are from other
local villagers (WBLLRD n.d.). Among these 86 Panda fam-
ilies, 2 families stay in Bandeuli, the rest in Guniada village.
The share of Panda families is 83%.
6
Gramin Soloana- In the lateritic zone of West Bengal there is a parallel
administration (informal) beside the constitutional body i.e. the Gram
Panchayat. This is called “Gramin Soloana” to look into all village matters
under the leadership of village headman. “Gramin Soloana” a traditional insti-
tution in the red lateritic zone of West Bengal efficiently manages the natural
resources like wetland and community forest. “Soloana” means 100% which
indicates that its function with 100% participation of all the owners (Ghosh
2014).
7
Santal- is a tribe living in the states of Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal, and
Assam in India (Risley 1992).
8
Bhuiya-This is also a type of social caste in the Hindu religion which receive
very low rank in the social hierarchy (Risley 1992).
9
Bauri- This is a social caste which is regarded as one of the lowest according
to the Hindu caste system. They generally live in the Bankura and Birbhum
districts of West Bengal (Risley 1992).
10
Land Reform in West Bengal- In 1977, Left Front Govt. (mostly dominated
by communist parties) came into the power in the election of West Bengal
province in 1977. They brought in land reform. Individual land ceiling and
land re-distribution was done among the landless labourers (Chattopadhyay
1979).
Wetlands

5. Fig. 1 Location map of Barabundh wetland
Table 1 Different types of data collection techniques and data collected
Data collection techniques /sources Data
PRA • Present and historical aspects of the wetland on use-pattern and institutional
arrangements
• Property right issues
• Conflicts
• Problems and solutions
KII
FGD
In-depth interview
Transect Walk Visual idea of the prevailing status of the wetland
Household Interview 77 number of households sampled by a
stratified random technique
• Household members’ participation (yes or no type) in village-level institutions
• The role of govt. in restoration/management of the wetland
• Need (yes or no type) water committee
• Prospective institution/agency who should get the responsibility for the
restoration of the wetland (if any)
Govt. online archive – (WBLLRD n.d.) Land ownership
Wetlands

6. Role of Government
The role of the government can be very significant for the
management of the wetland. In 2001, the district-level admin-
istration of Bankura granted an amount of INR11
2,700,000
for the renovation of the wetland. However, according to the
villagers, the fund was not properly utilized as there was a lack
of planning, and the concerns of the villagers were not taken
into consideration. It, therefore, could not increase the water-
holding capacity of the wetland much. The local self-govern-
ment, Gram Panchayat or GP, helped to get the allocation
from the district authority. Apart from that, our research did
not find any vital role of GP in the management of Barabundh.
Our household survey result also supports this fact as only 8%
of the respondents think that the GP had played some role in
the management of Barabundh.
The Present Use of the Wetland
Presently, the wetland is being used almost as an open-access
resource where anybody can come and use it without contrib-
uting towards its management like preventing excessive ex-
traction of water and fish; repair of the embankment, desilting
the wetland. It is being utilized still in the same manner men-
tioned earlier. Ten years after the renovation in 2001, the
wetland has become silted again, and the embankment that
was built in the process of renovation has been broken and
damaged. As a result, the water storage capacity has decreased
severely. As the dispute regarding property rights has contin-
ued no renovation work could be undertaken. As a result of
that, most of the vital uses, i.e. household use, irrigation, and
fishery, have been badly affected. According to the Panda
families, maintaining a minimum amount of water in the wet-
land was vital for the scientific culture of fish, which became
impossible due to unregulated withdrawal of water for irriga-
tion. Moreover, villagers also catch fish in an unregulated
manner. Due to the conflicts on property rights, leasing the
pond to fishery entrepreneurs also became impossible. During
the lean period, the water level in most of the tube-wells in the
surrounding area gets depleted, which illustrates why this wet-
land is indispensable for the villagers. However, farmers with-
draw water for irrigation in an unregulated manner, even dur-
ing the lean period. Some of the residents of two neighbouring
villages, i.e. Belaruma and Keliapathar, informed that they are
prevented from using the wetlands. One of them said, “That
pond belongs to the Pandas and the Santals. We don’t have
any legal right. They prevent us from using the pond”.
Overall Management Problems
of the Wetland
Most of the villagers think that excessive and unregulated
extraction of water is the main problem of managing the wet-
land. Moreover, there is no proper system of water distribution
and regular maintenance. About 95% of respondents sug-
gested that there should be a committee which would take
all the vital decisions – such as water distribution, other uses,
and routine maintenance of the wetland. Some of the villagers
of Belaruma and Kaliapathar expressed their interest in being
part of the committee, since it may ensure their right to use the
wetlands. When asked who should get the responsibility of the
management of wetland, about 78% of the respondents opined
that the villagers should take over the responsibility. Some of
the Key-informants suggested that there should be face to face
dialogue among different stakeholders to resolve the conflicts.
11
INR- Indian Rupee (Indian Currency)
Fig. 2 Timeline showing the historical change in the property right, use, and management of the wetland
Wetlands

7. Household Participation in Village-Level
Institutions
The household participation in village-level institutions is
moderate in Barabundh wetland. In the randomly selected
sample, the percentage of participation of males is 4 in Self-
Help Groups (SHGs)12
and 42.6 in the festival committee.13
The corresponding percentages for females are 48 and 0,
respectively.
Discussions
The management failure of Barabundh can be attributed to the
weakening of the governance mechanism. We have already
discussed how the change in the ownership structure caused
conflict between the stakeholders, which ultimately resulted in
the abandonment of the prevailing institution. After this, no
new form of institutional arrangement was developed. It is
interesting to see how this shift has affected the eight Design
Principles proposed by Ostrom, which determine the success/
failure of CPR management (Ostrom 1990). The first princi-
ple, i.e. the “well-defined boundaries” was violated when the
entry of free-riders became common due to the ambiguity of
the ownerships. The second, fourth, fifth, and sixth principles,
i.e. “congruence between appropriation and provision rules
and local conditions”, “monitoring”, “graduated sanctions”,
and “low-cost conflict-resolution mechanisms” were adverse-
ly affected due to the conflict regarding the property right and
dissolution of “Gramin Soloana”. Most of the conflicts
remained unresolved, and the influential sections in the soci-
ety began to get most of the benefits (Adger and Luttrell 2000;
Sekhar 2004). The third principle, i.e. “collective choice ar-
rangement” was not followed even under the governance of
“Soloana” as the local villagers who were heavily dependent
on Barabundh were not allowed to participate in making or
modifying the rules. This situation prompted them to change
the ownership structure. However, in the new era, everyone
tried to maximize their benefit from the wetland according to
their convenience without any formal or informal rule, which
has converted the wetland into almost an open-access re-
source. Therefore, there was no improvement in the “collec-
tive choice arrangement” principle. The seventh principle, i.e.
“minimum recognition of right” does not apply here since the
private property does not depend on the recognition of the
government authorities. The last principle, i.e. “nested enter-
prise” does not apply since it is a very much localized
resource.
12
Self-Help Group (SHGs) – A microfinance group composed of generally 8–
12 members (below 20) involved in saving, internal leading, and sometimes
involved in different economic activities. These groups are generally involved
in different types of social activities by the local self-government. SHGs are
generally socially accountable.
13
Festival Committee- This is a village based committee formed for arranging
different types of religious festivals in the village. They collect contribution
from every households for arranging festivals.
Fig. 3 The relation between different ethnic groups on the use of the
wetland (Rectangular shapes indicate different ethnic groups. The text
inside the rectangular shapes indicates the access, use and ownership of
these ethnic groups. The text inside the arrow sign indicates the
relationships between different ethnic groups)
Wetlands

8. Apart from these eight Design Principles, two other factors
are also important. The social capital which is very important
for the management of CPR (Agrawal 2003; Dixon 2008;
Maconachie et al. 2009) was degraded after the change in
the ownership structure; and, the external financial or techni-
cal help for renovation and reform from the government were
never adequate (Agrawal 2003). Though there are several
laws and policies at both the national level and state level,
which implicitly talks about wetlands, none of them speaks
about the problems of wetlands as a whole (Gopal 2000;
GoWB 2012; Bassi 2015; Joshi 2020). Therefore, the property
right related problems of Barabundh wetland did not receive
any major support from the government.
Barabundh, if appropriately managed, can play a signifi-
cant role in poverty alleviation of the surrounding communi-
ties. There is a need to resolve the existing conflicts and build
an institution for its governance and management. It should be
done in a decentralized manner by bringing different owners
under a common platform for initiating talks on governance,
restoration, and management of the wetland, as suggested by
some of the Key-informants. GP should mobilize stake-
holders, resources (technical and financial) of government de-
partments. Care should be taken so that the discussion does
not become futile due to the entry of the free-riders. The vil-
lagers of Bandeuli and the panda families of Guniada should
discuss among themselves on existing conflicts and solutions.
NGOs can also be involved for awareness generation and
facilitation of communication among different stakeholders
and government departments. However, villagers should take
responsibility for the restoration, decision making and man-
agement of the wetland, whereas the government departments,
NGOs, and GP can play a supporting role (Das and Nandi
2007; Beitl 2011). NGOs should also take the help of existing
institutions like SHGs and festival committees for ensuring
the participation of the people.
Conclusions
This study shows how the change in ownership structure led
to the conflict among the stakeholders and the dissolution of
existing institutional arrangement, which resulted in misman-
agement; and the mismanagement ultimately caused the deg-
radation of the resource. Therefore, it indicates that the main
reason behind the ecological problems and severe underutili-
zation of the wetland is a failure in local governance, which is
deeply rooted in the property right structure. Since there is no
comprehensive policy on the wetland, no initiative was taken
to resolve the institutional issues of the wetland. Decentralized
conflict resolution and improved local institutional arrange-
ments offer the potential to address this issue, providing the
enabling conditions for sustainable governance of the com-
mons are met.
Acknowledgements First of all, we thank two anonymous reviewers for
their comments which helped us to improve the draft. We are thankful to
several persons who helped improve the quality of the paper. Some of
them are late Dr. Dhrubojyoti Ghosh (IUCN), Dr. Subir K. Ghosh
(IUCN); Prof. S. C. Santra (University of Kalyani); Prof. A. K. Nandi
(BCKV); scientists of IESWM, Kolkata; Mr. Sandip Sarkar (WBSRDA);
Mr. Partho Protim Mondal (CAS); Dr. Polash Banerjee (SMU); Dr.
Taneesha Mohan (WOTR); and Dr. Eshwer Kale (WOTR) for their in-
puts. The fieldwork would not have been possible without the co-
operation of the villagers and the help of the field assistants. We are
thankful to them. We also thank Mrs. Indrani Sarker for her constant
support for preparing the draft of the publication.
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