THE YAKHA: CULTURE, ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT IN ...

for individuals within the prevailing social and political system with
whom they could work; a pradhkin PB-c willing to allocate the necessary
powers needed for forest management to a committee, for example, or a
District Forestry Officer (DFO! or ranger sympathetic to local needs.
As I mentioned in Chapter One, because of its remoteness and
relative abundance of forests, Sankhuwasabha did not feature much in the
KHCFP's work. However the Sankhuwas~bha DFO was also said to be a most
difficult man: he had told the 'K3' team that he wanted to organize his
own community forestry programmes without their help. I met him one day
in 1989 at the Chainpur range office before he set off down the hill, on
horseback, to meet the Zonal Commissioner who was flying into
Tumlingtar. He told me there was nothing organized in Tamaphok, but
that there were plans to set up a User Committee in the follwing year's
budget , ". Nothing seemed to materialise, and we saw in the previous
section how strained relations became between people in Tamaphok and the
Forest Department. Insofar as the KHCFP operated through the pre-
existing government department and insofar as staff from that department
were operating in Tamaphok, then the KHCFP was operating there,
However, this link appeared nebulous indeed.
Other aspects to the ODA's work may arguably have been having more
of an impact in Tamaphok. There was an Agricultura! Training School at
Uttarpani near Hile, as well as the Pakhribas Agricu!turel Centre which
conducted research and extension services. The llt tarpani school had a
policy of recruiting on the basis of personality as well as academic
ability, and one male Yakha student from Tamaphok went there. On the
other hand, while people knew of the existence of Pakhribas (which had
previously been a British Gurkha Rehabilitation Centre) there was not