Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

46 SAGARI R. RAMDAS AND NITYA S. GHOTGE
agricultural practices. Area already damaged by such cultivation should
be rehabilitated through social forestry and energy plantations’.
On Grazing: ‘In the absence of adequate productive pasturelands and a
grazing policy, forests have become the major source of grazing and fodder.
It is estimated that around 60 per cent of the livestock (about 270 million)
graze in forests. These include traditional sedentary village livestock and
migratory animals herded by ethnic graziers. Additionally, graziers collect
about 175 million tonnes of green fodder, annually, by lopping and harvesting
grasses. This also adversely affects regeneration of forests’.
‘Grazing in forest areas should be regulated with the involvement of the
community. Special conservation areas, young plantations and regeneration
areas should be fully protected. Grazing and browsing in forest
areas need to be controlled. Adequate grazing fees should be levied to
discourage people in forest areas from maintaining large herds of nonessential
livestock’.
‘The rights and concessions, including grazing, should always remain
related to the carrying capacity of forests. The capacity itself should be
optimised by increased investment, silvicultural research and development
of the area. Stall-feeding of cattle should be encouraged. The
requirements of the community, which cannot be met by the right and
concessions so determined, should be met by development of social
forestry outside the reserved forests’.
The above extracts from the 1988 Forest Policy read no differently from
any of the writings of the colonial administrators. Grazing needs to be
controlled by levying a grazing fee; shifting cultivation is to be discouraged
through alternative avenues of income and ‘improved settled agriculture’.
All legal and policy measures prior to the NFP, 1988, such as the Wild
Life (Protection) Act, 1972, the Indian Forest Act, 1927, and the Forest
(Conservation) Act, 1980, also placed severe restrictions on these communities,
resulting in loss of livelihood, shelter and food. Indeed,
community involvement in managing forests through the Joint Forest
Management (JFM) programme, launched with much fanfare in the
1990s, has only made it easier for the forester to police the pastoralist
and appropriate land used by shifting cultivators. In the name of forest
protection today, it is the village elite (who often head the forest protection
committees) who fine the grazier, ban lopping and raise plantations on
shifting cultivation fallow lands.