Ranchi, Jharkhand: It is difficult to believe that barely three decades ago, the residents of Ara and Keram were forever living in peril of hunger or penury, their survival increasingly dependent on the gradual destruction of the very ecosystem that sustained them. Today, the two contiguous villages reflect prosperity. Their fields are lush with year-round crops of paddy, peas, tomatoes, and watermelon, providing economic stability. Water is abundant, fed by the now-perennial Damba waterfall. Surrounding the villages is nearly 400 acres of forest, proudly regenerated with the villagers’ own hard work
This transformation was driven by a decision taken by the communities to collectively protect their forest and water commons. In the last three decades the two villages have created collective social security measures to tackle poverty, protected and regenerated their depleted forest commons, undertaken water harvesting work to revive the ground and surface water reserves, and addressed social issues like addiction, to transform their villages from poverty-struck to self-sustained.
‘Commons are shared lands such as forests, pastures, water bodies and mangroves, which cover 205 million acres, or one fourth of India, and form the lifeline for over 350 million people, including marginalised groups like Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women. Communities across India have traditionally protected, restored and managed these commons through customary self-governance practices. These customary rights and practices, however, haven’t been formally recognised or recorded in many parts of the country.
Pressure over resources, caste and class hierarchies and environmental degradation has curtailed communities’ access to commons, leading to over-exploitation of commons and exposing them to climate vulnerabilities and rural distress.
Despite these challenges, communities across India are showcasing that reclaiming, restoring and managing commons through customary self-governance practices plays a crucial role in their ecological, social and economic upliftment. Land Conflict Watch, a Delhi-based research group, in collaboration with Common Ground Initiative, a collaborative working on the commons is documenting case studies of successful collective action of communities around commons from across the country.
This story from Ara and Keram is one such example of a community that has fought its way back from depravity to thriving by determinedly caring for its commons. It shows how a strong gram sabha can both help a community bring its commons back from the brink and in doing so, also rebuild their own economies.
Survival through destruction
The villages of Ara and Keram, home to diverse tribal and non-tribal communities, had long battled with deprivation. Keram is inhabited almost entirely by the Bedia tribal group, while Ara is home to seven communities, including Bedia, Munda, Karmali, Lohar, Kharwar, Yadav, Kurmi and one Muslim household.
For decades, the twin villages were severely water-stressed. They were located in a hilly area, and in the absence of government schemes, there were no check-dams, ponds or other recharge systems to capture rainwater, which quickly flushed downstream.
“There wasn’t enough water to even grow sufficient food, leave alone cash crops,” says Ramesh Bedia, a resident of Ara and the Mukhiya of Tundahuli Panchayat, under which both villages fall. “Our waterfall had no flow in summer, and we struggled even for drinking water.”
Villagers did not have any source of cash income for needs other than food, and their meagre single crop barely met their food needs.
There were just two options for cash income – either migrate to work as construction labourers, which is exploitative, or to strip the village forest for survival. “Those who did not or could not migrate chose more and more to turn to the forest,” he says, “never realising that its slow destruction would deprive us of both water and livelihood in future.”
‘Days of despair’
As a 15-year-old in the late 1980s, Ramesh remembers what he calls the “days of despair”.
“Villagers would rise at four in the morning to walk deep into the forest to cut wood,” he recalls, “often carrying back headloads weighing forty to fifty kilograms.” After this back-breaking labour, they would again walk or cycle 19 km to the nearby town of Irwa to sell the wood cheaply to brick kilns. It brought limited income, and stripped the forest bare and depleted water sources.
Often, this income was lost too when forest guards caught them and confiscated their wood or tools.
By the early 1990s, much of the 400-acre forest was already degraded. Wood became scarce, streams dried up, and even drinking water became harder to find each year. By 1992, the community was exhausted, and ready for change.
Addressing the root cause
Already having felt the impacts of the collapse of the forests on their livelihoods, the villagers began to fear for the future generations. Gopal Ram Bedia, now 42 and the village gram pradhan of Ara, recalls, “For quite some time we were thinking and brainstorming on steps to bring change”. Realising that tree-felling was at the center of the degradation, Gopal adds, “We gathered in the Gram Sabha one day and made a decision to stop felling trees.”
That was the first step towards transforming from destroying to protecting the forest. In Keram, two hand-painted signboards now declare: Cutting of trees is prohibited.
The community addressed the root cause of illegal felling—hunger. They created a grain bank as a safety net. They collected small quantities of paddy, lentils, and maize from every household. Families facing illness or food shortages could draw from this reserve.
Medical expenses were another driver of tree felling, so households began contributing ₹50 a month to a common fund for medical emergencies. In just a year, this support system had stabilised livelihoods enough to make forest protection viable.
Baby steps to forest conservation
Moving beyond prohibition to awareness. As consensus grew, a formal Van Suraksha Samiti (Forest Protection Committee) was formed under the Joint Forest Management (JFM) scheme of the government, initially with 35–60 active members.
JFM is a state-sponsored participatory forest governance framework under which legally constituted village institutions, such as Panchayats, collaborate with the Forest Department in the protection, regeneration, and management of forest resources. The scheme has been criticised often because the communities have limited decision making power while the Forest Department remains the de facto authority. However, Ara and Keram have leveraged this scheme to show that strong community participation can override the limitations of a government scheme, enabling effective forest conservation despite structural constraints.
Over time, the forest protection committee expanded into a broader community body with around 120 members from both villages, with elected roles such as president and secretary.
By 2000, forest management had become more systematic. Internal rules were enforced, including fines of ₹10–15 for cutting trees. Weekly meetings reviewed incidents of illegal felling, forest fires, or outsiders entering the forest. Rotating teams of 10–15 people guarded the forest each week.
As protection intensified, the forest began to regenerate. Streams revived, the most visible marker of the revival being the Damba waterfall which slowly returned to life.
Addiction : Hurdle to conservation
Forest regeneration was matched by an ambitious water-conservation drive. But there was one hurdle to be removed before it could be carried out with any efficiency.
In 2016, during a visit, the state MGNREGA Commissioner pointed to a different drain on village resources: the 100 households were collectively spending nearly ₹18 lakh a year on tobacco and mahua liquor. This money could have funded schools and healthcare.
Seema Devi, 27, from Ara, says women of the two villages were the first to comprehend that banning alcohol was crucial for them to make progress. “We realised that it was needed, firstly, for reducing poverty which was a big cause of tree-felling. Also the work of regeneration of forests was highly committed work and a population steeped in addictions would not be able to commit seriously to this kind of undertaking.”
Women from both villages stepped up enthusiastically to enforce an alcohol ban. They organised awareness walks to stop the brewing of alcohol, especially amidst women who were traditionally the brewers.
Utensils used for brewing were collected and sold. The village became alcohol-free through a Gram Sabha resolution. This was the first time women were active in collective decision-making, and from then on their participation in forest management also grew.
Harnessing rainwater runoff
Meanwhile, water conservation work supported by Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) gathered pace. MGNREGA is an Indian law that guarantees 100 days of paid manual work each year to rural households, providing livelihood security and creating rural public assets. Under this scheme villagers constructed around 70 water-storage ponds to harvest rainwater for agriculture. These were located variously in the forest or or private land, based on what was needed.
Between 2017 and 2018, they dug Trench Control Boxes (TCBs) across 300 acres of hilltop land. TCBs are rectangular trenches dug along hill slopes to slow rainwater runoff, reduce soil erosion, and allow water to percolate into the ground. Each TCB is 12 feet long, 3 feet deep, and 3 feet wide, laid in semicircular formations to capture runoff. Each holds about 3,000 litres of water, preventing erosion and retaining rainfall. Adding to these, bunds were built on lower slopes to support agriculture.
In 2018–19, villagers completed 700 check dams across forest streams in just 70 days. These structures ensured water remained stored in the hills, reviving wells and improving water availability across both villages.
From survival to thriving
Together, water conservation, financial discipline, and forest regeneration transformed the local economy. Farming, once rain-dependent, is now year-round. Drip irrigation and high-yield seeds, such as grafted tomatoes from Chhattisgarh with eight-month crop cycles, were introduced. Crops now include peas, watermelon, paddy, tomatoes, and capsicum, with produce transported daily to markets.
“Earlier, vegetables were impossible to grow because of water shortage,” says Ramesh. “People migrated for work. Now, landowners provide employment to the landless within the village, because of which migration has also reduced greatly.”
Gopal Ram Bedia, once dependent on selling firewood, now farms full-time. He grows rice, watermelon, cauliflower, cabbage, tomatoes, peas, cucumber, bottle gourd, and onion, earning nearly ₹8 lakh annually. “Earlier, even my meagre earnings from selling wood were spent in alcohol because of stress,” he says. “Change came because the Gram Sabha took centre stage. When the Gram Sabha is strong, communities become stronger.”
The impact is visible beyond livelihoods. School enrolment rose from 37 children to 250, requiring six additional teachers. Savings from the alcohol ban, along with awards, including ₹1.5 lakh from the Jharkhand government and ₹5 lakh from the Sant Ishwar Foundation, a delhi-based non-profit organization focused on social upliftment, funded a hostel for 40 children, two community halls, and school upgrades.
Ara–Keram’s transformation, driven by collective decision-making, strong Gram Sabha governance, and equal participation of women and men, shows how restoring ecological commons can directly reduce poverty. By protecting forests, the villages revived their water systems and secured their future.