Getting out of the woods

Bhopal: "Whenever we saw people in uniform — forest department officials — coming, we would hide," says Kancheta Lal, a villager from Khatpura in the Sehore district of Madhya Pradesh. "What if they caught us? There really was no point talking to them."

The scenario Lal describes is part of a government-controlled forest management system which views local communities, mired in poverty, as thieves robbing the nation. Only recently has this system started creating space for Lal and people like him. Unfortunately, it still exists across much of India's forest area: forest communities disconnected from their heritage, and with little stake in conserving it.

Every Indian state has a forest department to administer its forest expanses. Recognised as the sole keeper of the land under its control, this department's expertise lies in putting a cost to the timber in its domain. Issues such as biological diversity and the cultural and economic circumstances of local communities living in and around forestland rarely register on the department's radar.

Managing a forest involves some amount of juggling. India's forests throw up a multiplicity of values, human, animal and ecological, that have to be juggled under ever-shifting ground conditions. Almost one in five persons in the world is an Indian, but only 1.8 per cent of the world's forest cover is in India. If the country's forests had to have a chance, a new approach was needed.

The community forestry model
In a small and extremely degraded portion of India's forest area, an interesting and vital experiment — backed by the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust — is evolving into what could be the template for forest protection and regeneration in the country. It's called community forestry.

Operating under the umbrella of the joint forest management (JFM) initiative, as spelled out in the 1988 Forest Policy of India, this experiment embraces multiple elements. It has in its fold forest protection committees (FPCs) and village forest committees (VFCs), comprising local villagers and officials as well as the forest department, and it also works with non-governmental organisations.