Community Forest Legislation in India: Rights-based Polycentrism or Responsibilization?

•The study attempts to explain the weak performance of the community forest resource rights (CFRR) recognized under the Forest Rights Act, 2006 (FRA) in India by analyzing the design of the Act.•We first discern the enabling and impeding factors that have influenced CFRR operationalization. We found that the support from civil society has been crucial in building collective action and social capital, while technical, financial and bureaucratic hindrances in addition to a conflicting regulatory framework were the major barriers.•Then combining the theories of rights-based approaches (RBA) and polycentrism, we conceptualized the framework of rights-based polycentrism (RBP) to analyze the design of FRA CFRR. We find that the legislation falls short of making the state accountable and repositioning the role of the forest department as a duty bearer.•We argue that the state has not played an enabling role by building agency, capacity and institutions for decentralized forest governance and continues to be substantially invested in local forest management decisions.•We opine that unless these design gaps in the legislation are plugged, it will result in rights-based responsibilization and adversely impact the scaling up of decentralized forest governance in the country. In India, forest rights of forest-dependent communities are democratized and decentralized under the Forest Rights Act of 2006 (FRA). This paper attempts to explain the weak performance of the community forest resource rights recognized under this legislation. We begin by discerning the enabling and impeding factors that have influenced the operationalization of the community forest resource rights. We found that support from civil society has been crucial in building collective action and social capital. Technical, financial and bureaucratic hindrances in addition to a conflicting regulatory framework were the major barriers. We conceptualized the framework of rights-based polycentrism by combining the rights-based approach and polycentrism, and using this lens analyzed the design of the community forest resource rights. We found that the legislation falls short of making the state accountable and repositioning the role of the forest department as a duty bearer. The Act assigns responsibilities of biodiversity conservation, protection of catchments, sustainable resource use and preservation from destructive practices to the local communities, without provisioning additional funds or functionarie