Feature Article

The JFM programme faces existential crisis. On the one hand, pieces of legislation like the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, and the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA) Act, 1996, have come into existence, giving rights to tribals and forest dwellers over forest resources and their management. On the other hand, communities demand the huge sums forest departments owe them under the programme. Questions are being raised whether the programme should be scrapped.

 

Beyond Jethiabhai Basawa’s mud house in the foothills of Aravali extends a 75-hectare patch of barren land. It was once lush bamboo forest worth Rs 9 lakh. After joining the JFM programme in 1996, his village Munkapada in Rajpipla district had nurtured it in the hope of making some money. But in 2003, the forest department allowed a paper mill to harvest the forest for a payment of Rs 36,748. “This is sheer injustice,” says Jethiabhai. “The village spent years patrolling the forest.”

Harvest time has come and gone but the residents of Sitarampeth village in Chandrapur district did not get a penny in return for protecting nearly 300 ha of reserve forest for over a decade. “No valuation has ever been done of the work done by us,” says Rambhau Dhande, a resident. The forest department has taken away the entire stock of timber without giving the community a share in it. Now the residents keep an eye on the 25 ha of teak plantation raised under JFM. It is ready for thinning. “We would like to fell teak for our own needs, but we dare not for fear of retribution from the department,” says resident Gomaji Naitam. The village of bamboo artisans has nurtured another 25 ha plantation of bamboo and other species but people are not allowed to cut bamboo for their own use.

Madhya Pradesh set out on a generous note. The state’s 1990 JFM resolution promised 20 per cent of the net profit from the felling of timber to forest protection committees in case of dense forest and 30 per cent of the net profit in the case of degraded forests. In 2001 in an unprecedented move, the government promised the committees the entire net profit from timber and bamboo in degraded forests. The new mechanism also laid down that half the money will be distributed among the members, while the rest will be used for forest and village resource development. Such an attractive proposition drew 16 million people into forest conservation and today 70 per cent of the state’s forest is covered under JFM.

Some 40 years ago an experiment began in Arabari forest range of West Bengal that caught the fancy of the nation. The forest authorities roped in the people living in the area in regenerating degraded forests. In return they offered them a share in forest resources and revenue. It worked. Two decades later the Centre adopted the Arabari model to start the Joint Forest Management programme. The response was such that today it involves 25 million people.