Van Panchayats
Brandis, upset at being overridden through influences such as those of these tea-coffee estate owners, offered to resign. To placate him, the British agreed to provide for declaring Reserve Forests as Village Forests and handing them over to local communities for management. This provision was subsequently incorporated in the Forest Act of 1927 under Chapter 3, section 28, but none were constituted till much later in 1930s as Van Panchayats of Garhwal and Kumaon Himalayas. These were exceedingly well-managed; Dr Somanathan of Indian Statistical Institute, a competent statistician conducted a careful field study of these Van Panchayats and reported in 2008 that their community- based management costs an order of magnitude less per unit area and does no worse, and possibly better, at forest conservation than state managementY
Overexploiting Indian Forests
Brandis with his sensitivity and empathy for the common people was an exception. After he left, the Foresters blotted out all trace of his statements, and of the reality on the ground and started insisting that the villagers had been destroying India’s forests and it was the duty of the Foresters to keep them out to conserve the forests. The Forest Department claimed to be implementing sustainable management of forest resources on a scientific basis. In fact, the forest resources were continually depleted in manifold ways, to provide timber as sleepers for construction of the Railway Lines, to bum as a fuel to drive Railway engines, to set up British
17
15
