Resolution of Public-good Dilemma through Induced Collective Action

Since the mid-1980s, scholarship on commons has shown that resource users often create institutional arrangements and management regimes that help them to allocate benefits over long periods of time. This, usually, is achieved through collective action where people come together to supply themselves with goods and services that they all need but could not provide for themselves individually. However, there are scores of communities that are unable to make the initial collective investment in monetary terms and are, therefore, unable to supply themselves with goods and services that they all need. The civil society sector, particularly non-government development organisations, has recognised the inability of poor communities to make the initial collective monetary investment and arrange for grants. This results in ‘induced collective action’ where social or public-good dilemmas are resolved in a cost-efficient manner but the institutional arrangement tends to dissipate soon after. This piece examines a set of interventions made by an NGO in the Indian Sundarbans to resolve a public-good dilemma and attempts to analyse the conduct of the community in the face of deteriorating system integrity and possible loss of benefits. In other words, this is an attempt to understand what undermines sustainability of institutional arrangements of induced collective action.