Govt scraps colonial rule to control forest produce

India has scraped a colonial rule restricting harvesting of minor forest produce and has empowered the village body -- gram sabha --- with its regulation to improve livelihood avenues for poor tribals and forest dwellers.

Updated on: Sep 9, 2012, 19:43:11 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India has scraped a colonial rule restricting harvesting of minor forest produce and has empowered the village body -- gram sabha --- with its regulation to improve livelihood avenues for poor tribals and forest dwellers.

The British through Indian Forest Act of 1927 had vested the power of regulating MPF with the forest departments to control the Indian forests, a treasure of rich exotic herbs and minerals.

The powers had been used by the forest bureaucracy to prevent locals from extracting the produce for their livelihood purpose.

The ministry of tribal affairs changed it through new rules allowing gram sabhas to issue permit for harvesting and transportation of minor forest produce (MPF) by forest dwellers and tribal communities.

The rules notified this week gave gram sabha the power to constitute a committee to issue transit permit to villagers to "individually or collectively" collect and transport MFP without restricting their right to dispose of the produce.

"The collection of minor forest produce shall be free of all royalties or fees or any other charges," the new rules say.

A small example of how the change in rules can benefit the poor tribal communities is evident from seven villages in Gadchiroli in Maharashtra where villagers were allowed to harvest MPF.

"Seven villages in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra earned 7.5 crores last year from harvest of bamboo which had been illegally denied to them by the forest department," said forest right activist Shankar Gopalakrishnan.

To ensure that the rules are enforced, the ministry has asked the state government to enlist all hamlets under the Forest Rights Act for the purpose of MFP in a limited time-frame.

But, the state governments have been debarred from use the rules to re-visit the rights of individuals or communities already recognized under the law.

The committee, apart from regulating minor forest produce, will also prepare conservation and management plan for community based resources for sustainability and equitable distribution of the resources among forest dwellers, an erstwhile right of the forest departments.

The management plan will be implemented through revenue generated by sale of minor forest produce and the committee will have powers to modify them, the rules say.

To make the business of MPF inclusive, the rules have stipulated presence of 50% of gram sabha members as minimum quorum for holding the meetings and all decisions to be made through majority vote.

The gram sabha will have to meet at least once in three months, the rules stipulate.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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