Community management of water resources: a case study of Sukhomajri (Haryana)
Student name: Ms Prachi Singhal
Guide: Mr Soumendu Sarkar
Year of completion: 2013
Host Organisation: TERI University
Abstract: This paper attempts to understand the details of the Sukhomajri Watershed Project, one of the
most successful watershed projects in India. The cooperation depicted by people in situations
where a community is on the verge of collapsing, like it was in the case of Sukhomajri, is a
departure from the standard textbook results in games of Prisoner’s dilemma. This has been
verified in this study by conducting a field survey in Sukhomajri to see how much people
understand the importance of the checkdams and individual’s cooperation even after decades
have passed.
The paper aims at finding whether cooperation is a common phenomenon when a community
demands it. Tools of Experimental Economics have been used – first, to identify the type of
the subject and classifying them accordingly. Then a voluntary contribution mechanism has
been used to know the cooperative behaviour of the subjects and the last part tries to see how
much, knowing the people with whom one has to cooperate affect their cooperation in a PD
setting.
The results show that people can be cooperative as well as individualistic but cooperative
people contribute more for the betterment of the community in which they live. Also,
knowing people with whom one has to cooperate, increases cooperation.
