Common property resources (CPRs): Resources accessible to and collectively owned\held\managed by an identifiable community and on which no individual has exclusive property rights are called common property resources. Terms like "accessible", ''collectively owned/held/managed'', ''identifiable community'' and "exclusive property rights''.are explained briefly below.Common property resources (CPRs) have been defined in a number of alternative ways in the available literature. The element that-is common to most of these definitions attributes primary importance to the nature of access in identification. of CPRs. The conceptual.
approaches vary over a wide range. At the one extreme, there is an approach treating all that is not private property as common property. The approach at the other extreme adopts a much more stringent view to distinguish between common property and "free rider'' or ''free or open access'' resources. The latter category is characterised by absence of any rules for management of the resources. The proponents of this approach hold that ''a resource becomes common property only whenthe group of people who have the right to its collective use is well defined, and the rules that govern their use of it are set otft clearly and followed universally", In their view, common property implies existence of an institutional arrangement for management of the resources. Traditionally, systems of community. management of CPRs and forest land had existed in different forms in many parts· of the country till the end of the 19th century. A very large part of the country's natural resources was common property, in the sense that a wide variety of necessary resources was freelyavai lable to the rural population. The process of extending state control over the common resources, which .began with the declaration of "reserved" and ''protected'' forests in the closing years of the 19th century, has essentially been that of exclusion of villagers' access to common resources by law. As a result, the systems of community management gradually disintegrated and are now virtually extinct.