Supplement to Wastelands News Vol. IV No 4

DEFORESTATION: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS

MADHAV GADGIL

Centre for Ecological Sciencesand Theoretical Studies

Indian Institute of ScienceBangalore 560012

FOUNDATION DAY LECTUREMAY 12 1989

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION OF WASTELANDS DEVELOPMENTNEW DELHI

CONTENTS

Page No

EDICT OF KING SHIVAJI 1,

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Of Mangoes and Mahua

1.2 Two Nations

1 3 Of Need and Greed

1 4 Phase Transformation

2 SYSTEMS OF RESOURCE USE

2,1 The Tribal System

22 The Agrarian System

23 Resource Use Diversification

24 Resource Flows in pre - British India

2 5 British Conquest

2.6 Drain of Resources

3 THE COLONIAL PERIOD

3,1 Rampant Profiteering

32 Abolition of Community Control

3.3 Material Flows of British India

3.4 Growing Pressure on Land

3.5 Beginning of Railways

3.6 "Scientific" Forestry

3 7 Banning Shifting Cultivation

38 State Ownership of Land

3 9 Meeting Biomass Needs of Villages

310 Of Rights and Privileges 3.11

Tragedy of the Commons

VI

1

2

2

2

3

4

5

5

5

7

9

9

9

1

0

1

0 11 11 12 13 13 13

312 Violating the Sacred Groves 14

3.13 Mining the Timber 14

314 War Demands 14

314 Devaluing Biomass 14

4 AFTER INDEPENDENCE

4.1 Subsidies at Whose Cost? 15

42 What Constitutes Demand 15

43 Vanishing Bamboo Stocks 15

4.4 Sequential Exhaustion 16

45 Dwindling Fuehvood Supplies 18

46 Liquidating Rural Tree Growth 19

47 Encroaching on Forest Land 19

5. THE CURRENT SCENARIO

51 A Land of Weeds 27

5.2 The Eucalyptus Story 27

53 The Manifold Functions 30

54 Subsistence Needs and Commercial Demands 30

55 Underreporting Commercial Harvests 31

5.6 Qualitative Differences 31

57 Influence of Accessibility 31

5.8 The Chipko Movement 33

5.9 T hi ee Perspectives on Forest Use 33

6. THE CHOICE BEFORE US

6.1 Point of Departure : Population Control 34

6 2 Organizing the Disorganized 34

6.3 Employment Generation 34

6.4 Minor Forest Produce 35

65 Nature Conservation 35

iv

66 Biomass Needs of Village Populations 35

67 A National Network of Community Lands 35

68 Tree Farming 38

69 No Biomass Imports 38

6 10 Employment Guarantee Scheme 38

6.11 No Subsidies to the Rich 38

6.12 Earth as a Human Habitat 38

REFERENCES 39

Table 1 : Service offered, value to rural and urban -industrial sector and fate of the forest cover ofIndia in relation to that service

43

Table 2 : Alternative policy prescriptions for use ofdifferent categories of land ownership by the threemajor schools of thought in India,

43

Table 3 : Alternative policy prescriptions for fulfillingdifferent service functions of tree produce by threemajor schools of thought in India 44

Edict of King Shivaji circa 1670 AD.

There are trees like leak in our kingdom Such of these as

are needed may be cut with the permission of His Highness. What

is needed over and above this should be purchased from outside

The mango and jack trees in our own kingdom arc of value to the

Nflin/. But these must never be touched. This is because these trees

cannot be grown in a year or two Our people have nurtured them

like their own children over long periods If they are cut, their sor-

row would know no bounds An end achieved by harming one per-

son can serve only in the short run Rather it would bring ill

repute to the ruler who Iiurts the citizenry Furthermore there is

grave danger in the toss of this tree cover,

After Rime (1987)

VI

INTRODUCTION

1 am deeply sensible of the honour conferred on me by the Society for Promotion of Wastelands Development in in-viting mo to deliver the first foundation day lecture T o me, voluntary effort in ecorestoration is amongst the most w orthwhile of endeavours for citizens of India. The SPWD has been in forefront of such effort within this decade; to be associated with it in today's function is therefore an opportunity I greatly value I hope to take advantage of it to present before you my own understanding of the patterns of deforestation in present day India I have arrived at this synthesis as a result of last sixteen years of field research, of work with Forest Departments and paper industry, of involvement with grass-roots level ecodevelopment organizations, and of investigations on committees that addressed themselves to issues as controversial as the Silent Valley hydel project and the Bastar Pine Plantation project I am grateful to a number of people who have advanced my understanding, though some of them would undoubtedly dispute at least part or perhaps all of the conclusions presented below Nevertheless, I would be failing in my duty if I do not record my debt of gratitude to the most important of them; these are : Anil Agarwal, Sundarlal Bahuguna, Chandiprasad Bhatt, M K Dalvi, Zafar Futehally, K.M Hegde, Nalini Jayal, K.C Malhotra, CT.S. Nair, S Narendra Prasad, N H, Ravindranath, A K.N. Reddy, Cecil J. Saldanha, S. Shyamsunder, M.D Subhash Chandran and MS. Swaminathan I would also like to thank N H. Ravindranath, M D Subhash Chandran, Yesh-want Kanade and Silanjan Bhattacharya for permission to quote their unpublished data and Janardanan Pillai and Vijayagcetha Gadagkar for manifold assistance in preparation of this material.

1.1 Of Mangoes and Mahua

Exactly nine years ago, on just such a warm day in May, Kailash Malhotra, an anthropologist, and I trekked from the hill station of Pachmarhi in Madhya Pradesh to a Korku village eight kilometres away There was good tree growth ali along the way, and the walk was most enjoyable but for the disturbing sight of many ring - barked and dying trees just as we got out of the town The number of such trees however quickly fell off and our joy was complete on running into ;a Korku lady who sold us a basketful of sweet wild mangoes with little pulp and large stones We went on broadcasting the seeds into the forest, as nature had meant us to, and were surprised to realize that while the tree growth was extensive, it was dominated by just two species: mango and mahua. Over centuries the Korku tribals practicing slash - and - burn cultivation had un-doubtedly spared them and as the forest came back they had gained the pride of place

Mango and mahua are just two of the many trees that have signified much more than utility to the people of India over the ages, Gathasaptashati, an anthology of romantic folk verses of the first millennium A D from Centra! India, has many references to both these species (Joglekar, 1956). Thus, one verse implores a youngbride not to despair because her husband was about to embark on a long journey; after all when he saw the pot full of young leaves and inflorescence of mango, kept just outside the house to bid him good-bye, he was bound to realize it was spring and return to her! Every summer, all of India looks forward to feasting on mangoes, wild and cultivated, raw and ripe. Not that its timber is no good; on the con-trary it is prized for building boats But the seventeenth century Maratha king Shivaji made it a special point to order his of -ficers never to cut mango (Mangifera indica) and jackfruit (Artocarpus heteraphyilus) trees for his shipyards or any other work of the state, for, as he put it, these trees have been treasured and nurtured by the peasants for generations (Ranc, 1987). Our modern Governments have had no such qualms while conceding magnificent old mango trees to the plywood industry In-deed, the highly subsidized forest based industry has often paid for a mango tree less than what its fruit used to fetch for the local people year after year (Gadgil and Subhash Chandran, 1989) But then, as a manager of a plywood factory explained to me, all they were concerned with was multiplying money for their masters, and if mangoes had to be sacrificed to this end, so much the worse for the mangoes !

This total, all pervasive change in the way resources are viewed is also seen in the case of mahua (Madhuca indica) Mahua is vital to tribal economy; as a major source of food energy in the form of sugar and alcohol and for its oil seed It is also valued in the Ayuivedic matcria medico, for treatment of ailments relating to gas and phlegm (Gogate, 1982). Most of our tribal groups venerated mahua, and traditionally used only its usufruct in a regulated fashion It was, therefore, a great blow to them when the British banned their shifting cultivation; but at the same time permitted contractors to cut down sacred mahua trees (Pressler, 1971) There is also the anecdote of one of our senior politicians who after independence ordered all

mahua trees of Bombay presidency to be destroyed to halt tribals brewing liquor from it Apparently he was later persuaded that dali trees need not be cut. Of course he never realized that dali v, as the name for mahua's oil-bearing seeds!

1.2 Two Nations

The major thesis I want to advance today is that the root cause of the on - going disaster of deforestation lies in the radical transformation of the social system of resource use that took place under the British regime, and has become all the more firmfy entrenched after independence. The hallmark of Ib't system is the use of state power to systematically under-value biomass, and even more so biological diversity and organize its supply to those in power at highly subsidized values The elite also pay unfairly low prices for other natural resources, like grain, water and power Those benefitting from such subsidies, for instance, forest-based industries, or citizens of Bangalore or Delhi; our political masters making policy decisions as to who will be subsidized at whose cost; and the bureaucracy that administers the subsidies have formed an alliance—the iron triangle as the Americans call it - which ensures that this system of resource use is perpetuated (Repetto, 1986; 1988) In this system, those receiving the greatly undervalued biomass from all over the country, indeed all over the world have no motivation to ensure its sustainable use The rural poor, at whose cost this whole system is being operated, form the bulk of our population Depending as they do on the gathering of biomass for fulfilling many of their basic needs, they could be motivated to safeguard and sustainably use the resource capital. They are however thoroughly disorganized and totally raught up in the day-to-day exigencies of survival. Hence, these major victims of deforestation have witiy-nilly become its major agents as well

13 Of Need and Greed

Evidently, the rural poor play a significant role in the process of deforestation today. But does this imply that it is only the quantitative pressure of their demands for fuelwood and fodder, smaii timber and thatch that has brought about the transformation of India from the biomass-rich country of the pre - British times to the plight of today? I would contend that it is not so. For one, their demands are of a qualitatively different nature from those of the affluent sector Our land is produc-tive enough !o meet these subsistence demands, if only it were managed prudently. It is the commercial demands growing without limit that are so much more difficult to fulfil More significantl)., the undervaluing of biomass to ensure its subsidized supply to the commercial sector has been achieved by abolishing the traditional rights of the rural society Under these cir -cumstances, the rural population cannot and will not co-operate in prudent management of our forest resources It is my belief that it is this whole complex of interacting forces, the current social system of resource use, that has triggered the decima-tion of our natural biomass base; and not merely the quantitative pressure of subsistence demands of rural poor (Repetto and Holmes, 1983)

1.4 Phase Transformation

Here a physical analogy may be apt When water vapour is cooled it condenses into liquid water The properties of vapour, its compressibility, for instance, are quite different from those of liquid water That is why we call this a phase trans -formation. A large quantitative difference in temperature, say from 201° C to 101° C may still allow water to remain in the gaseous phase and make only a minor difference to its properties But a much smaller difference in temperature, say from 101° C to 99° C may lead to a phase transformation and drastic changes in properties. Interestingly enough, the condensa -tion of water at around 100° C is dependent on nuclei such as dust par tides, without which there can be no clouds The seem-ingly minor quantitative contribution of the commercial sector is like this small temperature change in presence of dust. It is that which has lead to the formation of black clouds looming over the horizon It is that which has totally transformed the social system of resource use and set it rolling towards its present course

I shall devote much of the remaining talk to documenting the course of this phase transformation If my analysis be valid, it follows that the situation can be changed for the better only through another equally radical phase transformation I would argue that the major components of such a transformation would have to be twofold; firstly, halt to all subsidies, open or concealed, to any segment of the society, except as social welfare measures to those who are genuinely below the poverty line; and secondly, empowering the rural poor to take good care of the biomass resources of their local em, ironment and enabling them to deploy their labours productively towards the task of ecorestoration This is not a prescription to go back to an agrarian society On the contrary, it is a prescription for transformation towards a resource-efficient and an egalitarian society as all modern societies must be. It would also be accompanied by a cultural transformation which would recapture what was good in our traditions, a feeling for nature as a habitat for humanity, not just a warehouse of commodities I would finally like to argue that it is only such a transformation imparting some meaning to the life of our rural people that could motivate them to invest much more in each offspring and control our unbridled population growth.

2 SYSTEMS OF RESOURCE USE

21 The Tribal System

Two major social systems of resource use prevailed in pre - British India. The older one, characteristic of hunter -gatherer - shifting cultivator societies covered the northeastern hill states and the large tribal tract stretching from Aravallis and northern reaches of Western Ghats, over Satpuras, Vindhyas and the Central Indian plateau to the eastern reaches of the Eastern Ghats In this system each homogeneous social group, the tribe, controlled a certain land area, its territory as com -munity property The social group as a whole organized the pattern of resource use on this land, including allocation of plots for cultivation inn given year The flows of materials were largely restricted within the territory, though there would be some exchanges with the outside, for instance, honey and ivory for metal However, such exchanges were quantitatively insig -nificant, so that the material cycles were largely closed over the spatial scale of tribal territories (fig 1) This meant that the tribal population had a real stake in the security of the resource base of their territory and evolved a number of cultural tradi -tions to ensure its sustenance These not only included long fallows in the cycle of rotation of shifting cultivation, but also selective retention of valuable trees such as mango and mahua while felling for slash and burn Furthermore, certain areas of terrestrial as well as aquatic ecosystems were set apart as refugia, as sacred groves and sacred ponds immune to all human interference The community woodlots often lay next to these sacred groves, so that they could be effectively regenerated from the climax vegetation preserved in the latter There were a number of restrictions enforced by the community as to how harvests from common property resources such as community woodlots were to be made. Notably enough, even today in Miicoram the system of sacred groves and community woodlots is termed safety forests and supply forests {Malhotra, 1988) Apart from sacred communities, individual species, such as Ficus trees like banyan, or other totemic plants or animals were also given full protection These is abundant evidence that all of this enabled the tribal communities to use their resource base in a sustained fashion (McNcely and Pitt 1985; Bcrkcs, in press) There were undoubtedly other factors in maintaining this balance; in particular the fact that much of tribal territory was highly malarial, thereby keeping the population at low densities Furthermore, there were intertribal wars; thus Nagas hunted aliens' heads Coercion and violence was then riot unknown in these societies, but it was largely involved in continuing tribal control over its territorial land, not in organizing flows of materials from one territory to another (Vayda, 1974) Indeed the ability of a tribe to hold its own would have depended on the health of the resource base of its territory and promoted the evolution of traditions of prudent resource use (Gadgil, 1987)

* • • *

Flow of materials Human habitationLand either not cultivated or under shifting cultivation

Figure 1: Flows of materials in tribal societies The flows are largely closed on the spatial scale of tribal territory with inira-territorial flows much stronger in comparison with exchanges with the outside.

2.2 The Agrarian System

The greater portion of India, especially its fertile river valleys, was under a second social system of resource use, that of agrarian village communities This society mirrored the tribal society in several ways. Each village was a partly autonomous social unit, with its own territory and its own internal administration. The village paid taxes, the surplus of its grain produc-tion, to the chiefs as a unit, not individually. Although the chiefs in theory may have owned all land, in practice land could not be alienated from the cultivators The village community as a whole also controlled its non-cultivated land (Dharampal, 1986) Thus, in western Maharashtra, members of an endogamotr caste group called Mahars, served as village guards It was their duty to accompany all outsiders visiting the village from the village boundary to village council building and to see them off They held the responsibility for the safety of the village woodlot; their duties also included harvesting and supplying fuelwood to each household Since the few Mahar families of any village expected to remain there and be discharging this function over generations, they would be motivated to harvest fuelwood in a sustained fashion (Aatre, 1915)

The biomass - rich landscape of western Maharashtra that this system had preserved is best described in the words of Captain Duff, writing within a decade of the defeat of Marathas in 1818 {Duff, 1826)

"The scenery which everywhere presents itself is of the grandest kind, Some idea of it may be formed by imagining mountains succeeding mountains, three or four thousand feet high, covered with trees, except in places where the huge, black barren rocks are so solid as to prevent the hardiest shrub from finding root in their clefts The verdure about the Ghauts to the southward of Poona is perpetual, but during the rainy season, the effect is greatly heightened by the extreme luxuriance of the vegetation.."

It was, of course, these same mountains from which Shivaji had strictly forbidden his officers from cutting mango and jack trees, and instead set up a teak plantation on the west coast for his naval ship - building yard (Campbell, 1880)

The society had also retained a number of religion - based traditions of nature conservation from the hunter •- gatherer times These included protection of sacred groves and sacred trees such as banyan and peepal A seal from Mohenjodaro, the earliest known agricultural civilization on the Indian subcontinent depicts a peepal tree. Gautam Buddha is reported to have been born in a sacred grove, the Lumbinivana fuil of sa! trees, and achieved enlightenment while sitting under a banyan tree. The agrarian villages of India had thus apparently retained the system of having a community - controlled supply forest, and a religiously - protected safety forest attached to each village, a system that persists even today in some of the remoter corners of the country, such as the Western Ghats (Gadgil, 1985) (fig 2)

R = Refugium ( Terrestrial /Aquatic) C • Common lands-Forest and Grazing H= Habitation F= Agricultural fields

Figure 2: The mosaic of land/water use in tracts of settled cultivation in pre-British India. The refugia (sacred groves, ponds, river, pools) were left totally inviolate, while common lands were used in a regulated fashion under community control,

2.3 Resource Use Diversification

The agrarian society differed from the tribal society in one important way Here each village was made up of a num -ber of different endogamous caste groups, each with a definite status in social hierarchy This was a highly inegalitarian sys-tem, with the lower caste groups undoubtedly suffering exploitation Nevertheless, all these groups were linked together in a web of reciprocity, and each group shared in the well being of the resources of whole village territory (Dumont, 1970; Karve, 1961) Notably enough, the different groups had so diversified their patterns of resource use, that a given endogamous group had monopoly over certain plant uses in any particular locality loan extent, this system still persists and maybe exemplified by our own study of the use of plant materials for structural purposes by nine different endogamous groups of Sirsi taluka, in the Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka (fig 3) This figure shows the particular end use of a particular plant species by a given group. Thus Christians have a monopoly of using the cane, Calamus for making cane furniture in this taluk. Chamagars have the monopoly over making mats and brooms from Phoenix. Bamboo, Dendrocalamits, is on the other hand used by Badigars, Holeswars as well as Chamagars. Such diversification of resource use would undoubtedly have kept the level of competition for any particular resource at a low level, mostly within a tightly-knit endogamous group and thereby promoted its prudent, sustained use (Gadgil and Malhotra, 1983}

Bamboo, of course had other uses too; Kalidasa talks of the melody of wind whistling through a bamboo clump, and Venugopaia, or young Krishna playing a bamboo flute is the most endearing figure of Indian mythology. The folk poets of Gathasaptashati have written many verses about it; one of them talks of the wonderful life enjoyed by hii! people who can make love in the open without the least constraint, shielded as they would be by the thick clumps of bamboo swaying hither and thither with wind But that apart, bamboo shoots are edible as are its occasionally produced seeds Bamboo leaves are an excellent source of fodder for cattle in summer, and the Ayurvedic matcria medica mentions several uses for its root, tender leavts and the silica crystals found in its hollow internodes. Bamboo is prime material for rural house construction, and where it is still abundant, I have seen tribals construct a spacious hut in just three days; a hut which had a totally leakproof roof too, which is more than what can be said of many of our modern RCC buildings. Bamboo baskets serve for storing everything, and bamboos go to make all sorts of implements from bows and arrows of tribals to seed drills of plough cultivators (Prasad and Gadgil, 1985) Early British travellers wax eloquent about the wonderful bamboo groves to be seen in India, as they, as well as the first set of British Gazetteers prepared in 1860 - 90 do about the natural biomass wealth of most of India.

2.4 Resource flows in pie - British india

Like all ancient urban civilizations that of India was based on the surplus of agricultural production of the countryside This surplus was largely siphoned off as tax or loot as was some of the produce of the non - cultivated lands: sandal, ivory, musk, pepper, cardomom (fig 4) However, the non - cultivated lands primarily served to meet the subsistence needs of fuel and small timber of the villagers, and especially as a source of organic manure, both directly as leafy material and indirect ly as dung of cattle grazing on the uncultivated lands. This organic manure was vital to the maintenance of soil fertility, and Volcaer, an agricultural chemist appointed by the British Government to enquire into the condition of Indian agriculture in 1890's laments the ill-effect of loss of this supplement to agriculture brought about by British forest policies (Volcaer, 1897)

In pre - British agrarian India, then the non •• cultivated tracts of the country were firmly committed to a role suppor -tive of agriculture and were maintained well by the villagers as assets under community control Many of these harboured what some early British travellers have called "oceans of trees', though par ts of the country may already have suffered some deforestation. This is hinted at by thest .»y of theKhejadli village near Jodhpur in Rajasthan, where some five hundred years ago the then Kingof Jodhpur forcibly tried to harvest sacred khejadi (Prosopis cineraria) trees from a Bishnoi village, precipitat-ing the original Chipko movement (Sankhala and Jackson, 1985)

2.5 British Conquest

On to this stage arrived the British, very much in saddle by the beginning of nineteenth century. The European con -quest of the Americas and Africa was already well advanced by this time, a conquest whose significant fallouts included the genocide of American Indians and slavery for black Africans But more pertinent to our theme are the remarks of Hugh Cleghorn, one of the early Conservators of Forests in India In his book published in 1861, he says : "Of all European nations the English have been most regardless of the value of forests, partly owing to their climate, but chiefly because England has been so highly favoured by vast supplies of coal and the emigrants to the United States have shown their indifference to this subject by the reckless destruction of forests in that country, of which they now feel the want" (see also Cronon, 1983; Cros-by, 1986).

1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25

PLANT SPECIES

CHAMAGAR

MARATHA, JADAMALLI

HOLE5WAR

PLANT SPECIE^

1 CALAMUS2 AESCHE NOMENE3 AOINA CORDIF.QLIA4 DALBERGIA LATIFOLtA5 GMELINA ARBOREA6 TECTONA GRAND1S7 SANTALUM ALBUM8 ALBIZIA ODOHATISSIMA9 TERMINAUA ALATA

10 TERMINALIA CHEBULA11 VITEX ALTIS5IMA12 . ANACARDIUM OCCIDENTALST3 BUCHNANIA LANZAN14- CALYCOPTERIS FLORiBUNOA15 CAREYA ARBOHEA16 MANGIFERA INDICA17 BAMBUSA ARUNDINACEA18 OENDROCALAMUS STRICTUS19 OXYTENANTHERA20 HEMtOESMUS (NDICUS2V CARYOTA LJRENS22 COCOS NUCIFERA23 PHOENIX SYLVESTRI524 AGAVE25 LANTANA CAMARA

Figure 3: Utilization of different species of plants for fabrication of various articles by different human communities in Sirsi taluk of Utfara Kannada district of Karnataka State (Courtesy: Yeshwant Kanade)

Europeans had of course made some remarkable advances by this time They had progressed beyond the slow pace of growing knowledge through a process of trial and error of the old civilizations, and developed the much faster hypothetico-deductive method of modern science. They had applied the rapidly advancing knowledge of working of nature that this method had gained to practical ends. One result was the ability to effectively employ the energy tapped in fossil fuels iike coal fora vai iety of processes, to manufacture many different goods and to transport them over large distances The economic system of Europe had also changed radically with the availability of the vast resources tapped from the Americas serving as an important stimulus In the new economic system a whole lot of goods had become commodities, demand for which could go on increasing without any limit (Polanyi, 1968) The European economy had therefore developed an enormous appetite

USES

1 C/NE FURNITURE2 3ASINGA

3 DECORATIVE ARTICLES

4 FURNITURE

5 TOOL HANDLES

S AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS

7 FISHING IMPLEMENTS

8 INCENSE STICKS

9 BASKETS

10 ROPE

11 MAT

12 BROOMS

Flow of materials Settled cultivation Human habitation Non cultivated lands

Figure 4: Flows of materials in the pre-British India in tracts of settled cultivation, Although the surplus of agricultural production was siphoned off to urban centres, the flows were largely closed on the scale of village ecosystems The non-cultivated lands were primarily dedicated to supporting agricultural production,

for the resources of the rest of the world; to be acquired either totally free as with the loot of the gold and silver of Incas, or against European goods of manufacture with terms of exchange loaded in favour of the manufacture The resources thus demanded from outside Europe were principally biomass, both cultivated and natural and minerals,

India had to fit into this scheme of things and become a supplier of raw materials and a market for manufactured goods, in North America and Australia this could be achieved by wiping out the indigenous population, in South America and South Africa by reducing them to serfdom. In India, with its ancient civilization and a large population, this was not pos-sible Indians therefore had to be broken down into accepting this arrangement while they largely continued to run the af -fairs of their own country. To this end they were to be brainwashed into accepting that all that the old Indian system represented was bad, all that the new system being imposed by the British represented was good If was transparently clear thcit the scientific knowledge at the disposal of the British was in many ways superior; hence, all that the Indians were doing earlier was condemned as unscientific, superstitious, and a!! that the British were trying to impose as scientific. This was the strategy employed in the forestry sector as well after 1850's and it is remarkable hov\ Song the myth has endured, with wild guesses and arbitrary prescriptions pas/ing off for scientific management

2,6 Drain of Resources

In prc - British ir.dia the cultivated iand was producing.! great variety of crops, and the non - cultivated land a varietv of plant and animal produce largely for fulfilling the subsistence needs of the local populations This now had to be changed with cultivated lands focussing on the production of a few crops, like cotton, jute, indigo and tea and the non - cultivated lands a few choice timber species like teak (Tectona grandis), primarily for export to Britain (fig. 5). Teak was especially im-portant for British ship building, Britain having exhausted its own oak forests by seventeenth century itself The western half of peninsular India is rich in teak, though this species finds little use locally, More than 15 per cent of the verses in Gathasap-tashah mention one or other of 40 different kinds of plants; not a single one of them mentions teak, Nor does it figure amongst the 246 species of plants mentioned in a modern compendium of Ayurvedk materia medica (Gogate, 1982). Teak is thus a plant alien to Indian culture, though its value for ship-building was known and the Maratha naval chiefs had established success -ful teak plantations for their ship building yards on the Konkan coast as early as 1680 The Ratnagiri District Gazetteer as well as the Forest Enquiry Commission of late 19th century mention these plantations and also that they were thoughtless-

To Britain

Figure 5: large-scale flows of biomass out of India to the British Isles characterized the colonial period, Teak was both directly ex-ported to Britain, and served to promote such export by serving as a raw material for shipping and railways The pines primarily served to facilitate the export by helping develop railway lines,

!y destroyed by the East India Company within a decade of the defeat of the Marathas (Campbell, 1880) But the later forest hislories of India ignore these altogether and contend that Indians knew nothing of the timber plantations; the first success-ful teak plantations being raised by Connolly in Nilambur in 1840 (Stebbing, 1922-27), This is merely one instance of the sys-tematic distortion of historical facts on which generations of Indian foresters have now been raised

jy Deodar, Pine

Indigo m Tea Jute

3 THE COLONIAL PERIOD

3.1 Rampant Profiteering

Early years of British rule were characterized by the most thoughtless exploitation of teak wherever it occurred Thus Munro, writing in 1838 states : "The system of throwing open teak forests to all who wish to cut, or giving them to contrac -tors, i j in the highest degree ruinous They cut indiscriminately all that comes in their way; any range of forests, however ex-tensi\ e, would be destroyed if left to their tender mercies They never think of planting and ail that such speculators calculate on is present profit or loss, without troubling their heads about depriving future generations of the benefit they now enjoy The teak forests in Malabar are, I am told, in this predicament1 (cited in Stebbing, 1922) Not oniy were teak trees thus abstracted from non - cultivated lands, the early British forest administration in Malabar, headed by one Captain Watson declared all teak trees on farm lands and homesteads as the property of the East India Company as well This, however, caused so much resentment that the forest department had to be closed down in 1822 (P.P S.T, 1983)

The early years of British rule were thus characterized by a forcible takeover of the forests till then held by private in-dividuals, or much more universally as a community managed resource. It was then exploited rapidly and with no thought of the future This phase is best summed up in the words of Cleghorn (1861):

"In 1805, the Government, for the first time laid claim to the indigenous forests of the western coast .... From this period upto 1822 a partial and somewhat ill - advised attempt at conservancy was made, but it thoroughly failed in its object; and all the restrictions which had been imposed during its existence were removed"

3.2 Abolition of Community Control

While the restrictions imposed by Captain Watson including alienation of farmers from trees planted on their own land may have been removed by 1822, one significant change had already taken place. The state no longer recognized the right of local communities to control and manage the non - cultivated lands of their locality Nor did it recognize the validity of conservation practices such as sacred groves Francis Buchanan writing in 1801 of a sacred grove near Karwar on west coast calls it as me rely a "contrivance to preven* the Government from claiming the property" (Buchanan, 1870).

Along with other measures iniiated by the Bluish destroying the cohesion of India's village communities this meant that in the period of early British rule, all of India's non - cultivated lands became open access common property resources. Under these conditions no party having an access to the resources has any guarantee that its prudent use will benefit it ill the long run, That is because under conditions of open access it is quite likely that somebody else would later usurp ail ti&iefits flow-ing from the current prudent use Future is therefore totally discounted and everybody is motivated to extract as much as they want for the present without any restraint This is the tragedy of the commons, and this tragedy overtook much of India's forest lands in early years of British rule (Berkes, in press; Hardin, 1968) To continue with Cleghorn s (1861) statement regard -ing abolition of forest conservancy on west coast in 1822: "This relaxation, or rather abandonment of law, however, in course of time led to results of a still more disastrous nature, which threatened the speedy and complete destruction of the forests themselves."

We thus see the initiation of the phase transformation of the social system of resource use that I discussed earlier At this stage there is no evidence whatsoever of any rapid growth of human population or any change in their subsistence demands. The major change was firstly the breakdown of community management of common property resources and secondly the introduction of commercial interests "who merely calculated their present profit or loss, without troubling their heads about the future." It is this qualitative change in the social system of resource use which was responsible for the "speedy and complete destruction of the forests themselves"

3.3 Material Flows of British India

Consider the kind of material flows that would prevail under this system (fig. 6). The non - cultivated lands would no longer be providing substantial flows of materials onto cultivated lands and local habitation Instead both cultivated and non-cultivated lands would generate material that would flow out, to India's urban centres, and then often on to Britain Much timber from forests was of course employed primarily to facilitate this flow of materials, in building ships, in building railway lines and as fuel for the ships and railway trains These outflows from cultivated and non •• cultivated lands of the countryside were balanced by counterflows of goods of British manufacture. But in material terms they made up only a tiny fraction of what was exported Material was therefore being continually drained out of the countryside, impoverishing the land and the people who depended on the land

• •»«*

Flow of materials Human habitation Settled cultivation Non cultivated lands

Figure 6: Material flows in present •• day India. There are large-scale flows of materials both from cultivated and non - cultivated lands to urban centres within India as well as to the industrialized countries. They are only partially compensated for by flows of materials back to countryside in modern india in the form of fertilizers, pesticides etc,; in British times such flows were negligible. Non - cultivated lands no longer serve as the basic support system for agriculture and material flows are not closed on the scale of village ecosystems.

3.4 Growing Pressure on Land

A consequence of this was a process that threw the burden of more and more people onto the land of the country Early years of British rule were a period of decay of the urban centres and an increase in the proportion of rural population as occupations such as weaving were forcibly destroyed, and the local chiefs had everywhere to disband their armies and its supporting staff (Gadgil, 1922). Other occupations such as those of nomadic entertainers and transporters also became less and less viable as modern modes of communication were developed to facilitate the large flows of materials on which the British empire depended This process of destruction of traditional occupations and the dependence of ever larger numbers of people on cultivation of land, of course, continues to this day and is illustrated by a village, Kusnur, in the Dharwad dis -trict of Karnataka (fig. 7) This figure depicts the population of the 29 endogamous caste groups of this village arranged in descending order For a representative sample of these groups are given the traditional caste occupations and the current oc-cupations. It is evident that over the years occupations involving processing of materials (eg weaving, oil pressing) or transporting (eg. ferrying) have become unviable in the countryside,, without opening up of any new opportunities. An in- -creasing number of people have therefore been forced to depend on cultivation of lands either as owners, or as farm labourers It is the impoverishment of the small landholders and landless agricultural labourers in this process that is the most serious problem, of management of natural resources, as well as of social justice before us today Again while the magnitude of this problem has greatly increased today due to population growth, its origins He in the transformation of the social system of resource use initiated by the British

3.5 Beginning of Railways

All of the non - cultivated lands of India, now rendered open access resources thus suffered the tragedy of the com -mons till 1850's. It was at this juncture that the British began to lay down the railway lines The impact of this development, in the words of Cleghorn (1861) was to cause "an immense demand for timber, (which) entirely changes the features of the district through which (the railway lines) pass I may specify the Palghat, the Shevrai Hiils and the North Arcot hills; in these the old woods have everywhere fallen to meet the urgent demand for timber." At the same time as this increase in the

10

demand for wood occurred, the British had succeeded in suppressing the first war of independence - or Sepoy mutiny as they called it - of 1857 and had consolidated their power. A longer term view of forest resource management was therefore possible, with regulation of access to the non -culthated lands. This ushered in the era of modem 'scientific' forest manage -ment with constitution of reserved forests supposedly to be managed for sustainable yields (Stebbing, 1922-27)

3.6 "Scientific" Forestry

The question of scientific basis of forestry merits a separate detailed discussion Here, however, it may be mentioned that sustainable yield management of the highly diverse natural forests of India would require a very extensive data base which has ne\ er been collected (Waring and Schiessinger 3985; Jacobs, 1987). Not only that, there has never been a serious attempt to collect it. For instance, a majority of the preservation plots set aside to collect data on girth increments of different tree species under different environmental conditions in the country are either poorly maintained or destroyed. Thus Gupta (1981) lists scv era! preservation plots in Karnataka which are "thoroughly disturbed or have ' no trees left!' My own strik -ing experience of this was as a member of the committee to took into whether a large scale plantation of tropical pines should be set up in Bastar to generate paper pulp. There was serious opposition to this project from some of the tribal members of Parliament, whose constituents did not wish to lose their natural sal (Shores robusta) forest Sal, like mahua is a plant of great i mportance to tribal economy and culture, so much so that the activists demanding a separate tribal state of Jharkhand employ the slogan : 'Sal is Jharkhand, teak is Bihar "Asa result of this opposition, a Committee was appointed under the Chairman -ship of the then Inspector-General of Forests, M K Daivi When we looked at the background of the project it turned out that the larger project was expected to be initiated only after evaluating the performance'of a smaller experimental plantation over a five-year period When we asked for the results of this experiment, it turned out that while the experimental planta -tion was established by clearfelling good sal forest, no data whatsoever had been maintained on the survival and growth of the tropical pine In spite of this, of course, the larger project was being vigorously pushed for from many quarters This made me very much wonder whether the purpose of the whole exercise was to truly raise tropical pine, or merely clearfeil natural forest Whatever it was, science based on empirical observations had no place in this exercise

3.7 Banning Shifting Cultivation

A minor philosophical digression is in order here Indian philosophy talks of three kinds of truths : paramarthika, vyavahanka and paribhasika; which may be loose ly translated as ultimate truth, operative truth and apparent truth Part of the

ut

2 "3

Of

.o3

120

100

60

40

20

0

Cultivators + agricultural

labourAgricultural labourer

labourer

1

3

1

7

R

a

n

k

Weaving and 'seizing cloth

•^Cultivators —

Fishermen+ /ferrying

.Priest + cultivators

140

• White collar workers* cultivators

Agricultural labour + cultivators Cultivator —«• Cultivator+ agricultural

labour .Trader —•• Cultivator •+• shopkeeper

,ViStage guards •

Black smith-*, carpenterAgricultural labour + cultivation

60

Cultivators •*• agricultural labour

Agricultural labour 1-cultivation

Barber

29

Figure 7: Population of 29 different communities arranged in descending order for the vil'age of Kusnurin Dharwad district of Kar -nataka state The traditional and current occupations have been indicated for a representative sample of these communities (Courtesy: SilanjanBhattacharya)

n

tenet of the scientific" forestry launched in 1850 s was the banning of the shifting cultivation as a destructive practice Now shiftingcultivation included cultivation following ciearfelling, though not total since trees like mahua, mango and myrobolan (Tcnninalia chcbula) would be left behind. The "scientific" forestry has continued to indulge extensively in clearfelling fol-lowed by cultivation,, for instance, to raise teak plantations under the taungya system." The taungya system has often been highly destructive of the environment (FAO, 1984) However, a hint of what may really be behind banning of shifting cul -tivation is provided by the many letters quoted by Cleghorn (1861) Captain Anderson, a revenue official of Mahratta country, favours it, stating that" it requires no (live) stock or agricultural capital. It requires less labour than any other description of cultivation ... and affords (an adequate) subsistence, such as it is " On the other hand a coffee planter attacks it vigorously, saying that 'it is carried on by a set of savages, in every sense of the word, who would be much more profitably employed on public works or on coffee plantations." Now Cleghorn records the following of public works : "Sickness has reduced the effective strength of the forest establishment. During the year, sometimes nearly half were laid up with fever, and one man died of it The same was the case with workmen; several died of cholera at Kulgi and those who were unaffected ran away Of 190 coolies at Kaneii, 35 were sick for a long period " We also know that conditions of labour on Indian coffee and tea plantations were worse than those of slaves and people had to be brought there under duress (Daniel, 1969) One wonders therefore whether the apparent truth that shiftingcultivation was banned to save forests from destruction was the operative truth, or whether shifting cultivation had to be banned to force people out of a way of life they preferred to provide labour f&r public works and plantations.

3.8 State Ownership of Land

As for the apparently, 'scientific forestry on sustainable basis" the operative truth is evident; it was a contrivance for Government as Buchanan would have put it to claim what it considered its rightful property. One may add that this was done with the ultimate objective of ensuring free or highly subsidized supply of biomass to those in power The Government set its claim to property firstly by overruling any community ownership of land. In the new system, the land was either owned privately, for which the individual would be liable to be taxed, or by the Government. Only in northeastern hills and a few other remote tribal areas did community control continue Institutions such as temples also did continue to hold some land But practically ail of the non - cultivated lands vested with the Government; in particular, two departments: forest and revenue (fig 8) The revenue department viewed this land as a service to agriculture, which of course did yield taxes The forest department clearly set its sights on timber production for urban - industrial - military requirements and consistently

S1 = Reserved forests (First phase) S2= Reserved forests (Second phase P = Protected forests F = Fields H = Habitation

FigureS: Changes in land use brought about under British system (compare with Fig 2), The refugia and common lands of pre- British India were converted in phases into reserved forests and protected forests; agriculture also extended to these lands.

12

viewed services to the rural population as a burden to be done away with In late nineteenth century, this attitude was strong ly criticized by people as different as Jyotiba Phulc, a great social reformer and founder of non - Brahmin movement in Maharashtra (Keer and Malshe, 1969) and Volcaer (1897), a British chemist appointed by the Government to report on the condition of Indian agriculture Both called on the Government to recognise the vital function of India's forests as a basis for agriculture and animal husbandry, and deciied the wooden - mindcdness of the forestry machinery Volcaer pleads that proper development of fodder and fuel reserves for the rural population would ultimately pay back the Government through greater agricultural productivity and realization of higher taxes

3.9 Meeting Biomass Needs of Villages

Of course, some lands were set aside either as revenue lands, as protected forest lands or as special categories of reserve forest lands such as minor forests to meet the biomass needs of India's village populations. However, no scientific data on actual biomass requirements of our villagers was ever collected till 1970' 's when A K N, Reddy, a Professor of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Science did so (ASTRA, 1982; Reddy and Ravindranath, 1987).. The quantum of such land was there-forearbitrarily fixed, enhanced or reduced from time totimedependingonthepoliticalcloutoftheloca! population Marathas were amongst the last to fall to the British in 1818, and even after that had risen in a succession of armed revolts from their traditional strongholds in Western Ghats So shifting cultivation was not banned on Maharashtra Western Ghats though it was stopped in adjoining Karnataka No reserve forest was set up in the Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra, though 80 per cent of the land was brought under reservation in the adjoining Karnataka district of UttaraKannada. The literate Brahmin farmers of the latter district were conceded substantial areas of "soppinabetta" lands to provide leaf manure for their orchards, but the illiterate Vakkal farmer's got no such although they too heavily depended on leaf manure for their paddy cultivation (Gadgil and Subhash Chandran, in press) In this tussle, by and large the villagers ended up having far less land to serve their agricultural and other needs than they were used to Indeed, the Madras administration for a long time argued that there was no piece of forest not serving needs of rural population in the whole Presidency, and therefore no reserve forests should be constituted Under these circumstances, it contended that the constitution of reserve forests meant confiscation, not conser-vation It was, of course, overruled and substantial areas of Madras Presidency were constituted as reserve forests (PPST, 1983).

3.10 Of Rights and Privileges

Not only that the villagers were denied access to substantial areas that they were earlier using, their communities no longer had any control over the common property resources {Singh, 1986), The Government insisted that they had no rights, but only privileges with nobody being in a position to check abuse of privileges The situation that developed is best explained in the words of Collins (1921), the Forest Settlement Officer of Uttara Kannada district: "It is only the outlying villages on the east which have forests with good tree growth. These are preyed upon by other villages which lie between them and the sea, all along the line They too are not sufficient to meet the wants of the large population (our emphasis) It is to be noted that the population of Uttara Kannada had not increased at all till this time; its increase started only after the eradication of malaria around 1950. Rather, the Government had with great deliberation created the situation where such preying upon, such unregulated exploitation could go on without any restraint EvenCleghorn (1861) urged the Government that the least objectionable course, in my opinion, would be to throw the privilege of cutting and the duty of maintaining, the jungles on those who can perform both at least cost, and are most interested in their preservation; viz., the villagers." Unfortunately, the Government was bent upon not per mitring any genuine institutional structure to survive or develop at the village level, and the process of degradation of such land areas set aside to meet the biomass needs of village populations continued unabated

3.11 Tragedy of the Commons

The period leading upto the First World War, 1860 - 1914, was one of consolidation of the power of Great Britain throughout the world and the Government naturally thought it fit to further step up its control over the country s resources The area under reserve forests was therefore progressively increased at the cost of the areas set aside to meet the needs of vil -lage populations Thus the area of minor forests meant to meet these purposes in Uttara Kannada district was 780,288 ha in 1880,718,592 ha in 1890,256,000 ha in 1900 and only 35,328 ha in 1910 (Masur, 1918) Increasing population pressure, shrink -ing areas of land accessible to meet domestic requirements and requirements of agriculture and animal husbandry and above all the open access situation that had been created meant continuing degradation of these areas Through all these vicissitudes some villages here and there throughout the country did manage to retain the hold on the village forests and maintain them properly In Uttara Kannada district, the Forest Settlement Officer, Collins (1921) commended these and noted that the vil -lagers on their own had been appointing watchmen to keep out non - residents and to enforce regulated harvest by the resi-

13

dents He went on to recommend that it would be desirable to emulate these examples and to form group or village commit -tees to look after the minor forest. He, however, noted serious difficulties in accomplishing this as often (1) the forests were too far away for the members of the committee to exercise supervision, and (2) in most cases there were so many villages in the group that the probability of fixing the responsibif ity for offences on the light person was remote In the event, while sub -stantial areas of land have remained set aside for the purpose of meeting the biomass requirements of the village people throughout the country, these have almost all fallen prey to the tragedy of the commons, of property that is everybody's to exploit but nobody's responsibility to guard.

3.12 Violating the Sacred Groves

What of the other lands, reserve forest lands where "scientific" management on sustained yield basis was believed to have come in force after 1850's The land taken over as reserve forests included the erstwhile sacred forests, known as kans in Uttara Kannada Wingate (1888) deplored the entry of contractors in these kans. "1 am still of opinion that the system of annually selling by auction the produce of kans is a pernicious one The contractor sends forth his sub-contractors and coolies who hack about the kans just as they please; the pepper vines are cut from the root, dragged from the trees and the fruit then gathered, while the cinnamon trees in many instances which 1 have personally seen are all but destroyed I was greatly struck with the general destruction which has taken place of late years amongst the Kumta evergreens. They were in a far finer state of preservation 12 or 15 years ago"

3.13 Mining the Timber

In the reserve forests as a whole the total emphasis was on a few commercially valuable species of the moment, espe -cially teak Thus Pearson (1908) reported that the evergreen forests natural to coastal Uttara Kannada were "threatening to come back" to the peril of teak Bamboo, of such great utility to the local people, was considered a weed, and the department continued to wage" a battle against bamboos" till 1950's (Coelho, 1956) The trend everywhere was to pluck the more acces -sible larger timber that had commercial value for the moment, with little thought for long-term sustainability for the yield of these species, or for the possibility that species of little commercial value today may become significant in the future A sample of what was happening is revealed in the following quotation from a forest working plan of Uttara Kannada (Wes -ley, 1964):

"In the Yekkambi - Sonda area the A coupes under Edie's plan and replacement felling areas under Garland's planhave resul ted in total exploitation of all valuable species and these areas have only bamboos and useless growth Most of theoverwood of valuable species had been removed under the so - called "uniform system" over large stretches of reserve forestarea in the false hope of inducing natural regeneration of teak and other valuable species.. . .As much as 30,834 acres were totally exploited of which 8235 were planted up . ... Garland's replacement fellings under uniform system was a total failureas it failed to induce or establish natural regeneration of teak or other valuable species."

3.14 Wai Demands

The era of gradual consolidation of the British power came to a rude end with the declaration of the First World War in 1914. This war, the depression of 1930's and the Second World War that followed was an unsettled period during which the mining of forests was all the more speeded up, The war efforts were, of course, an overriding priority for the British and whatever restraints the Working Plans prescribed were thrown to the winds. More and more remote areas were opened up for exploitation

3.15 Devaluing Biomass

The management of forests under the British rule thus placed no value at all on a very significant component of biomass, most of the species of the most diverse of biological communities, the evergreen forest or species of great utility to rural populace such as bamboos The balance, of some utility from the point of view of British interests, for railway sleepers, or making furniture, was attached some value that basically related to cost of harvesting and processing, rather than regenera -tion of the biomass removed. This component of the biomass was thus made available to the influential component of the society that needed it at highly subsidized prices This principle was carried to its extreme after independence when the forest based industry, which had its halting beginnings under the British really took off

14

4. AFTER INDEPENDENCE

4.1 Subsidies at Whose Cost?

Wholeheartedly accepting Sir Vishweshwariah's dictum that India must either industrialize or perish, and equally firmly rejecting Mahatma Gandhi's vision of an India made up of self - reliant vibrant village communities, the elite of inde-pendent India set it on a course of industrial progress under a mixed economy The widely accepted notion that industry must be encouraged at all costs was translated in practice into a prescription that industry must be subsidized in every pos-sible fashion But this subsidy perforce has to beat somebody's cost Unlike Europe in its age of expansion we had no treasures of Inca's to loot, no black Africans to enslave, no Americas and Australias to settle, nor Indias and Chinas to convert into cap-tive markets So the cost of the subsidies, of the electric power supplied at less than a tenth of its cost of production to aluminium industries, of bamboos supplied at less than a thousandth of its market price to paper industry, of the river and ocean water freely available for discharge of its effluents to the fertilizer industry had to be passed on in part to the future generations and very substantially to the weaker segments of the present generation Having successfully accomplished this, the Indian industry has grown apace. But its progress has been, in the words of the famous economist, Gunnar Myrdal (1968), that of an overheated engine, Pampered with subsidies, sheltered from all outside competition, it has grown to function in a thoroughly inefficient manner In particular, it has no concern for exhaustive use of natural resources supplied to it at throw-away prices. For, as resources of one region or one kind, are decimated, resources of another region, or another kind are opened up for its use If the resource costs go up in the process, they can be passed on to the consumer in the captive market So the industry has gone on, consuming not just non - renewable, but also renewable resources to exhaustion in a sequence, always concentrating on those that can be most profitably used at any particular moment The rural population forced to depend on open access resources, has also followed the same pattern, of first exhausting the most accessible, most desirable fuelwood species, and then progressively going on to less and less accessible, less and less desirable sources. I term this process as one of sequential exhaustion The current pattern of forest resource use in India, is best described as that of sequen-tial exhaustion along many different dimensions; at many different scales

4.2 What Constitutes Demand?

After waging a relentless battle against bamboos as a weed of teak plantations, workers at the Forest Research Institute in Dehra Dun discovered that its long cellulose fibres rendered it an excellent raw material for paper manufacture Suddenly it became a resource that foresters claim had earlier been in no demand (Melkote, 1981) This is an amazing phrase, because the manifold uses of bamboo and its critical place in rural economy are surely known to all Indians. As Cleghorn (1861) notes the forest department had itself started charging the basketweaveis Rs.5/- per tonne in 1860, undoubtedly realizing some revenue There was also a brisk commercial market in bamboos and by 1960 the market price of bamboo was around Rs 3000 per tonne in Bangalore It was at this time that West Coast Paper Mills was established at Dandeli in Uttaia Kannada district Following the policy of making all resources available to the industry at nominal prices, this mill was awarded bamboo at the rate of Rs 3 12 per tonne of paper, or about Rs 1 50 per tonne of bamboo, less than one- two thousandth of the market price (Gadgil and Subhash Chandran, 1989). The three sides of the iron triangle - the politicians who made bamboo available to industry essentially free, the foresters who administered the bamboo stocks, and the industry who used them to reap great profits were all happy, But the basketweaveis of Karnataka soon found that their very livelihood was threatened by the ex-haustion of the bamboo stocks that soon followed its industrial exploitation. It was then in 1976 that I had the opportunity of looking closely at the bamboo stocks and their management in the state of Karnataka (Prasad and Gadgil, 1981)

4.3 Vanishing Bamboo Stocks

There were two hypotheses as to why bamboo stocks had declined One, that of foresters, was that it was the grazing pressure of the villagers and nomadic pastorals along with the fires set by them that had prevented any bamboo regenera -tion following its mass flowering in 1960 The second, that of basketweavers and villagers and pastorals that I talked to, was that it was due to harvesting pressure of the two paper mills of the state, one at Bhadravathi, the Mysore Paper Mills and the second at Dandeli, the West Coast Paper Mills, Our investigations revealed that there was a qualitative difference in the way villagers traditionally harvested bamboos and the way the industry did, The villagers took out one or two culms at a time from each clump This did not disturb the thorny cover of short branches that forms at the base of each clump The mill on the other hand was silviculturally prescribed to remove a much larger number of culms from each clump, and in the process to carry out an operation of deliberately cleaning the thorny cover at the base of each clump We found out that this sup-posedly scientific prescription was based on a mistaken notion. Firstly, we showed that the number of new culms produced

15

in a clump is proportional to the number of culms already present. The prescription as to how ma ny culms should be removed therefore resulted in maintaining the clumps at too low a size to realize its full growth potential . More importantly, the clear -ing of the thorny cover from the base of a clump exposed young shoots to grazing by pigs, monkeys, cattle andbuffalo (Prasad, 1985) This grazing seriously cut down on growth of bamboo clumps; to this extent the claim that grazing affected bamboo stocks was correct. However, this impact of grazing would be far less if the thorny cover at the base of clumps had not been cleared by the paper mill extractors Our controlled experiments also revealed that contrary to claims of foresters, fires did not hurt bamboo regeneration or growth; though grazing had aurrie effect on regeneration

There were other significant findings Field surveys showed that the Forest Resource Survey on which bamboo stocks had been estimated were consistently overestimates; the average level of overestimation being by a factor of ten. Thus the sustainable yields to the paper mills were estimated to be far higher than they possibly could be. Furthermore while making these stock estimates no account was taken of the fact that bamboo populations tend to flower and die gregariously, although the information to take this into proper account was available scattered in literature (Gadgil and Prasad, 1984) Because of at! these factors it turned out that the bamboo stocks of Karnataka we're clearly being ovcrexploited, and that the demand of the paper mills was the major cause of this ove'explottation (Gadgil and Prasad, 1978) (fig 9)

Yield (1,30,0001)

Deficit (30,0001)

Total harvesi {1,60,000 T)

Figure 9: Dynamics of bamboo stocks of Karnataka state in the year 1977, The total harvest exceeded the annual increment to the stock by 30,000 tonnes The Mysore Paper Mills (MPM) and the West Coast Paper Mills (WCPM) were the major consumers (after Gadgil and Prasad, 1978)

4,4 Sequential Exhaustion

There were other factors too The contractors supplying bamboo to the paper mills rarely adhered to silvicuitural prescriptions Notably enough the suppliers of the public sector Mysore Paper Mills were worse violators than those of the private sector West Coast Paper Mills Figure 10 depicts the fashion in which the Mysore Paper Mills suppliers were remov -ing bamboo from a part of Ramanagaram range of Koliegal division in Mysore district Instead of removing a fraction of culms from all clumps throughout a block taken up for exploitation, they would remove all culms from the clumps most ac-cessibk from the road made in the first year (Gadgil and Prasad, 1978) Next year a fresh road would be made further inside the block and all clumps near that ciearfeiled, and so on in a sequence reaching into less and less accessible terrain Thus ex -haustion of bamboo in a sequence of accessibility in space was one dimension of sequential exhaustion by paper mills The second dimension was distance. As the forest areas nearby the mill were depleted, supplies were drawn from further and further away In case of the West Coast Mills this implied first going out of Karnataka to neighbouring Andhra Pradesh and

16

AJ Extractions in year I Extractions in year II Extractions in year III

Year IIIYear II

Year I

Figure 10 : Schematic illustration of the pattern of extraction of bamboo by contractors of Mysore Paper Mills from Ramanagar range of Kollegaf division of Karnataka around 1977

then further afield to Garhwals of UP, to Assam, to Nagaland (fig 11) The third dimension was species As the most suitable species for paper making, bamboo supplies dwindled (fig. 12), other species began to be tapped First softer, and then har -der and harder woods A fourth dimension was plant parts; as resources dwindled, lops and tops earlier rejected began to be utilized Finally, the fifth dimension was the ownership of land from which raw materials are to be derived The first choice of course was reserve forest land,because supplies subsidized by the state could be most easily organized from this category of land ownership. The Mysore Paper Mills then shifted to use of bagasse from sugarcane, the West Coast Paper Mills to eucalyptus grown on farm lands Finally, Mysore Paper Mills has taken over large areas of protected forests earlier earmarked for meeting the biomass needs of village populations for raising their own captive plantations. This move has led to much conflict with village people and litigation (fig 13)

Without going into too many details, one may mention here the parallel case of plywood industry Consider for this purpose the Indian Plywood Manufacturing Company, also located at Dandeii As figure 14 shows the industry earlier tapped the more accessible deciduous forest areas of Uttara Kannada; as these were exhausted it turned to the evergreen forests on the steeper slopes It has also gone on tapping more and more species, as the most desirable ones, such as mango, have been exhausted (fig, 15).

17

Calicut and Trichur

Trivandrum

Meghalayaa&Shi/llong

Hyderaad/-'

DandeliMadras

* Bangalore

Figure 11: Areas from which the West Coast Paper Mills, Dandeli, began to draw bamboo in late 1970's (after Gadgil and Prasad, 1978)

4.5 Dwindling Fuelwood SuppliesWhat of fuelwood ? Are patterns of sequential exhaustion equally evident with respect to gathering of fuel for domes-

tic consumption? Just after the visit to the Korku settlement that I spoke of at the beginning, I went to the village of Gopesh-war in Chamoli district of Garhwal Himalayas Right next to the village is a nice patch of oak and rhododendron, the traditional village grove Its extent had been significantly reduced in recent years by a road cutting through it But the vil -lagers still maintained the traditional restrictions on the amount of biomass harvested per family per week from this grove This amount was however inadequate and most days women had to collect fuel and leaf fodder from elsewhere This has meant going progressively further and further away, since outside of the village grove there has been no restraint on hack-ing and for kilometres around the forest vegetation has been devastated, Sequentially the degradation has been progressing in an ever - increasing radius from the village of Gopeshwar. As only more and more remote hills retain good vegetation, people from more and more villages congregate on them to gather what they can It becomes progressively more difficult to manage any such woodlots as the number of people utilizing them goes up (fig. 16)

18

Figure 12 : Fluctuations in the supply of bamboo to the West Coast Paper Mills, Dandeli, from the original supply area which was ex-pected to meet its requirements on a sustainable basis (after Gadgil and Subhash Chandran, 1989)

Apart from villagers proceeding to more and more distant and less and less accessible localities, they also begin to util-ize species and plant parts not touched earlier, Thus in coastal Littara Kannada people used to avoid touching Sapium and Holigarna both of which have latex that causes blister and allergy Today these too are beginning to be lopped. In the dry maidan areas of Karnataka people even sweep dry eucalyptus leaves to feed their hearths Villagers from the dry maidan areas of Karnataka are also now beginning to cut down peepa) (Ficus religiosa) and banyan (F bcngalensts) trees, earlier regarded sacred and therefore inviolate and Pon^amia trees prized as sources of oil seed and leaf manure and rarely touched tiJl recently

4.6 Liquidating Rural Tree GrowthA colleague of mine, Dr N..H, Ravindranath has followed the fate of trees in a cluster of villages in the Tumkur dis -

trict of Karnataka. Species of ficus such as pcepal and Pongamia constitute fully 60 per cent of the standing tree biomass in these villages; this has been built up to these levels because of the traditional nurturing and protection of the species involved (fig 17) Today 12 per cent of the trees are being cut down every year and Ficus and Pongamia figure amongst them in the same proportion as in the overall biomass Most of this wood does serve as fuelwood; but for whom? Fully 78 per cent of it is exported to Bangalore city. Of the 22 per cent of the wood that is consumed in the village, one fifth goes to fuel brick kilns that manufacture bricks exported to Bangalore; a third goes to timber for rural home construction The balance, about 11 per cent of the total wood felled is used as fuelwood within the village, but only for special occasions such as marriages and cremation (fig 18). What do the villagers use for their own cooking? They only use smaller twigs, even dry leaves and of course crop byproducts such as legume sticks (ASTRA, 1982) T he trees cut in these villages are basically to serve cash needs of the villagers This is very clear from the yearly calendar of tree cutting (fig 19) The peaks of cutting are in the months of March, June and July March is the marriage season, June and July seasons of agricultural operations when cash needs are high This qualitative difference in the way fuel needs of villages and cities are met has profound implications for the process of deforestation

4.7 Encroaching on Forest Land

Commercial as well as subsistence demands thus exceed the productive capacity of the capital of natural plant biomass; the capital is therefore being progressively eaten into Along with this is going on a process of alienation of land from being

Karwar Original supply are;

HassanMandya

Mercara »Mysore

Coondapoor

Mangalore

As natural supplies dwindled, MPM first switched to use of sugarcane bagasse and then to eucalyptus plantations raised on village common lands

Figure 13 : The history of supply of raw materials to the Mysore Paper Mills, Bhadravati in Karnataka state {after Gadgil and Prasad,1978)'.

20

Deciduous belt Evergreen belt

oo

tb

40- -1- 1

1 ^r

'/

30- ^ //

1_1 i

2 0 -i

I1 1tf

O r"> CD o ro to r- r- c*- CD co co

) r t"- o f> f- O o^ <£> c^ t^. c^. dj CO ^* O^ Cn c 7^ CT> cr^

Figure 14: Supply of raw materials to the Indian Plywood Manufacturing Company, Dandcli, from the deciduous and evergreen forest belt of Uttara Kannada district (after Gadgil and Subhash Chandran, 1989),

CD CO CD *— -^~*f <f If) CD t^ t>-CT) O*> CD CT3 CD CD

Figure 15: Number of tree species conceded to the Indian Plywood Manufacturing Company, DandeH by the Karnataka State Forest Department in different years (after Cadgil and Subhash Chandran, 1989)

21

Village forest

Figure 16: A schematic representation of the shift with time in the forest areas tapped by village populations to meet their biomass needs. As areas adjacent to habitations are exhausted, the pressure shifts to more remote areas.

Ficus species (38°/0)

Azadirachta rndica(12e/o)

Others (58/0)

Pongamia pinnata (22%)

Albizia amara(6IJ/o)

Acacia nilotica {17°/0)

Figure 17: Distribution of biomass of different species of trees in a village cluster in the Tumkur district of Karnataka State in 1986-87 {Courtesy: N H Ravindranath),

22

Consumed within village (22%)

Timber for house construction (31 %)

Sent to Bangalore city

Fuel largely for marriages and cremation (49%)

Brick kilns (20°/o)

Figure 18 : End uses of tree biomass harvested in a village cluster in Tumkur district of Kamataka State in 1986-87 (Courtesy: N H Ravindranath)

23

March 21V, April 8%

February 3%

January 4%

May 7%

June 17%December 8%

vNovember 2°/<

•N

October 05%

September 0.5%

August 3%

July 26%

Figure 19: Proportion of tree biomass harvested in different months of the year in 1986-87 in a village cluster in Tumkur district of Karnataka State (Courtesy: NH.Ravindranath).

devoted to natural plant production. This alienation has been taking place for several purposes; land being brought under cultivation, submerged under river valley projects, being converted into locations of industries or human settlements Con-version of forest lands and pastures into cultivation is an old process, which really accelerated with the construction of rail -ways in mid - nineteenth century, Huge areas of Gangetic plains were cleared of forests and settled at this time, the main stimulus for the clearance of these sal - dominated forests was the demand for railway sleepers (Moosvi, 1988) (fig.20). A second major stimulus came with the "Grow more food" campaigns of early decades of independence before the green revolu-tion made us self-sufficient in food What is however notable is that encroachment of forest and pasture lands for cultivation continues vigorously even after our agriculture has become productive enough to meet our food needs This too has profound implications, It means, as was discussed above in section 3 4, that despite our industrial growth, the vast majority of our people still have to mak^ a living tilling land, even when this land is totally unfit for growing seasonal crops Fig. 21 shows how such cultivation has been creeping up steep hill slopes on the Kerala - Karnataka border turning border into thickets (Pascal, 1982) Encroachment on forests for cultivation is particularly active in Kerala which has amongst the highest popula-tion densities in the country; although the lowest population growth rate, perhaps related to the high level of female literacy in that state

24

Nien

8 8

3Area under forest in 1951Area deforested between mid-seventeenth to mid-twentieth century

Figure 20 : Change in the forest cover of the Gangetlc plain between mid - seventeenth and mid - twentieth century (after Moosvi, 1988).

0 10 15Km...La

Scale

75° 75° 30'Ml Forests (including open forests) l 0 oVJ Savanna

jc cj Plantations of coffee t I Other plantations

Thicket

^ Boundary separating Mangalore and Mercara forest divisions of Karnataka from

Wynad forest division of Kerala

Figure 21: Land use in the hilly region on the border of Coorg district of Karnataka and Cannanore district of Kerala. Substantial areas in Kerala have been deforested, often illegally, for the purpose of cultivation (after Pascal, 3982).

5. THE CURRENT SCENARIO

5.1 A Land of Weeds

The process of deforestation thus continues inexorably along many dimensions More and more remote parts of the country are coming under its sway every day: from Assam valley to Nagaland to Arunachal Pradesh; from South Andamans to Little and North Andamans Within any given region, such as Himachal Pradesh, localities closer to main roads or rivers are getting degraded first; only then does the pressure shift further afield (fig 22) The Working Plans are amazingly con-verting the more difficult hill slopes earlier set aside as parts of a protection circle first into selection felling circle, and then, as degradation proceeds, into conversion circle earmarked for clearfelling (fig 23) (FAO, 1984). As more desirable species are exhausted, less and less desirable ones are beginning to be tapped Thus paper industry having exhausted bamboo, and then softer woods such as Kydia calycina is experimenting with the possibility of using weeds such as Parlhenium for making paper. As trees of large girth arc gone forever, smaller and smaller ones are being plucked Where forest cover nominally exists, the biomass is being degraded successively (fig 24) (Gadgil and Meher-Homji, 1985), Instead of a land of deodars and oaks and rhododendrons, of sal and mahua, of mangoes and Cullenia, of pccpal, babul and neem, of mangrove swamps and lotus covered ponds, India is becoming a land of fast growing, weedy species introduced deliberately or not so deliberately by man,, of Eucalyptus and Acacia auriculiformis, of Parthenium and E.itpatorium, of ponds choked by water hyacinth, of salt water marshes covered by the spiny Acanthus ilicifolius

5.2 The Eucalyptus Story

The story of the age of clearfelling of vast tracts of natural forests and its planting with fast growing exotic species, especially eucalyptus is an instructive one. By mid - 1960's the supply of raw materials to India's forest based industry, which had been rapidly increasing in capacity with scant regard for the availability of resources to support it on a sustainable basis, was running into difficulties. The supply thus far had largely been based on selection fellings - i.e, fellings short of total clear-fellings from natural forests. If this was insufficient, then of course it could be stepped up by clearfelling and then replacing the natural stands with stands of fast growing species This was a solution advocated on many fronts, domestic as well as by foreign advisers. The call was for abandoning the "cautious" approach of conservation forestry and become aggressive" To clearfell at rates far greater than in the past for raising plantations This was strongly supported by the National Commission on Agriculture and made operative by the Central Government providing special funds as part of the Five Year Plans to the states for raising these plantations (National Commission on Agriculture, 1976; Gadgil, Ali and Prasad, 1983; FAO, 1984)

Typically there was no careful scientific research on which species would really succeed and what productivities could be realized The genetically highly heterogeneous eucalyptus was declared the wonder plant and the best of our natural forest was clearcut, on the supposition that the new plantations would annually produce biomass of between 14 to 28 tonnes per hectare. A significant proportion of these plantations were a dismal failure, especially in the high rainfall tracts They were infested by a fungal disease, pink disease, cutting down their productivity to just 1 to 3 tonnes per hectare (Prasad, 1984) Many steep slopes of Western Ghats of Kerala were laid waste as the magnificent old stands of evergreens gave way to miserable stands of sickly eucalyptus Some enlightened foresters have admitted the mistake and phased out eucalyptus plantations, for instance, from the high rainfall tracts of Karnataka Others still swear by it and continue planting it even in the high rainfall tracts, as in Koyna valley of Maharashtra

Eucalyptus from these plantations was of course to be made available at highly subsidized rates; there were agree-ments for its supply at around Rs 20 per tonne. This was well below what it was costing the Government just to raise these plantations, even without taking proper account of other losses, such as minor forest produce or watershed values of the evergreen forests they replaced The heavy subsidies were now thus extended from mining of natural forest to actual man-made stands But the promised eucalyptus yields failed to materialize, and the industry had to turn to agricultural lands to meet its requirements. This prompted social forestry programmes that generated and supplied eucalyptus seedlings on large scale to farmers - especially the t 'gger landholders The productivity of eucalyptus on their lands was substantially greater-around 10 to 15 tonnes per hectare per year, and the industry could acquire this raw material at around Rs.300 per tonne This indeed was a good profit margin for the farmers and the area of farmland under eucalyptus has rapidly grown over the last two decades. But then the price of farm produced wood has stagnated as pressures by industry has opened up channels for importing wood and woodpulp from abroad Eucalyptus plantations on farmland are therefore now on a downturn

27

Forest

Open/degraded forest

Barren/cultivated land

Figure 22 : Land use in the hilly region in eastern Himachal Pradesh and western parts of the hill regions of Utlar Pradesh Deforesta -tion has been particularly greater in areas more accessible for commerical exploitation either through roads or riverways (after NRSA, 1982).

28

K31°30f

-31

-~ - Track-----River

30°30 -30°30'

Stage I

Stage !!

Stage III

Selection circle

^Conversion circle ;-------Road;—^ River

Protection circle ;

Figure 23 : Successive changes in designation of areas under protection, selection and conversion circles in the Quilon Forest Division of Kerala over the period 1950 -1980 (after FAO, 1984)

29

O E C I D U O U S F O R E S T

Pseudo steppe

Figure 24 : Changes in vegetation structure resulting from a variety of pressures of human exploitation (after Gatfgil and Meher-Homji, 1985),

5.3 The Manifold Functions

We may pause here to look at how the various services offered by plant cover ate faring in out country today, and how this relates to the interest of the rural versus the urban - industrial sector in these services Any such survey undoubted ly involves gross simplifications. After all neither our rural not urban society is at all homogeneous; for instance, interests of Bihar landlords diverge greatly from scheduled caste landless labourers, and those of Bombay slumd wellers from bureaucrats of Delhi. Nevertheless I make bold to provide such a picture in Table 1 Here i denotes decline and -» maintenance at the present level t could mean an improvement; unfortunately I am unable to discern any.

5.4 Subsistence Needs and Commercial Demands

Evidently, the services of value to the rural sector have deteriorated far more rapidly than those of value to the urban-industrial sector. This in part is related to the greater magnitude of demands of the former, where more than two - thirds of our people still dwell. These are also people who are so deprived that they have little purchasing power; they must gather such fuelwood as they can to cook their meals; all - electric - kitchens or LPG stoves are very far out of their reach indeed,. The exact quantitative value of their demand is of course not really known; but it can always be calculated by multiplying their large numbers by some crude average such as one kilo of fuelwood per head per day which gives a figure of about 260 million tonnes of fuelwood (Planning Commission, 1988) Nor is the exact quantitative value of the many, demands from urban-industrial sector estimated at 28 million cubic metres, or about 20 million tonnes known (Forest Survey of India, 1988) But here the demands are for commodities, not for basic subsistence needs The per capita demand for commodities can es -calate indefinitely The dwelling for a person mav employ anywhere between zero to several cubic metres of tcakwood or plywood; he may consume not a kilo of paper or tonnes of it in all the containers and gioss\ magazines and toilet papers that he uses It is therefore not possible to fix a simple figure such as that of fuelwood for such commodities, and difficult to glib- ly quote demand figures relating to biomass based produce of commercial sector Furthermore many articles of this sector are liable to tax, and given the rampant tax avoidance in our country, it is certain that biomass consumption in this sector is greatly underreported I have personally seen godowns in paper mills full of paper that was never officially produced and it is on record that sandalwood oil factories of Kerala live entirely off wood smuggled from Tamilnadu and Karnataka The gap between the quantitative demands of rural versus urban - industrial sector is therefore far less than what is made out to be; by how much is not clear (Forest Survey of India, 1988; Shyamsunder and Parameshwarappa, 1987)

30

5.5 Underreporting Commercial HarvestsI would like to cite some evidence of this discrepancy from a study of two felling areas of one hectare each in the

Sharavalhy valley, an excellent evergreen forest on steep slopes of Western Chats of Karnataka Only 8 trees per hectare are supposed to be removed from this area; 16 and 17 large trees were cut in the two sampled quadrats In addition there was enormous damage caused by the fall of these trees, as well as their being dragged down the slopes More than 60 trees of 35 cm or more in basal girth had been destroyed per hectare in the process of extraction Furthermore concentrated fellings had Produced Kirgi' gaps in canopy, totally transforming the microclimate (Gadgil and Subhash Chandran, 1989) {fig 25 a&b) There is no particular reason to believe that the Forest Department is involved any more or any less in resource mismanage -ment than the Public Work or Rural Development Departments But any machinery working without independent checks and balances in charge of large assets is bound to mismanage it In a soft state such as India, this mismanagement is quite gross This February 1 was involved in a course for officers of Indian Administrative Service In a discussion initiated by some of the officers themselves, it was reported that in Uttar Pradesh more than 80 per cent of funds released for any Government program me are misappropriated, and remarkably enough this proportion might be as low as 50 per cent for Karnataka ! Given this ambience, it is expected that a goodly fraction of the commercial demand and its fulfilment from forest resources goes unrecorded This is at least in part at the bottom of the reportedly very low productivity, 0,7 cubic metre per hectare per year of India's forests (Forest Survey of India, 1988).

5.6 Qualitative Differences

Leaving aside quantitative issues, the impact of commercial demands on India's forest cover is qualitatively very dif-ferent from that of the subsistence demands of the rural population Commercial demands reach out far more quickly to remote, inaccessible areas The demands of local people, including shifting cultivation, in Nagaland have little to do with the opening up and rapid drain of that state's forests in recent years to feed the plywood industries of Assam and neighbour -hood The conversion of steep hill slopes in Quilon division of Kerala from protection circle to selection and eventually to conversion circle is also due to the influence of commercial, rather than subsistence demands Secondly, commercial demands lead to felling of large trees; while the subsistence sector depends much more on harvest of smaller branches, of foliage, of fruits nuts and gum The large mango trees being extracted for plywood would be spared by the subsistence sector, who would instead prefer the fruits year after year Even from their own lands, farmers fell old valued trees like Pongamia only win.-;1! p ssed by need for some cash. There is then every reason to believe that the commercial demands would have an in -fluence on the country's forest cover far, far greater in magnitude than their quantitative share would indicate.

5.7 Influence of Accessibility

This becomes striking when one travels in country which is just being rendered accessible to commercial exploitation As one travels from Shimla in Himachal Pradesh toJubbal on UP border, one sees total devastation in localities that have had good access roads for a long time (fig. 22). Then as one approaches locales that till recent times had only foot tracks, one begins to see some good forests. Beyond that where there are still no truckable roads arc the stands still relatively well preserved, unless the area has a good riverway down which logs could be floated In that case the slopes of the river valley may be as barren as any near good approach roads This correlation in space between access to commercial exploitation and the extent of deforestation also holds in time. People of Garhwal Himalayas still talk of the 'wonderful change wrought in the landscape of the country" as Cleghorn would have called it brought about by the construction of good access roads soon after the war with China. As the roads came in the forest went out, exported to the Gangetic plains The experience of Gua too has been very similar T he Portuguese had little interest in commercial exploitation of Goa's natural resources They there -fore did not tamper much with the community-based management systems, the so-called "cumindad' lands. Till its libera -tion, Goa remained a trccclad land, with much of the non-cultivated cumindad land also retaining their good tree cover This, in spite of the fact that the population pressure had been slowly building up Goa's forests were opened up for commercial exploitation shortly after its liberation and were depleted fairly quickly afterwards

In all these cases, there is little change in densities of rural populations and their subsistence needs; the critical dif -ference comes from the ease of access and duration for which this has obtained Unfortunately, there arc no good empirical studies of this very significant relationship; as of most other facets of deforestation However, all knowledgeable people 1 have talked to strongly endorse it, and I am confident that proper studies would document it. It is this correlation that is the most convincing evidence of the overwhelming role of commercial sector in the process of deforestation of the country

31

-C en

30-20-10 H

Figure 25 a & b : Profile diagrams of (a) an unlogged forest (above) and (b) logged forest (see next page) in the Sharavathy valley of Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka State (after Gadgil and Subhas Chandran, 1989).

60

Fig. 25 b.5.8 The Chipko Movement

It was just this deforestation of the Himalayas following the opening up of border roads in the 1960's that precipitated the Chipko movement, which has been so important in shaping the debate on deforestation in the last decade in our1 country. But it was not just deforestation with the attendant landslides that roused people A group of Sarvodaya workers of Garhwal was interested in setting up forest based industries as a part of rural development effort in Chamoli district They thought of manufacturing turpentine from resin tapped from pine trees To their chagrin they discovered that while the forest depart-ment was happy enough to supply resin at highly subsidized rates to a factory far away in UP. plains at Bareilly, this small scale industry right where the pines grew would have to pay a higher price for the raw material, After all, they were not a part of the iron triangle (CSE, 1985; Guha, in press).

5.9 Three Perspectives on Forest Use

The Chipko movement has been a watershed T here have been numerous forestry related protests earlier in the country But all these had focussed on demanding greater immediate privileges for the local people and not raised fundamental is-sues regarding the whole social system of resource use that underlay the crisis. The Chipko movement did so and as the debate developed two strands of thinking have emerged in the movement One strand, with Sundarlai Bahuguna as an able expositor, would like to reject the whole modern economic system based on extensive use of fossil fuel, hydel and other ener-gy sources and with an emphasis on the production and utilization of commodities It would like to see a restoration of the Indian agrarian society with largely self - sufficient villages taking good care of local resources It tends to single-mindedly oppose all modern developmental projects, and so far has thought little of organizing any alternative institutions on ground, believing that once the power over local resources is passed on to the villagers they would automatically tend to look after them well. After Lipton (1977), I would term this school pastoralists. The second strand of Chipko movement, with Chan-diprasad Bhatt as a leading figure may be termed appropriate technologists. This school of thought tends to question the modern technologies being pushed, but not reject them out of hand It is willing to consider and absorb the more appropriate of the technologies. The criterion on which this appropriateness is determined is its impact on the weaker sections of the rural society, half of our population that lives below the poverty line, that is still illiterate, that still must meet many of its needs from such biomass as it can gather. This school is concious of the need to erect new institutions to organize these people to participate in a process of economic development and to take good care of the resources of their environment It would be most instructive to closely examine the framework these schools suggest with respect to forest resource management, and to contrast it with the framework supported by those who would like to strengthen and continue the present system I term the latter the school of the iron triangle (tables 2 and 3).

33

6. THE CHOICE BEFORE US

6.1 Point of Departure: Population Control

Which of these three frameworks would it be rational for us to adopt? But reason cannot act in a vacuum; as G K, Chesterton puts it, only a man who knows nothing of motors talks of motoring without petrol; only a man who knows noth-ing of reason talks of reasoning without strong, undisputed first principles, What first principles should serve as our point of departure ? I suggest one which would be most widely agreed upon, at least by the elite of the country This is that we must strive towards creating a situation in which the growth of our already large population be brought to a halt This has never been achieved by compulsion; even the much more disciplined society of China is finding it difficult to do so. Our people must therefore be motivated to limit the number of their children, People who are scrounging for a living find children of help in their struggle for existence, At that level of subsistence they would never agree to limit them It is only when the quality of life is a little elevated, when they do not have to wony about the next meal or the fuel to cook it with, when they have had some education, especially of womenfolk, that thoughts enter of the need to invest in each child, Only when in-vestment in a child acquires a meaning, does limiting the number of children so that each child can be done justice to be-comes an appealing concept Only then is the motivation to limit the number of children generated, and demographic transition become possible (Becker and Tomes, 1976)

This is now well established as a broad experience round the world, and supported by our own experience in Kerala where the per capita income is low, but where basic security of livelihood brought about by widespread land reforms and other social measures along with the country's highest level of women's literacy is accompanied by a population growth rate of 1 1 per cent per year, only half as much as for the country as a whole This example emphasizes that the current trend of worsening of social and economic disparities in the country goes against all that is important for limiting our population, Gains of any such inequitous growth would instead be rapidly swamped by the burgeoning population Our national inter-ests therefore lie in providing basic security of livelihood and minimal health and education levels to the masses of our popula-tion; half of whom still live below the poverty line, 60 per cent of whom are still totally illiterate and at least a third without access to a source of drinking water

6.2 Organizing the Disorganized

This situation will not correct itself automatically The society would continue to develop at their cost, it would remain a few islands of prosperity in an ocean of poverty, unless these people organize themselves, make their weight felt and pull themselves up by the boot straps We must therefore provide for them something around which they could organize them-selves. This something could be a resource, such as that of common lands or of employment guarantee scheme, Secondly, apart from devices for organizing themselves they need employment, productive employment that would add to our assets And thirdly they need security in fulfilling their minimal needs such as fuel, fodder, organic manure and small timber, If we accept this set of propositions which follows quite logically from our point of departure, we are fairly on way to defining how we should deal with our country's living resources As a corollary, we also have pointers to how we should deal with other aspects of our society, in particular, with industrial development

6.3 Employment Generation

Providing steady round - the - year employment for the large rural population is the most difficult challenge before us The industrial route has proven totally inadequate in this regard, In particular, dedication of reserve forests towardssupp-ly of industrial raw material may have had a net negative impact, The paper mills may have created fewer jobs than they destroyed with decimation of bamboo for thousands of artisans dependent on it The plywood mills may have generated less employment than was lost through the liquidation of mango and many other minor forest producing trees The rayon mills too may have provided fewer jobs than they destroyed by promoting the conversion of natural forests to eucalyptus planta-tions Furthermore, each of these industries has perhaps destroyed further jobs, for instance, of fishermen by polluting the river There has never been any proper accounting However, we do broadly know that creation of an industrial job requires large investments, generally of several lakh rupees, while land/ plant biomass based job can be created at far less investment I am not suggesting that industrialization should be abandoned -1 shall make other proposals about it below, I do however suggest that in the interest of rural employment generation the burden of forest based industries on reserve forests should be totally removed; for all the evidence cited above shows that this burden is unsupportable

6.4 Minor Forest Produce

I suggest that instead we go back to the old Indian tradition in which forests served as a source of usufructs which could be harvested without destroying the trees There are myriads of these ranging from tendu leaves, bamboos and canes, myrobolan nuts to pine resin An enormous number of people have been traditionally engaged in collecting and processing these. Our reserve forests should be nurtured back into diverse stands of trees, shrubs and climbers producing a variety of such produce and supporting large numbers of people in its collection and processing. The organized effort of state should go into this and in helping build institutions which would generate a reasonable return for forest produce collectors and processors such as basketwcavers

6.5 Nature Conservation

Eventual banning of all tree felling and wood removal from reserve forests would also have a very salutary effect for our attempts to conserve these as reservoirs of genetic diversity and for their watershed values For as long as fellings con -tinue in these forests, it would be very difficult to control illicit felling and destruction A total ban would be far easier to im -plement especially if we involve local people on a wide scale in its execution, For the moment some extractions may have to continue, especially from plantations such as those of teak and eucalyptus. But after the current cycle is over, these too should be reverted to diverse natural forests, albeit enriched by species of value in production of minor forest produce As we saw at the beginning, that is very much a part of the Indian tradition, a tradition that we need to nurture If about 20 per cent of our land is maintained under such forest cover, we would also benefit greatly from its watershed services,

6,,6 Biomass needs of village populations

A fair proportion of our fuel and fodder needs is already being met from agricultural byproducts such as coconut shells, cotton and legume sticks and paddy and jowar straw. Our own estimates show that this accounts for 58,75 million tonnes out of a total fuel demand of 262 million tonnes, and 368 million tonnes out of a total fodder demand of 613 million tonnes, But this is the countrywide picture. As fig. 26 and 27 show there are districts in Haryana where farm production can more than support the fodder needs, or in Kerala where the coconut orchards provide all of the fuel needs However, over most of the country agricultural byproducts are quite inadequate to meet either fuel or fodder needs, forcing people to burn large quantities of dung and maintain nali-starved livestock For the country as a whole therefore we cannot think of meet -ing all the village biomass needs based on agricultural byproducts alone, even when augmented by some agroforestry. This would necessarily have to be supplemented by biomass production on lands unfit for agriculture; the revenue wastelands and protected forest lands currently assigned for this purpose, added to, where necessary by carefully selected degraded reserve forest lands (Planning Commission, 1988; Gadgil, in press)

6.7 A National Network of Community Lands

These community lands from which the local population may meet their biomass needs should not above all else be open access lands. They should be lands to which access is carefully regulated by some group of people Bureaucracy would have to help in this regulation; but it cannot accomplish it by itself The prime responsibility for it should be assigned to a small village community living in immediate neighbourhood of the piece of land and organically dependent on it Such a village community would not often be a cluster of villages constituting a revenue village or mandal panchayat Rather it would be a smaller, more homogeneous settlement or hamlet Fresh, careful surveys would have to be conducted to delimit such units and common land areas to be assigned to them The management of the common lands would then be the respon-sibility of a committee elected by the gramasabha (village assembly) of this unit Such a committee should give greater wcightage to the poorer segments of the population more intimately dependent on the common lands, as well as to women Special provisions would have to be made to ensure this, and to guard against the domination of the committee by the more powerful segments of the village population The committee should be accountable both to the gramasabha as well as to higher level committees at mandal/tehsil/ district level Some impartial outside presence from Government administration would also have to be involved to help the committee discharge its duties adequately; to convert the open access resources into community controlled resources

The Government may have to initially invest in generating biomass on these common lands However, most of this investment would be in the form of human labour, and should be used to generate employment for the local people In the long run, however, the Government should not have to go on investing in biomass production from these lands Instead all members of local community must pay for resource use cither in cash or through labour input Such charges should be so

35

PERCENTAGE FUEL DEMAND MET BY AGHOWASTE

* <= 25o > 25 and <« 50a > 50 and <= 75* > 75 and <= 100+ > 100

Figure 26: Proportion of fuel wood demand met from agricultural byproducts (other than dung) in different districts of India,

36

PERCENTAGE FODDER DEMAND MET BY AGROWASTE

> 75 and

> 100

x <= 25o > 25 and <« 50n > 50 and <•= 75

100

Figure 27 : Proportion of fodder demand met from agricultural byproducts in different districts of India.adjusted as to be adequate for long term maintenance of biomass on common lands Indeed such a system of users paying for the salary of a watchman or other inputs does exist in the few forest panchayats that are still surviving. The biomass produced from these lands should not enter market; for as with reserve forest lands it would be difficult to control exploita-tion once market forces come into play

Good management of biomass production as well as utilization would call for substantial technical inputs District level mechanisms should be generated to provide these Such a networkof common lands should becreated on a countrywide basis with appropriate adjustments for local conditions. A strong legislative framework at both state and centra! level would have to be created to ensure that the integrity of this network is fully guarded against encroachment at all levels, from local cultivators to Government enterprises (Gadgil and Guha, 1989)

37

Such a resource would provide a concrete asset around which the poor can become organized and play a catalytic role in winning them a better quality life It would also go a long way towards ensuring them secure supply of their basic mini -mum needs

6.8 Tree Farming

It would obviously be impossible to provide adequate common land to meet the biomass needs of each and every vil -lage, let alone all towns and cities The biomass needs of this population, plus the biomass needs of the industry should be met from tree production on privately owned cultivated lands These could either be encroached Government lands, lands under shifting cultivation, legally owned marginal lands unfit for cultivation of annual crops, or even better class agricul -tural lands The total biomass demand such land may be called upon to fill annually could be 80 million tonnes for fuel and 20 million tonnes for industrial requirements This 100 million tonnes could very reasonably be produced on 10 million ha out of 150 million ha of land under cultivation in this country; a very reasonable level of demand What would be necessary to make this possible would of course be a mechanism to ensure adequate financial returns for the free farmers and ways to take care of their subsistence needs in the years it takes tree crops to mature

6.9 No Biomass Imports

In the long run this would call for a firm policy for halting imports of wood pulp from Canada, timber from Malaysia and so on Our farmers simply cannot stand competition from these sources, not because they are inefficient, but because biomass is deliberately undervalued in the world economy as well As Repettoand Gillis (1988) extensively document wood is being sold at excessively low prices all over the world; hurting in the long run interests of countries like Malaysia and In -donesia as well Developed countries on the other hand heavily subsidize their farmers to produce whatever they do; grain, dairy produce or tree crops and thereby keep the biomass prices low, Furthermore, India must pay foreign exchange for all such imported biomass; we are not in a position to accept ever increasing foreign exchange burdens on our economy, or on our environment for that matter After ail we are meeting a good proportion of our foreign exchange requirements by ov er-cxpioiting our prawn stocks

6.10 Employment Guarantee Scheme

An employment guarantee scheme on the pattern of Maharashtra, but far better administered for the entire country could be the most vital component of providing a better quality of life for our rural poor This scheme should be carefully designed to improve the productive potential of ail lands, be they marginal farmlands, community lands or reserve forest lands, With modern technical inputs and careful planning it has immense potential for restoring the health of our land and its plant cover, With openness, loosening the hold of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats and more checks and balances from those employed on the scheme and voluntary agencies working with them, the EGS could also serve as an important cause around which the powerless could become organized and acquire some clout

6.11 No Subsidies to the Rich

I he whole thrust of our approach is to ensure that economic development that proceeds at the cost of rural poor should come to a halt, and be reoriented to make a better quality of life for them its central concern. This is however no plea to stop running the engine of industrialization, only to stop overheating it Biomass-based industry should grow, but on its own strength properly paying for the resources it can help tree farmers produce, adequately controlling the discharges of its pol -luting waste products. This would undoubtedly cut into its currently exorbitant profit margins, forcing it to become more efficient, which would be all to the good of the country

6.12 Earth as a Human Habitat

Last but not the least, we must return to our cultural roots, with a respect for nature as a habitat for humanity, not con -tempt for it as a warehouse of commodities We must move away from a society in which the influential can now down mag -nificent old mango trees to multiply money for their plywood mills; towards one that treasures its heritage, of culture and of nature We must transform this inequitous society in which poor peasants are being forced to cut down the mango trees in their yards to fill their belly, into one in which they will be secure enough to continue decorating their houses with its tender leaves and inflorescences to remind their brides and bridegrooms of the arrival of the springtime

38

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42

Table -1: Service offered, value to rural and urban - industrial sector and faie of the forest cover of India in relation tothat service

Value to

Urban- Service Rural industrial Fate

sector sector Genetic diversity High but declining Little I Wild game Now little Nil I Wild plant food Substantial Nil i Small timber, bamboo High High, growing 4 Watershed values High Nil I Fuclwood High Now much less 4 Fodder High Nil 1 Organic manure High but declining Nil 1 Minor forest produce High Little 4 Nature as recreation Low Growing ->

Large timber Nil

Softwood for plywood NilSoftwood forpaper, polyfibre Nil

Table - 2 : Alternative policy prescriptions for use of different categories of land ownership by the three major schoolsof thought in India

(sanctuaries)J 4

High, but declining High, growing

High, growing

(farm forestry)

Land category Fastoralists Appropriate Technologists Iron trianelists

Reserve forests Ban all access to industry, allow current pattern of privileges to rural popu-lations

Manage for production of fruit, nut bark, resin honey; where essential incorporate into community lands network

Outside of nature reserves continue present pattern of industrial exploitation, including clearfelling

Protected forests, C and D class revenue lands etc

Shifting cultivation

Continue present pattern of use by rural population

Constitute into a network of community lands to fulfil subsistence biomass needs

Convert in phases to tree farming/horticulture

Take over as state property to raise industrial plantations

Ban totally, constitute into reserve forests for industrial use

Marginal lands unfit for agriculture, but currently under cultivation

Continue grain production for subsistence

Raise tree crops tomeet industrial-commercialdemands; urban fuelwoodneeds

Lease to forest department for raising industrial plantations

Good farmland, irrigated as well as non-irrigated

Devote to food production without resorting to heavy irrigation - fertilizer -pesticide inputs

Keep open the option of tree production for commercial sector as one kind of cash crop

Encourage tree production, but ensure low prices for the produce

43

Table - 3 : Alternative policy prescriptions for fulfilling different service functions of tree produce by three majorschools of thought in India

Service Pastoralists Appropriate technologists Iron triangiists

Fuclwood, fodder, leaf manure, small timber for rural populations

Raw materials for rural artisans

Continue gathering as at present from reserve forests, protected forests, C and D class lands etc

Continue gathering as at present from reserve forests, protected forests, C and D class lands etc

Organize carefully regulated, intensive production on a network of community lands

Provide as a priority from reserve forests and network of community lands

Meet all these demands from cultivated lands

Of no concern

Fuelwood for urban sector Of no concern

Of no concern

Industrial wood

Supply from tree crops on farmlands

Supply from tree crops on farmlands

Supply from tree crops on farmlands

Supply from tree crops on farmlands

Continue production from teak plantations on reserve forest lands Import from countries like Malaysia

Continue selection fellings, clearfelling and conversion to plantation in reserve forests Take over protected forests, C and D class lands ' etc. for raising industrial plantations. Import from countries like Malaysia and Canada

Large timber1

Of no concern

44