The book addresses several critical interconnected issues relating to the creation of institutions for the management of common property resources (CPRs), especially land and water, and people's decisions on rural-urban migration. It also highlights that people's decisions with respect to migration from a village are influenced, among other things, by whether or not well-specified rights to common property exist. It tries to assess the magnitude of problems of degraded common property resources in the country as a whole and in arid and semi-arid regions in particular. The study supplemented macro survey by using primary data and information from National Sample Survey report on Common Property Resources in 1998. Using econometric techniques, desegregated levels of analysis are employed to test the basic hypothesis in various ways and to explore the relationship between variables. The impact of micro-initiatives of different kinds and with different levels of governmental support on economic, environmental and demographic variables are examined by focusing on two major NGO initiatives, namely, Ubeshwar Vikas Mandir (UVM) and Sewa Mandir in Udaipur. The study corroborates that the focus needs to be one of perception of local issues at a decentralized level. Institutional change, induced mainly by non-governmental organizations, positively influences the productivity of natural resources by creating well-defined property rights as also mechanisms for enforcing them. This then decreases out-migration from rural areas.