An enquiry into the causes of the vanishing rivers in West Bengal, India

The delta region of Ganga-Brahmaputra-Padma is characterized by very fertile land and dense population. West Bengal; a province/ state of India is part of this delta; — is also known as nadi-nala r desh (country of rivers and canals). Land-water-human nexus formed the basis of lives here. Despite this intimate social and cultural connections with nature, people are mindlessly exploiting natural resources. This study aims to understand this dichotomous relationship between human-biophysical system. It tries to do so by testing Elinor Ostrom’s theory of effective commons governance in a specific condition. In this case, Anjana river is chosen as case. The research tries to investigate and explain to what extent the five prerequisite conditions of “effective commons governance” are satisfied for environmental governance of the Anjana river. In order to conduct the research, the research focuses on how much of the preconditions of effective commons governance can be applied for ecological governance of Anjana river. In order to do so, an in-depth analysis of spatial, social, economic, and environmental conditions over time is done. This analysis involves asking a representative sample of respondents from the area about the changes occurred in the area. The analysis also covers various aspects regarding the changes over 20 years (from 2000 and onwards). Therefore, the research strategy is a single case study which will allow to work with small units and large variables. Also, the research is primarily focus on questionnaire, interview, and content analysis, conforming to case study design. The results indicate that the five factors of effective commons governance i.e., monitoring of resources, rate of changes, social capital, presence of outsiders and user support does not affect environmental governance with equal intensity. Also, each factor themselves have nuances. While conducting the research, it is found that the adopted framework proved sufficient for testing. The framework helped to gain deeper insights about individual perceptions about environmental governance. However, a need of larger dataset is felt to justify the width and breadth of the subject. Also, the need of advanced statistical techniques like Neural Network is felt. However, these could not be achieved due to time constraint. At the same time, it is felt that several context specific issues like caste, property rights, politicisation etc. should be investigated. Such studies will help to understand the process of commons governance more accurately in this everchanging world.