TheImprovement ofTropical and Subtropical Rangelands

~ IMPROVEMENT OF TROP/GAL AND SUBTROPIOAL RANGELANDS
Ambip houeehold for supply of fish to certain other village h~
holds. In turn, farming houll8holds provided a defined proportion of
their farm produce to the Achari or Ambiga houeeholds who eerved
them. The village community u a whole also provided a portion of
their produce to the king u tax.
The cultivated land wu often owned communally by each clanall
houeeholds of a given cute group in the village. The king, in
theory, owned all uncultivated lands and waters and had the right to
usign a portion ofit for cultivation. The villace community, however,
effectively controlled all theee resources, which were partitioned in
a way that assigned monopoly rights over certain resources to a
particular clan. Thus, only Halakkis collected bivalves and only
Ambigu fished open waters. There were further replations in the
use of resources such u timber or fuelwood that were required by all
clans of the village and gathered from uncultivated lands controlled
by the village community u a whole.
This was, then, a system producing only low levels of surplus
for the ruling elite and with extensive communal management of
resources base4 on socially accepted customs and conventions. It
probably permitted sustainable use of the resource ba118 that eerved
a village community (Gadgil and Malhotra, 1983; Gadgil, 1985).
COLONIAL PERIOD
The ColODlal Syatem
In establishing their hold over India, the British sought to convert
the prevalent pattern of resource use (that generated little surplus
for the state and was ball8d on strong communal replation) into
a pattern that would generate higher levels of surplus for the state
with resources under its firm control. By the time of conquest,
the British society had rejected communal and customary modes of
resource control. The British rulers imposed this system in India,
insisting that the only legitimate forms of resource control were
through individual and state ownership, and that all resource use
should be fully codified. All cultivated land was therefore to be
individually owned, with the owners responsible for paying a certain
level of taxation in cuh. All other land and waters were to be state
property, and to be utilized u far as pOll8ible for generating resources
of value to the British economy. In this hilly and forested district
with excellent natural growth of teak in the moist, deciduous farest