Articles by L Venkatachalam

The Tamil Nadu government is attempting to revive the institution of kudimaramathu by leveraging a scheme sponsored by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Developmentto rejuvenate small waterbodies in the state. How a payment for ecosystem services system can incentivise village panchayats to engage in tank management and, in turn, ensure the sustainability and longevity of the community-based programme beyond the life of the project is explored.

Contrary to the neoclassical assumption that the freeriding behaviour of selfish utility-maximising individuals leads to under-provisioning of common pool resources, Elinor Ostrom empirically demonstrated that communities themselves devise institutions in order to organise collective action to "successfully" manage the cprs in a sustainable, efficient and equitable manner. This paper argues that there is a "hidden failure" even in those cases where community management is claimed to be "successful" within Ostrom's framework.