Participatory Development: People and Common Property Resources (STUDIES IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND PLANNING)

Participatory Development provides an alternative rural development strategy based on people′s participation in common property resources such as irrigation tanks and common land. The authors use primary survey data from five villages in north India to provide evidence of the gainful participation of village societies in the management of water and forest resources. It is a book which will be of use to academics studying economic development in developing countries and anyone interested in the complex relationship between government and people in the rural sector.

`The book is an interesting study in micro-development economics and should attract the attention of planners and development administrators.′ - The Book Review

`The painstaking analysis of CPR in the village scenarios, using the cost benefit analysis, cluster analysis and the Nash co-operative game, has added to the academic value of the book.... The book under review is timely so that the planners, policy makers, conservationists, rural development officers, students and researchers can learn much out of the experience of success and also the lack of it.′ - Sunday Herald

`The book has given an analytical treatment to the concept of participatory development through illustrations from villages studied and has worked out the economics of this development process. It has developed a good case for making people responsive to and responsible for community resources, resulting in better gains for themselves....This is a readable book, informative and useful to all those who talk about people′s participation.′ - Journal of Rural Development

`one of the very few economic analyses of the currently evolved participatory approach. The authors have made excellent characterisation of the economic interdependence of the common property resource use. They have shown, very clearly, that participatory programmes are economically viable and have made some sincere attempts to develop a framework for deriving the regulatory measures to be adopted by the government....There are not many writing in this area, rarely one with the same competence.′ - Journal of Quantitative Economics

`This is an extraordinarily good book. It would have been a classic with a little more care. At the cutting edge the economist is alone and does not have to count current fashion with marginal productivity theory and non-existant `national estimates′ of activities we are only now beginning to understand. But this is just to provoke the authors to write another edition. Like Oliver Twist, we are left asking for more.′ - Indian Economic Review

`The book′s strength is that it not only reports empirical work but also develops a neat theoretical model to evaluate investment with people′s participation.′ - Journal of Agricultural Economics