Community Based Irrigation Tank Management Programme, Fisheries Intervention and the Tragedy of the Commons : An Overview from Karnataka, India

This paper gives an overview of how tragedy of commons impacting one component of a larger project, impacts revenue generation for the community. The study is based on the Karnataka Community Based Tank Management Programme. One of the components is the fisheries intervention, that provides regular income to the community through the harvesting of fish. While it should be noted that fishing activities depends predominantly on the rains, there are many other factors that can also contribute to the Community abandoning the operations altogether or resulting in steep fall in the revenue. While we covered 59 tanks in nine districts of Karnataka between July and October of 2011, only 19 tanks were found to be involved in fishing operations for more than one season