Chhattisgarh - Kalpavrikshkalpavriksh.org/images/CCA/Directory/M-7 Chattisgarh.pdf175 state chapter - chhattisgarh Conservation, local practices, and innovation: Natural resource management

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Conservation, local practices, and innovation: Natural resource management in Chhattisgarh

Archana Prasad

Author’s noteIn this chapter, I look at community conservation practices in the context of a crisis in natural

resource management in the newly formed Chhattisgarh State. Epitomised by the century’s worst drought,1 this crisis is a reflection of the mismanagement of land, water and forest resources. Neo-Gandhian and radical left-oriented activists in the region see the centralised control of resources as the main culprit for the present environmental crisis. Many contend that traditional patterns of resource use and conservation must be restored if the aim of sustainable development is to be achieved.2

While this critique of modern conservation practices is valid, it ignores the feudal context in which traditional conservation systems were embedded. Community conservation in the Chhattisgarh context cannot be seen merely in terms of oral traditions and prevailing terms of use, but should be seen mostly in terms of the local community’s ability to utilise their resources sustainably so as to reap the benefits of that particular resource over extended periods of time. This requires the adaptation of local skills and knowledge of prevalent situations and the development of new and innovative decentralised systems of resource management through a confluence of local, ‘indigenous’ and scientific knowledge.

If such programmes are to be effectively implemented, the term ‘community’ should be redefined in a way that it can include the creation of new collective identities. These identities are not representative of the ‘traditional culture or identity’ of the local people, but are based on a process of social engineering that attempts to establish relationships of social equity. This equity has to be seen in terms of both access to productive resources as well as the distribution of benefits—a principle not followed by a majority of local institutions currently. It is therefore not possible to see conservation practices as isolated from their vision of society, economy and polity as a whole. I argue that social and economic transformations are integral to community conservation initiatives in the context of the interventions of the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha, Ekta Parishad, the People’s Science Movement and the efforts of an empowered women’s group. The efforts of these groups and movements show that new social identities form the basis of community conservation efforts with a view to ensuring that the marginalised sections of the population benefit the most from it.

1. Background 1.1. Geographic profile

The state of Chhattisgarh was formed on 1 November 2000 through an Act of Parliament entitled ‘Reorganisation of Madhya Pradesh Act’. It is situated in the east of Madhya Pradesh 17° to 23°7' degree North latitude and 80°04' to 83°38' East longitude. The total area of the state is 1.35 lakh sq km.

The region is primarily drained by the Mahanadi River. The average annual rainfall is 60 inches. Chhattisgarh consists of three natural regions, rich in minerals, forest produce and fertile alluvial plains. The first natural formation is the plateau of Baghelkhand that joins the Jharkhand plateau to the north. Contiguous to the Gondwana region, it stretches from Sarguja District in the north to the northern parts of Bilaspur District. The region is

A typical forest landscape in Chhattisgarh Photo: Madhu Ramnath

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drained primarily by the Son river, which separates Chhattisgarh from the rest of Madhya Pradesh. The area is rich in Kosa silk, Chappa in Bilaspur being the main centre of trade. Large industrial concerns in the Sarguja area are engaged in mining of coal, bauxite and limestone. The area is rich in forests, especially mixed forests of sal, mahua, amla, shisham, semul, rohini and palas. The Kodaku, the Pahadi Korba and the Nagesia are among the tribal groups dependent on seasonal gathering and cultivation in the region. Around a third of the population migrates to cities in other states for wage labour after the harvesting season is over.

The second ecological zone consists of the Chhattisgarh Plains in southern Bilaspur, Raipur, Durg, Rajnandgaon and Raigarh districts. This area forms the Mahanadi basin and was known as the ‘rice bowl of central India’. The region was particularly rich in indigenous varieties of rice and water-harvesting methods. The region is rich in iron ore, bauxite, limestone and asbestos, and is also known for Kosa silk. The region is mostly inhabited by Gonds, Kamars and cultivators like the Kumbis and Kurmis. A large part of the Bilaspur and Raipur districts that falls in this region was directly administered by the British till Independence.

The third ecological zone in the region is the Bastar (Dandkaranya) plateau that begins from Kanker and ends in the Dantewara region in the southernmost part of Bastar district. This region shares a border with the East Godavari region of Andhra Pradesh and is drained primarily by the Indravati River. Its main natural wealth consists of forests and minerals. While there is a thin strip of teak along the Indravati valley and the Keshkal hills, the rest of the forests are of mixed sal types. Bastar is well-known for minor forest produce such as imli, amla, chironji, mahua, harra, etc. and also for minerals like mica, manganese, iron ore, bauxite and limestone. Like the northern part of the state, this region is also considered a proto-type of the composite tribal culture of Madhya Bharat. It houses Abhujmarh, the abode of the Maria Gonds, and also has a considerable Kamar and Gond population. It was also one of the oldest Gond feudal states of the region and because of this, its history has acquired significance for all scholars of central India.

1.2. Socio-economic profiles in the context of developmentThe state’s population (2001

census) is 20.83 million people, of which nearly 80 per cent live in rural areas, and the rest in urban areas. 31.8 per cent of the population is composed of Scheduled Tribes (ST), and another 11.6 per cent Scheduled Castes (SC). An overwhelming majority (about 95 per cent) is Hindu, with Muslims and Christians forming about 2 per cent each, and other religions very tiny minorities.3

Despite rich and diverse natural and human resources, Chhattisgarh has not been able to develop to its full potential because relations between the region (now a newly formed state) and the rest of Madhya Pradesh have always been based

on systems of unequal exchange. This is evident in the patterns of industrialisation. Industries like BALCO, Bhilai Steel Plant, Bharat Aluminium, many cement factories, the sleeper repair factory of the Indian Railways and several paper mills were opened in the region during the late 1960s and mid-1970s. Most of these were ancillary industries and hardly produced any finished goods. Chhattisgarh thus recovered the cost of primary produce and labour without generating additional employment or income. This meant that the poorest of the poor were either forced into daily-wage employment or had to migrate in search of jobs outside the region.

Chhattisgarh was considered the rice bowl of the country and rice was the staple food of its people. The production of paddy is mainly concentrated in Raipur and Bilaspur divisions, with Raigarh and Durg having the highest yields in the plains of the Mahanadi basin. As far as the landholding patterns of the region are concerned, production is concentrated in the hands of

A tribal market for pots Photo: Madhu Ramnath

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big landholders. According to the Indira Gandhi Krishi Vishwa Vidyalaya, only 9 per cent of farmers controlled 70 per cent of all cultivable land in 1987, while the small and marginal farmers had titles to only 20 per cent, despite constituting 65 per cent of the peasantry in the region.

Since primary occupations in the region were agriculture- and forest-based, most of the rural landless were only able to get part-time seasonal employment within the Chhattisgarh region. Large numbers migrated to other parts of the country. Given this situation, poverty, unemployment and migration are some of the main problems of Chhattisgarh development. According to Hari Thakur, 2135 people committed suicide in 1994–5, of whom 80 per cent were reported to have killed themselves because of unemployment and poverty.4 These were among the factors that led to the voicing of demands for separate statehood for the Chhattisgarh region.

While some of the above factors were important elements that contributed to the poverty of Chhattisgarh, long-standing mismanagement of natural resources also played a significant role in the underdevelopment of the region. Despite its rich endowment of land, water and forest resources, Chhattisgarh has been facing its worst droughts of the century (e.g. in 2000-1). In Raipur district alone, 1467 of 2,215 villages have been declared as drought-affected, whereas 24 of 42 tehsils face hunger and destitution in Bilaspur. The 2001 village panchayat records state that 400,000 people migrated out of the state even before Diwali and that close to 50 per cent of crops had dried up and failed.5

Increasing soil erosion and water depletion are evident even in government reservoirs, where water levels have been reduced to a third of their capacities. Changes in cropping patterns, forest degradation and the marginalisation of small water harvesting initiatives have resulted in degeneration of the natural resources base of the state.

The figures of the Madhya Pradesh Human Development Report are revealing and show that most of the districts of the region are starved of stable irrigation facilities. Almost half the landholdings, even in primarily paddy-growing regions like Durg and Raipur, are unirrigated and depend on rains for agriculture. In other forested tribal areas and hilly tracts like Bastar and Sarguja, the level of forest degradation is shown by sharp increases in the area in open forest tracts and the corresponding decline in dense forest area even in a short period between 1993 and 1997.6 Given this situation, the state has been forced to recognise the importance of people’s participation in natural resource management.

2. A history of administrative control over land and resources2.1. Communities, conservation and the political system

Chhattisgarh region was ruled by a diversity of political systems before it became an integral part of Madhya Pradesh after the reorganisation of states in the 1950s. The Bhosale Raja of Nagpur dominated the region since the early 18th century and was followed by British rule since the early 19th century. The region was the ancient seat of the Raj Gond dynasties that comprised some of the most ancient feudatory zamindaris. The zamindaris of Bastar, Sarguja, Raigarh Kawardha, Korea and Pandaria were important centres and survived till the post-Independence abolition of the system. The diversity of political systems had a great

impact on the fate of traditional conservation systems. Since conservation itself involves degrees of political control, the space available for community control over local resources differed. Recent studies on the nature of the zamindaris have shown that the prevalence of feudal loyalties accorded some protection to local resource use systems. Communities were charged with taxes in the form of produce and labour,7 in return for

Toddy in the forest Photo: Madhu Ramnath

Women making leaf cups Photo: Madhu Ramnath


which they were accorded rights of movement and management in the forest areas they inhabited. This meant that conservation practices were in most cases dictated by patterns of subsistence that could be defined not only in economic but also in social and cultural terms. For instance, there was a ban on felling mahua and sal trees for timber as their non-timber forest produce formed an integral part of tribal life in the area. We also find that these trees formed an important part of the sacred groves and sacred spaces of the area.

Box 1

Sacred Groves and Trees in Chhattisgarh8

Many anthropological studies give an account of the tradition of sacred groves in Chhattisgarh. Villages in Bastar, for instance, have three kinds of groves, matagudi, devgudi and gaondevi, the first two managed by families, and the last one belonging to the village as a whole. The Chhotanagpur part of the state shows the predominance of sarana or jahera kind of groves. Generally, the area occupied by the sarana is less than an acre. Practices range from absolutely no extraction of resources to once-a-year extraction to minimal use of non-timber forest produce.

Chhattisgarh’s sacred groves are said to contain rich biodiversity, which however remains largely undocumented. Trees that are typically part of such groves include saj, sal, mahua, pipal, tendu, sag, and semur.

Certain species of trees like banyan, bel, khadsingi, mahua, mango, palas, peepal, and umbar are culturally and traditionally considered to be sacred and are not cut by local communities.

Tribal habitations were however, quite mobile and the settlement of tribals and poor peasants in interior forest tracts was a phenomenon observed only in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Before that tribal and pastoral people moved between the plains and the highlands and followed an agro-pastoral mode of livelihood. It was the settlement of caste Hindu cultivators in the mid-17th century that stopped the seasonal migration of tribal people into the plains and their marginalisation process gained momentum. This was mainly because the Maratha regime was only interested in extracting maximum revenue from these lands and therefore facilitated the settlement of these cultivators. As a result of this tribal people were pushed further and further into the forests and their survival became more and more precarious because the seasonal balance of their subsistence systems was disturbed. In this situation the local control over resources did not necessarily mean that people dependent on the forest eco-system were able to meet their subsistence needs properly.9 This trend was further accentuated in colonial times. Areas that were directly annexed by the British witnessed drastic modifications of local resource use patterns. The formation of the forest department in 1865 and the reservation of forests that began in 1878 resulted in a great loss of subsistence resources in tribal and poor peasant societies. It also resulted in forceful exploitation of tribal forest dwellers as labourers, often followed by the migration of tribals from the state-owned forests into zamindari forests.

The British then attempted to shift control over the forests of the zamindari areas through their Residents to the rajas. This created a lot of political and social tension in the forested zamindaris because forest-dwellers expected that rajas and zamindars would grant them more rights than the alien British rulers. This is evident from the fact that many more protests are recorded in zamindari areas than in the state-owned territories of the erstwhile Central Provinces. Some of the more significant of these protests were the Bastar Maria rebellion of 1910 and the Sarguja

Nagesia rebellion of 1929. Most of these rebellions were for reduction in taxes on land settlements, forest rights and against the operation of the banias (money-lenders) and other outsiders. In many cases tribal leaders thought that the zamindars and rajas were not able to protect the rights of the people on their own resources and had therefore violated their customary duties towards them.

After the abolition of the zamindaris in the 1950s, feudal states became a part of independent India. British systems of conservation and control over resources were followed throughout the country. Customary rights that had been retrieved through

the rebellions of the pre-Independence era were once Local people celebrating a festive occassion Photo: Madhu Ramnath


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again violated, leading to widespread protests in the erstwhile feudatory states. However the post-Independence era also witnessed a different trend of rebellion in that the question of rights was integrally linked to the redistribution and improvement of land. These rebellions were different because the confrontation was not only with the landholder but also with the state machinery of independent India. In Chhattisgarh a good example of this trend is the movement started by a forgotten freedom fighter, Sukhlal Nage. As a leader of the tribals, Nage inspired the landless tribals of Koremuda in Siwaha of present-day Dhamtari district to reclaim 1,881 acres of cultivable wasteland for traditional cooperative farming in the 1950s. Two years after successfully farming the area, the movement was broken by police action, and Nage himself was killed in custody.10 Similar protests for customary forest and land rights were witnessed in Bastar in 1966. Organisations like the Bharat Jan Andolan, Ekta Parishad, Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha and others have fought for customary rights of local inhabitants (some of these cases are considered in greater detail later). These movements were to influence community conservation trends in later years.

Pressures on traditional systems also led to changes in traditional patterns of conservation. By the mid-1980s and early 1990s, community participation became a buzzword in the officialdom of the state of Madhya Pradesh, and was accompanied by the passing of the rules of Joint Forest Management, the setting up of Rajiv Gandhi Watershed and Drinking Water Missions, enactment of the Panchayat Raj Act and the formation of district governments,11 aimed at rectifying resource degradation through the involvement of people and attempting to reverse the trend of centralised resource control. While many of these initiatives have provided opportunities for movements to experiment with community conservation, they have also resulted in an effort to appease popular demands for genuine decentralisation.

These measures are, however, proving too late and too little for two reasons. First, the nature and scale of resource degradation is such that a single community or NGO cannot harness the investment and technical expertise required for restoration. Second, prolonged centralised management systems have led to the marginalisation of local and regional institutions that can have a positive impact on resource utilisation and control. The interface between natural resource management regimes and structures of governance has assumed great importance today. The foregoing discussions show how the use of official mechanisms for community conservation has to be accompanied by aggressive mobilisation and social engineering if local needs are to be met in an equitable manner.

Box 2

Appropriation of Natural Resources12

Chhattisgarh has had a long history of land appropriation by Maratha invaders, the British and the non-tribal communities from other parts of the country. Exploitation of forests started in the 19th century and from the 1860s onwards the British Government started exploiting commercially valuable sal forests through leases to various private companies. Reservation of forests began in 1891 when the erstwhile Central Province (of which Chhattisgarh was a part) came under direct British administration. Reservation included three major categories of forests: reserved forests (no rights of local people allowed), Protected Forests (some access allowed to the people), and Nistari Forests (meant for meeting bonafide domestic needs of the people). Non-Timber Forest Produce (NTFP), on which a majority of the population was dependent (for personal use and sale) was made a state subject with leases given to powerful contractors, reducing local people to mere collectors who had no option but to sell to these contractors. This led to the breakdown of traditional systems of NTFP trade, e.g., with local artisans and the Banjara (migratory) community. The new forest policy with more area under reservation, NTFP policy and imposition of grazing fee led to a major rebellion in 1910. This was perhaps the last time a popular action was led by the majhis (traditional system of local leadership) and the representatives of the traditional tribal regime. Thanks to this and a series of other rebellions, the subsequent forest policies in Bastar were not as intrusive as in rest of the country. However, these forests were too valuable to leave unexploited, particularly during the two World Wars.

The situation did not improve after independence, with India’s commercial /industrial needs replacing colonial needs as major policy determinants (Gadgil and Guha 1992). In addition, in the 1960s local biodiversity and livelihoods were severely impacted by the replacement of indigenous forests with monocultures of commercially important exotic species, encouraged by agencies such as the World Bank. Between 1956 and 1981, 1,25,483 ha of forest land in Bastar was transferred to development projects, accounting for one third of the total forest loss in the district.13 Prior to that, in 1949 the Nistar forests were converted to Protected Forests.


This led to further complexities for the local tribals, as without proper land surveys and clear statement of jurisdiction over these forests, many long-term cultivators are today considered encroachers. Encroachments are a serious problem, carried out both by the landless in the absence of any other alternatives, and by the politically powerful for financial gains (in the period 1976–80, 32.5 sq km out of 11,600 sq. km. of forests in Jagdalpur District were under encroachment).

Bastar has been shrouded with scams involving a nexus of politicians, forest contractors and government officials (often exposed by sensitive government officials and social activists). The most well-known of these is the Malik Makbuja scam, which involved misuse of rights given to peasants to cut trees on their own lands. The scheme was exploited by the nexus by encouraging peasants to cut the maximum number of trees at abysmally low prices. Timber was also extracted from the government forests using Malik Makbuja as a front. MP Protection of Scheduled Tribes (Interest in Trees) Act, 1956, was aimed at ensuring that the tribals are not cheated under this scheme; however, this was not of much use and was subverted by timber merchants and the powers-that-be. In 1992, thanks to the efforts of movements like Ekta Parishad, the Supreme Court banned all felling in Bastar. Whether this has really benefited the tribals and the biodiversity of Bastar is yet to be seen.

Box 3

People’s Protected Areas14

The People’s Protected Area (PPA) Initiative, launched by the State forest department in 2002, is expected to be implemented by the people with the philosophy of achieving sustainable livelihood through biodiversity conservation following the ecosystem approach. The FD expects this programme to be different from the existing ecodevelopment programme and Joint Forest Management (JFM). They see ecodevelopment as an exclusionary process aimed at providing alternative sources of livelihoods, thus alienating the communities from their resources. JFM is seen more as a FD programme in which local people participate. PPA is supposed to derive legal support from the Indian Forest Act, 1927, though it is not very clear from the documents how this is so. So far 32 PPAs have been established, extending over 500,000 ha and covering more than 300 villages. The Dugli-Jabarra PPA in Dhamtari Division includes 15 villages with a population of 5,742.

The total catchment area under the project is 37,774 ha of sal and miscellaneous forests. While 20,269 ha is reserved for conservation, 17,505 ha have been allocated to meet people’s nistar needs. Various initiatives taken up to enhance livelihood options and improve biological diversity include forest protection through village forest protection committees, developing nurseries and plantations of suitable indigenous species, reducing grazing pressures in sensitive areas, non-destructive harvesting of medicinal plants, raw material processing, value addition, effective marketing, etc.

3. Origins of community conservation initiativesChhattisgarh serves as a good example of people’s participation in the management of their

resources, but in a non-conventional sense. When examined in a purely scholarly context, it may appear that Chhattisgarh has no community conservation practices at all, because the state is a land of migrants who have continuously influenced and developed each other’s resource use patterns and knowledge base. Erratic movements of people from hilly regions to the plains were indicative of this, and were often conditioned by political conflict (see Prasad 1999).

The Gonds can be considered the first migrants into Chhattisgarh. They fled from the kingdom of Deogarh (present-day Chhindwara district, MP) and arrived in the rice bowl of Madhya Bharat in the early Maratha period in approximately the early 14th century when the Gonds and the Gowalees had their kingdom in the area. Farmer communities like the Kurmis, Lodhis and Kumbis were settled in the area by successive Maratha regimes to exploit the optimal revenue potential


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of the region. The continuous influx of people into the area led to changes in practices of resource use at frequent intervals.

It is thus difficult to define local practices of communities specific to any area of the state before the late 18th century. For example, early Maratha records clearly indicate that many of the Gond people (of which the Marias form an integral part) of Chhattisgarh practised rice cultivation in the plains and had bullocks in the period before 1747. It was also indicated that many of them may have given up the plough for gathering of forest produce and doing shifting cultivation on forested tracts after military invasions drove them to settle in highland forested areas. The projection of any of these practices as either ancient or eco-friendly may thus be out of place. Each of these community practices needs to be evaluated separately from the prism of regeneration and preservation of local habitats.

In this context, we explore four different community initiatives that involve (i) the preservation of agricultural diversity, (ii) watershed management, (iii) community mobilization for forest rights, and (iv) forest conservation. The first three case studies are based on people’s movements and social engineering as critical precepts in community efforts, but are, interestingly, quite distinct in the philosophies that drive them. It must be noted that these are not typical NGO or CBO organisational forms. Rather, they are forms of social and political mobilisation in the struggle for people’s rights. These struggles are combined with ideas of change and any success that they get in their campaign and constructive work is a result of their organisational base at the level of the village or even hamlet. People who identify themselves as part of these movements are also part of the ‘community’ because they belong there. In this sense these movements are CBOs, but with a perspective that encompasses a vision not only for the community but the entire society. Their efforts at the regeneration of resources are born out of this vision and are part of their larger community-based work. Further communities are seen not as static entities but as evolving, and these mass movements try to influence the nature of this transformation by organising the most marginalised section of the people. The fourth case study is a remarkable story of a woman’s efforts to empower other women and derive benefits for the entire village community.

Box 4

Local Forest Management Practices15

In Bastar cosmology, villages were founded on the basis of land given to the founding member by the Earth, which had therefore to be propitiated at all agricultural festivals. The Earth includes the spirits of the river, the forest and the mountain, to each of whom separate offerings are made. Although the appropriation and reservation of forests by the forest department meant that forests were officially taken out of village boundaries, they often continued to be part of the village for ritual purposes. There has continued to be a strong tradition of managing the forests within one’s village boundaries till quite recently, involving a system of charging residents of other villages a small fee—known variously as devsari, dand, man or saribodi—in exchange for the use of one’s forest. In some villages in north Bastar, the fee was charged according to the amount of timber taken, and usually took the form of some liquor or meat. Some villages charged only for good timber and not for dry or fallen wood, and others only if the wood was stolen. Similarly, in some villages, they expected man for grazing, while others allowed grazing free. In south Bastar, villages which used the forest of another village made collective contributions to the Earth of that village at festival times. This was not necessarily a system of forest protection as it is understood today, but managed to regulate excessive felling and enabled a supervisory eye on what was happening. Inevitably, there are cases where it did not work. The residents of Chitrakote, for example, complained that while paying this fee or offering, other villages had cleaned out their forests, and now they in turn had to pay another village to use its forests. However, by and large, it seems to have been fairly successful. In some cases, villagers contributed to engaging watchmen. Two examples are available from the villages surrounding the Ulnar and Junawani forests (see the Chhattisgarh case studies). Fallow land Photo: Madhu Ramnath


Often different kinds of management systems are layered upon each other—‘traditional’, NGO-initiated and forest department-initiated. ‘Traditionally’ villages in Kanker (formerly North Bastar) would cut timber from each other’s forests in return for Rs 2–4 as devsari. Around 1985–6, under the influence of Parivartan (Ekta Parishad), the village of Salebhata and the neighbouring villages of Peedapal, Mandri and Kingapati in Kanker all began protecting their own nistari forests. Since protection began, no timber cutting from each other’s forests was allowed, and the giving of devsari stopped. Protection took the form of all-male patrols. Internally timber was supplied on application. Sunsequently, a government FPC was formed in Salebhata and they were given a patch of protected forest to protect, which is somewhat further away from the village, beyond the nistari jungle. In practice, however, the village was already protecting both the nistari and protected forests. While Salebhata got nothing for its protection, Mandri village got funds to build a stop-dam, well and pond, as well as wages for plantation work. The effect of such differential funding for something that both villages were doing anyway, and its consequences for ‘social capital’ and trust between the villages, should be fairly obvious. In those cases where women were active in protection, the setting up of a formal VSS invariably transfers responsibility and authority to males in the village. For instance, in Belgaon, Korkotti, Bade Khauli and some other villages in Kanker, Mahila Mandals (women’s groups) formed by Parivartan started protecting their forests a couple of years ago. The main obstacle was men from their own and neighbouring villages, who were trying to steal wood. In 1999, a formal VSS under JFM was started in Belgaon and a man was appointed as chair. Conversations with the Mahila Mandal in December 1999 revealed strong resentment against this formal committee and its chair. At the initial meeting, everyone was invited and their signatures were taken but they were told nothing. The VSS had received money to trade in tamarind and urea, but no one except a few office-bearers knew what was going on. The women’s’ major complaint was that the Patel or the headman took money on behalf of the VSS for allowing people from other villages to cut trees from their forest, kept it for himself and did not tell them about it. When they tried to stop offenders, they would be told that money had already been paid, and could do nothing.

Where villagers have been organised enough, they have been able to resist the imposition of a formal scheme. For example, in Chanagaon (Nagari, Raipur district), the villagers have been mobilised by the Bharat Jan Andolan and are fully aware of their rights to manage their forests under the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA). About 25–30 years ago, when the nistari forests were converted into protected forests and the FD started exploiting the forests, the earlier practice of asking the headman for timber ceased and everyone cut freely. Once the village became organised through the Bharat Jan Andolan (1994–5), they resumed their earlier system. An FD proposal to start a JFM programme was rejected on the grounds that the 30 per cent being offered by the FD was too low, and that the JFM rules made no provision for timber for domestic use.

To summarise, all over this belt, ‘traditional’ forest management rested on the recognition of village boundaries in forests and the need to make offerings to the forest gods for the use of the forest. In many places, the villagers trace deforestation to FD felling in coupes. Apart from (falsely) blaming villages for deforestation, even within the reversed and so-called participatory framework of JFM, there has been no effort to institutionalize existing cultural systems of management. In some cases, VSSs have been superimposed on existing community management systems. With the coming of forest department sanctions and money, villagers’ own contributions have ceased, as well as the control which flowed from this. Equally problematic is the neglect of traditional boundaries in apportioning forest land for protection. For example, part of Darbha’s forests have been given to Chindawara village to protect.

3.1. Natural wealth, local people and the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha Movement3.1.1. Niyogi and early efforts at conservation

The Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha began work in the late 1980s by organising the workers of the mines of Durg district and the employees of the Bhilai Steel Plant (Bhilai, Chhattisgarh). In an essay titled ‘Hamara Paryavaran’, Shankar Guha Niyogi, the founder of CMM and an eminent trade unionist with strong leftist leanings, highlighted the need for recognising the importance of development and conservation as two parts of the same coin:

“Nowadays people are making environment an obsession and using environmental conservation as an excuse to oppose industry-based development … But the truth is that we will have to protect our


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nature, we will also have to protect our earth. Forests, trees, plants, clean drinking water, pure air, animals, birds, humans—all these constitute our world. We will have to use our compassionate reasoning to develop flexible programmes on the basis of which the balance between nature and science can be maintained.”16

Niyogi believed this was only possible if people were organised to better understand the value of their own resources. Open access to resources to meet their basic needs was critical. The CMM believed that people’s traditional knowledge base and participatory local planning could form the basis of eco-friendly and sustainable development. The CMM analysis was that the indifference of the local population towards the trees that grew in their area resulted from the lack of control and stake of the local people in the management of their plantations. In this context, Niyogi noted that 60 per cent of the trees in official plantations were destroyed because of the lack of local community participation. He also held that the nexus between forest department and the contractors was very strong. Contracts for the felling of wood were granted in the name of afforestation. Other malpractices recorded by the CMM were the false reporting of the plants that were meant to exist on government lands and the non-reporting of deaths of saplings that occurred because of neglect.

Having noted the indifference of local people to their own environment, Niyogi and the CMM began a campaign in Daundi and Rajhara for the revival of people’s knowledge systems, called Apne Jangal Ko Pehchano, Apne Parivar Ko Pehchano (know your forest, know your family) in the late 1980s. Through this programme the CMM initiated a process of introducing people to different plant species growing in their own area, by dividing them into indigenous species, economically useful ones and those that needed to be regenerated or protected. Their campaign concentrated on afforestation through the organisation of local communities, believing that enhancing and utilising local knowledge was the best form of conservation. Their resultant plans were a mix of local and regional needs. Their studies had revealed that 15 per cent of the total area under government plantations was covered with bamboos and shrubs and 35 per cent with trees of local species, while 25 per cent had economically valuable species. The campaign labelled every tree, displaying information of its variety, uses and the means of sustainable use. In the process, local people were re-acquainted with their own environment and recognised the importance of making rules to protect their forests. The campaign was conducted mostly in wastelands and depended on locally collected funds. This helped in mobilising the local community to begin looking at the possibility of managing their own resources.17

Taking off from the Apne Jangal Ko Pehchano programme, the CMM began intervening in other forms of resource management, and facilitated the setting up of 12 hand-pumps and tubewells at Dalli Rajhara. CMM activists noted that the Gonds had good knowledge of drainage systems and built their dwellings along natural waterbodies. The CMM opposed the pollution of these water bodies by protesting against the setting up of the Dalli crushing plant and made a plan for alternative resource use by helping the people mobilise resources by actively helping people build on their own knowledge base.

3.1.2. The protection of agricultural diversity: The next phase

Niyogi’s philosophy and the CMM’s early efforts showed that successful people’s participation in sustainable natural resource use was based on protests against the abuse of natural resources by government and big industry and the simultaneous development of alternative systems that revived and built upon people’s knowledge bases. This strategy gained prominence with the extension of CMM’s work in natural resource management in the early 1990s. The formation of Rupantar, an NGO whose leadership was composed of members of the CMM, helped by creating mechanisms for the documentation of local knowledge, especially in the field of agricultural and forest diversity. The main focus of both Rupantar and the CMM was on advocacy and documentation of indigenous rice varieties in the region.

Climbing a sal tree for resin Photo: Madhu Ramnath


CMM activists working in the area noticed that paddy yields had been declining in recent years with increased use of chemical fertilisers and HYV seeds (like IR36) that were promoted by the Manila-based International Rice Research Institute. These seeds required transplantation and consequently led to the marginalisation of traditional rice cultivation practices.18

Gond and other tribal peasantry suffered most. These communities were adept at growing different varieties of paddy by broadcasting. In lowlands under the biyasi broadcasting method, farmers kept the seeds ready for sowing just before the onset of the June rains. After the seeds germinated (a little over five weeks) and water had reached the height of the seedlings, the fields were ploughed (around July-August) and guarded till ready for harvesting.19

Under the penda system of cultivation, the Marias of Abhujmarh converted strips of forest into cultivable land by burning just before the rains.20 They then spread the ashes on the ground and waited for the rains to come before they broadcast paddy seeds. The Marias shifted their fields every two or three years, returning to the same field only after the forest had regenerated (a gap of 13–14 years). Grigson and Bloomfield’s early studies of shifting cultivation reveal that it was a rainfed system, having little or no water harvesting principles and completely dependent on the one crop that it grew. According to Bloomfield, it could barely feed more than 2 persons in a family in the Baiga area. In the Maria highlands too this would be the case. It appears that this is not a very old system but has evolved out of the marginalisation of tribals into forested areas in this region, and is a more precarious and adapted form of the seasonal agro-pastoral system of survival in this region. The history of the tribal survival patterns shows that there is nothing known as an ancient system of survival—they are all evolving structures, and in some cases the tribals benefit and in the other cases not. Clearly in the case of shifting cultivation they did not, as they were not able to meet even their bare needs.

Nagesia communities grew paddy along with other crops in the bahra or the lowest portions of the uplands that retained moisture throughout the year. They propagated the rice seed only on these lands and nowhere else. In the midland (chanwar), paddy could only be grown once the monsoons came, but did not have the capacity of retaining moisture throughout the year. Less water-demanding crops could be grown in these areas.21 In the uplands or danrh lands, paddy could not be grown at all. William Ekka (1986) points out that these were all good lands with ownership restricted to a limited elite, leading to a differentiation between those Nagesia who could grow paddy and those who could not. Nagesia who could not grow paddy, preferred bari or garden lands where vegetables could be grown and khair or sandy lands below the hills where kodon or kutki that required lesser amount of water could be grown throughout the year. These diverse systems were harbingers of agricultural diversity.

During his tenure as the Director of the Madhya Pradesh Rice Research Institute, Dr. Richharia documented 20,000 indigenous varieties of rice. He also demonstrated methods by which indigenous techniques could be improved to increase yields from local rice varieties by cloning. He said that this was possible by making changes in the local biyasi system, if the farmers were taught how to split the tillers of the rice at a vegetative phase even in the broadcasting method. These tillers could then be transplanted in the spaces between the older transplants, increasing the productivity of rice by as much as 10 to 15 per cent per hectare. Seeds propagated by this method were less prone to pests and required minimum threshing. Productivity could be increased to one and a half times the normal, especially when accompanied by composting.22

The CMM and Rupantar experimented with his techniques with the participation of smallholding farmers of some panchayats in the Durg and Dhamtari districts. The CMM published a pamphlet based on the work of Dr. Richharia, to inform farmers of the advantages of clone propagation.

While the work of the CMM is concentrated in southern Rajhara and Dondi Panchayat areas of southern Durg, Rupantar concentrates on the adjoining Nagri Siwaha region of present-day Dhamtari district.

The CMM, which has been contesting the elections as a political party since the 1980s, has some of the panchayats under its control. It uses this formal structure to implement Dr. Richharia’s ideas on indigenous rice cultivation and to create traditional structures for watershed management. In the Dondi, Mohalla, Chikla Kasa, Kusum Kasa and Purur panchayats of the Dondi Block, they advocate the repair of traditional water harvesting structures and equitable distribution of access and benefits. Through the panchayats, the CMM also continues to fight for the rights of the small farmers.

Community elders Photo: Madhu Ramnath


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Rupantar set its sights on setting up seed banks for indigenous rice varieties. It first collected and propagated 270 varieties of indigenous rice species in the Nagri-Siwaha Blocks in 1992–3. It then transplanted these varieties in plant-cum-seed multiplication centres in the Nagri-Siwaha area.23

Emphasis was placed on varieties that required little water in a region that has frequent monsoon failures. The work of seed multiplication is being implemented through women’s self-help groups (SHGs) to encourage self-reliance.

3.1.3. Constraints and opportunities for the initiative

The practical experience of the CMM and Rupantar is very new and needs to be followed up systematically if the long-term impact of their efforts is to be known. Their attempts highlight the fact that community control over their own resources can only benefit people if it encompasses the synthesis between new and old knowledge systems. The use of Constitutional institutions to promote the conservation of biodiversity also requires social engineering and political mobilisation, something that Niyogi attempted to do in his lifetime.

3.2. Community watershed interventions and the Chhattisgarh Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti (BGVS)3.2.1. From literacy to watersheds: The initial phase

The Chhattisgarh Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti, as part of its aim to use use modern science for development of the disadvantaged, has taken up implementation of the Rajiv Gandhi Watershed Mission in five areas of the Bilaspur Division. This was with the purpose of improving agricultural productivity of about 12,00,000 ha of land, creating employment and recharging ground water levels. Their Mission Document stated that participatory watershed management approaches would be followed, whereby the local people would be made direct or indirect stakeholders in implementation (through NGOs and CBOs).24

The BGVS sought to make small farmers, landless labourers and women leading actors in implementation. This was done through a series of dialogues about the importance of watershed regeneration and management, agricultural production, and other matters of importance to the villagers. Participatory mapping was also used as an effective tool.25

Two specific examples will illustrate the approach used.26

Community involvement at Jagdalli village

Situated on the foothills of a high ridge, Jagdalli commands a watershed area of 26 sq km. The people’s watershed management initiatives in the form of earthen structures on the ridge and in their fields were often destroyed by the monsoons for lack of protective vegetation. Gond peasants survived on the low-yielding and drought-resistant kodon and kutki crops.

Unlike the official machinery, the BGVS wanted to ensure that the watershed committees would benefit the poorest of the poor. Keeping this in mind, the BGVS volunteers encouraged villagers to categorise people according to landholdings, and facilitated proportional representation in the committees. Since the largest proportion of the population consisted of landless labourers and small farmers, they formed a majority in the committee. Women began forming self-help groups and also found representation in the watershed committees.

The committees went from house to house to assess water requirements for both irrigation and personal needs. With participation of the villagers, the committees mapped distribution patterns of water collection. The committees helped to resolve inter- and intra-village conflicts by creating rules for water use (See Case Studies).

Community involvement in Chamanpur

In the preliminary phase, the entire watershed area comprising 29 villages was surveyed with local villagers. Existing water harvesting structures were mapped and detailed surveys conducted prior to construction of new structures. User groups were formed, each group representing an area fed by a single water harvesting structure. Each user group was represented in the watershed committee of the village. Since most of the area was earlier forested and comprised of the Kodaku, Korba and Gond tribals, the committees also have a majority tribal representation.

Local land classification systems divided the watershed into three land use categories: bahra or lowlands, where rice could be grown and which remained moist throughout the year; chawar or midlands, which had seasonal water shortages and where both rice and wheat could be grown


seasonally; and darh or highlands, where only trees and some vegetables could be grown. The interventions were carried out keeping the different needs of these lands in mind.

In Bairupura, Kodaku farmers were encouraged to practice communal agriculture, even though individuals held ownership titles. Tribals worked on each other’s lands and gave a portion of their produce to the village treasury. This accumulated produce was stored for times of trouble. As another institutional innovation, the village treasury also acted as a bank or moneylender. Since the borrowers were also beneficiaries from the treasury, the villagers could enjoy the same benefits as others, as long as they repaid their loans in easy instalments.27 (see case studies).

3.2.2. Impacts of community interventions on habitat restoration and resource development

In Jagdalli, irrigated and total cultivable land increased by 20 per cent between 1996–7 and 2000. This was accompanied by an increase in productivity by 20 per cent for previously irrigated lands and 100 per cent for unirrigated lands. Changes were more dramatic in Chamanpur, where the 35 acres of irrigated land in the pre-Mission era increased to 40 acres in the first year of the watershed, to 100 acres by the third year and to 235 acres in the fourth year (the end of 2000). Rates of migration were reduced drastically, as 7 million persondays of employment were generated by BVGS activities in four years.

These developments would not have been possible without successful recharging of groundwater levels and sustainable water conservation practices. Wells have started retaining water in summer, and in Chamanpur the natural nala (stream) has been regenerated. In a neighbouring village, Bhudupani, a pond that had no water for the last thirty years was now regenerated with potable water.

Project activities have thus naturally had an impact on the vegetation of the region. In Jagdalli, the once-bare ridge has regenerated naturally. Outside Chamanpur village, 25 hectares of sal forest has regenerated. Locally useful and traditional species like tendu, amla, behra and harra were also grown as a part of the watershed mission.

3.2.3. Constraints and opportunities faced by the initiative

The basic challenge of implementation lay in making the programme different from government-run watershed programmes. Among the main problems faced, was the delay in transfer of funds from the government departments. Despite this, work progressed because the community was mobilised and oriented towards the project. This is in sharp contrast to government-run watershed programmes, where work stops when funds stop.

Activists and the villagers identify a second problem in conflicts that arose between watershed committees and gram panchayats, especially where the sarpanch represented a dominant caste and where dalit and tribal peoples were left out of decision-making processes. Chamanpur initially faced this situation, but once a majority of the people started supporting the project, the panchayats themselves became sensitised and more supportive of the programme.

3.3. Protest and conservation: Ekta Parishad and the question of rights3.3.1. From rights to conservation

The Ekta Parishad, established in 1990 under the leadership of P.V. Rajagopal, considers itself

Traditional gourd and seed conservation Photo: Madhu Ramnath


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a social movement with Gandhian perspectives. The Parishad firmly believes that the village community has an inalienable right to forest and land resources, and that if villages are reorganised on traditional patterns, the conservation of wildlife, land and forests will automatically occur. It sees the struggle for the establishment of local rights as an inseparable part of community conservation efforts.

The Ekta Parishad is in sharp contrast with the other two movements explored in this chapter, mainly because of elements of re-creation of tradition and anti-modernism as essential parts of their ideology. This is especially emphasised in the context of the exclusion of traditional rights in national parks and sanctuaries. As a senior activist from Chhattisgarh put it in conversation with the author: “Vested interests have created unreal contradictions between human rights and wildlife rights, and between tribals and tigers. The real contradiction is between two worldviews: a tribal view based on survival, life, regeneration and conservation, and a modern view based on exploitation, consumption, surplus and profit. It is imperative to accept the tribal view to save the forests and this world.”

This view is reflected by many of the people who are involved with the Parishad. For example, a Baiga in the Majhura village of the Achanakmar Sanctuary told me on a recent trip that the traditional taboos and rules of conservation were only applicable with limited population pressures and interference by conventional conservation systems. Whole traditional systems went awry as biotic pressures on forests increased and lands available for the collection of forest produce became more and more restricted.

3.3.2. Institutional mechanisms in community conservation in the Achanakmar Wildlife Sanctuary28

In Achanakmar WLS, in the Lormi Block of Bilaspur district, the Parishad has worked in 42 villages within the sanctuary and its buffer zone. They have attempted to re-create traditional structures of the Baiga tribe. Under this structure, villages have a gram sabha consisting of all the villagers, who elect one male and one female mukhiya in each village. Most of these villages traditionally do not have gram sabhas—mukhiyas are the customary heads of Baiga society as it has evolved over time. The Parishad has facilitated this traditional system of governance and insisted on elections every year. The mukhiyas are employed by the Parishad and are in charge of building the movement in their villages. They keep in touch with mukhiyas in neighbouring villages, exchanging information and holding regular meetings with them.

The mukhiyas enforce community rules for resource use as and when required. The rules are informal and depend on prevailing situations. In the Achanakmar area, people of Parishad-dominated villages do not entertain cutting or burning of any trees within their areas of influence. Some rules involving specific resources are also implemented: for instance, the branches of the amla trees are not to be cut and its fruits can only be picked in a particular season.

3.3.3. Constraints and opportunities faced by the initiative

Inter-village organisations of panchayats consisting of all the mukhiyas of villages in the area, usually organised on a specific issue, are common. Five villages near Bijra (in the proposed buffer zone of the sanctuary) held a jungle panchayat around the end of December 1999 in order to discuss situations arising from the plantation of trees by the forest department on farmlands. The forest department had declared these out of bounds for cultivation, but the villagers continued to cultivate these tracts at the instigation of the Parishad. Thus the people decided that they would uproot all such trees and refuse to move from the lands of their birth. This decision followed from the Parishad’s organisation of protest against the relocation of villages from the sanctuary, reportedly now proposed to become a national park.

The Baiga rehabilitation programme run by the Parishad has so far rehabilitated two villages, Sarsoha and Ekta ki Purti, from within the confines of the sanctuary. The villagers originally lived within the confines of the sanctuary but the Ekta Parishad decided to resettle them as a mark of protest against the regulations imposed on people by the forest department. The organisation began work involving land reforms and forest protection by ensuring that rules set by gram sabhas and the mukhiyas are followed. In this way Ekta Parishad and its partner organizations attempt to combine constructive work with the fight for rights.


The major challenge to this initiative lies in ensuring organisational sustainability among village communities and institutions once external interventions by the Parishad stops.

3.4. The Karaundamuda Village Forest CommitteeKaraundamuda village in Sarguja District is an example of community-led regeneration

and protection of forests (See Case Studies).29 In the 1980s, forests had started to be cut by contractors from outside. The women of the village then came forward, forming a village forest protection committee (VFPC) and symbolically tying rakhis to the trees.30 Certain rules were made for protection:

• Both men and women were required to police the forests.

• Villagers were banned from cutting any trees or their branches in the first year.

• Punishments were accorded to offenders, the nature and size of the offence determining the type of punishment. For instance, someone caught cutting green wood for fuel was fined Rs 100, which went to a Village Development Fund run by the Committee.

• At one time, only two cattle per household were allowed to graze in the forest during the daytime.31 Surplus grass from the forest areas was cut and sold to those who owned more than two heads of cattle.

The women decided against selling regenerated seeds and seedlings in favour of permitting natural regeneration of the forests. They also decided to plant traditional resource-use species like tendu, amla, mahua, and sanjha.32

Within two years, the system of regulated extraction resulted in increased income from forest-based produce, which was in turn used to install a tubewell for the use of villagers. In 1994 the VFPC received legal recognition as a van suraksha samiti (VSS) from the forest department under the Joint Forest Management programme. In this process, it suffered one setback: a forest guard replaced Rajmanbai (who was instrumental in initiating the effort) as the secretary of the committee. Due to the rules of the JFM programme, women members of the VSS were no longer in control of funds.33 This was partly a result of the committee’s involvement with Sangata, an NGO; the NGO however also helped with improved livelihood prospects.

Karaundamuda received the forest department’s award for being the best VSS in the district. The initiative was then replicated in Ganeshpura, a neighbouring village, in 1997 with active participation of the women of Karaundamuda on a 220-hectare afforestation programme. A number of livelihood programmes have been started in both villages. The greatest challenge faced by this initiative is to identify a means of restoring their powers in the forest protection committee.

4. Major issues4.1 Prospects ahead: An overview of constraints and opportunities for community conservation

Broadly speaking, efforts at community conservation in Chhattisgarh have been part of broader social and political movements against dominant systems of resource use. Many of these movements have attempted to incorporate egalitarian, democratic and ecologically viable methods of resource use of the local society. For these movements, true decentralised control over resources is one of the main precepts of community conservation, as is observed in case of the BGVS, CMM and the Ekta Parishad. In the case of Karaundamuda, however, structures of local conservation were incorporated into the dominant political system. Local people evolve their own systems of management (which evolve with time), especially in order to cope with the larger problems they are confronted with. The entire focus of the BGVS work on watershed was on upgrading the local systems.

The second broad characteristic of these initiatives is that the fight for community conservation is also closely associated with a vision of the future. This perception also conditions the relationship between these movements and the State.

The Ekta Parishad, for example, attempts to re-create the radical Gandhian dream of gram swaraj and believes that sustainable resource use and regeneration can only take place if tribal sovereignty is established over forests. In a sense, they attempt to create a model based on traditional beliefs and practices that is biased against modern scientific practices. Such an effort is not hazard-free as the challenges faced in the management of natural resources are not only


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local but also regional, as forests, rivers and watersheds form ecological boundaries. A study of community-led watershed interventions in the region shows that ecologically viable water exploitation accompanied by regeneration of natural vegetation in the area is not only possible but can be spread over a number of gram panchayats.

Ecological boundaries do not necessarily conform to socio-political ones. The Chamanpur Milli watershed strategy in Sarguja and Bilaspur shows that conservation units where a majority of people benefit can only be formed successfully if the interventions are designed to follow principles of social justice within the limits of natural boundaries and catchment areas. Experience shows that panchayats or other formal structures like the VSS under JFM can only form such units if they have experienced some amount of social engineering prior to the conservation effort.

In the case of the CMM and BGVS a broad anti-capitalist vision marks attempts at community conservation that is mostly concentrated on mobilising disadvantaged sections of society. The aim is to use government programmes and institutions and build upon them through social mobilisation and the quest for using modern science for the benefit of the people. Thus these movements are looking for ways of combining local knowledge and science. However their success has been very limited in this respect and at best they have only been able to solve the immediate problems of their area. Thus the challenge before them is to realise their dream of equitable distribution of resources along with

the establishment of peoples livelihoods in a sustainable manner by using and developing these strategies further. Only in that case will we have a system of community conservation that is able to meet the imperatives of resource use and regeneration in a desirable way.

Archana Prasad is a Reader at the Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

References

Department and Chhattisgarh State Minor Forest Produce (Trading and Development) Cooperative Federation Ltd., Raipur. 2003. People’s Protected Areas (PPAs) – Unlocking Forests for People: A People Friendly Framework for Poverty Alleviation, Sustainable Forest Development and Biodiversity Conservation through Integrated Ecosystem Approach. Chhattisgarh Forest Department and Chhattisgarh State Minor Forest Produce (Trading and Development) Cooperative Federation Ltd., Raipur.

Endnotes1 Chandrika Mago, ‘States gear up to tackle drought’,Times of India, 26 January 2001.

2 B.D. Sharma, Whither Tribal Areas? Constitutional Amendments and After (Delhi, Sahyog Pustak Kutir, 1995).

3 http://www.censusindia.net/t_00_005.html and http://www.censusindia.net/religiondata/Religiondata_2001.xls. Note that most tribal communities seem to be classified as Hindus, Muslims, or Christians, having been converted to these mainstream religions at various stages of history.

4 Harilal Thakur, Chhattisgarh Gatha’, Rupantar Lekhmala 1, Raipur (1996); Harilal Thakur, ‘Jal Jangal Zamin Ke Sangharsh Ki Shurooat’, Rupantar Lekhmala 3, Raipur (1997).

5 Anon.,‘Chhattisgarh in grip of severe drought’, Hindustan Times, 10 December 2000; Anon., ‘Farmers pack their bags as Chhattisgarh reels under drought’, Indian Express, 17 September 2000; Hashim Qureshi, ‘Chhattisgarh reels under severe drought’, Rediff.Com News, 15 January 2001.

6 Anon., Madhya Pradesh Human Development Report (Bhopal, Madhyam, 1998).

7 Nandini Sundar, Subalterns and Sovereigns: An Anthropological History of Bastar 1854-1996 (Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1997).

8 Sources: K.C. Malhotra, Y. Gokhale, S. Chatterjee, and S. Srivastava. Overview of Sacred Groves in India (forthcoming); D.V. Gode (ed.), ‘Central India Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (Vidarbha and Bastar)’, Prepared under National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Vidarbha Nature Conservation Society,

Leaf cups used to eat out of Photo: Madhu Ramnath

Nagpur (2004). Included in a CD with Securing India’s Future: Technical Report of the NBSAP-India.

9 Archana Prasad, ‘Military Conflict and Forests in the Central Provinces’, Environment and History, Vol 5 No 3 (1999), Cambridge.

10Thakur, Chhattisgarh Gatha. Rupantar Lekhmala 1, Raipur; Thakur, Jal Jangal Zamin.

11 District Collectors and the CEOs of Zilla Parishads can sanction projects upto Rs 1 crore without prior approval of the state government. They also have the power to make and implement District Development Plans.

12 Source: N. Sunder, Is Devolution Democratisation? (New Delhi, 2000).

13 CSE. State of the Environment: Second citizens report. (New Delhi, Centre for Science and Environment, 1985).

14 Source: Chhattisgarh Forest Department and Chhattisgarh State Minor Forest Produce (Trading and Development) Cooperative Federation Ltd. (2003)

15 Source: Sunder, Is Devolution Democratisation? (As above).

16 Shankar Guha Niyogi, ‘Hamara Paryavaran’, Anil Sadgopal and Shyam Bahadur Namra (eds), Sangharsh aur Nirman: Shankar Guha Niyogi Aur Unke Naye Bharat Ka Sapna. (Allahabad, Rajkamal Prakashan, 1993).

17 Niyogi, ‘Hamara Paryavaran’. (As above).

18 Illina Sen, Perspective on Biodiversity (Raipur, Rupantar, 2000, unpublished article); Illina Sen, Hunger Stalks the Rice Bowl (Action Aid India, n.d.).

19 R.H. Richharia, Rice in Abundance for All Times Through Rice Clones (Bhopal, 1987).

20 W.V. Grigson, Maria Gonds of Bastar (London, Oxford University Press, 1936).

21 William Ekka, ‘Nagesia Economy: A Case of Upland Farming’, in ASI, Tribal Situation in North East Sarguja (Calcutta, Anthropological Survey of India, 1986).

22 Lok Sahitya Parishad. Dhan Ke Kansa La Phore Se, Paidawar Bhadaiyethe. Pamphlet of Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha (1996).

23 Interview with Illina Sen, Director, Rupantar, Raipur, 31 December 2000.

24 Government of Madhya Pradesh, Rajiv Gandhi Watershed Mission Statement’, MP Government Website (1994).

25 BGVS, A Handbook for Land Literacy, Participatory Resource Mapping for Self Reliant Panchayats (New Delhi, Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti, 1994).

26 The material for this sub-section is based on fieldwork by the author in 2000 in Jagdalli village, Jajgir district, and Chamanpur village, Sarguja district. Meetings were held with women’s groups, villagers and interviews with the secretary of the watershed committee and the local BGVS volunteers. Additional material is from an interview with Tribhuvan Singh, President, Gyan Vigyan Samiti, Sarguja district, 28 December 2000.

27 Sarguja BGVS. 2000. Dagar. A newsletter of the Pratappur Milli Watershed. Ambikapur.

28 This sub-section is based on a field visit to Achanakmar, Lormi Block, Bilaspur District, 30 December 2000. The co-ordinator of the Parishad’s work in Lormi, Rashmi Dwivedi, also shared some of this information with me.

29 The material for this section is based on a meeting with the Karaundamuda Women’s Protection Committee in Ganeshpura, Sarguja district, 29 December 2000.

30 Rakhi is a festival marked by women tying bands or thread (rakhis) on the wrists of their brothers, and the latter pledging to protect and support them.

31 Sangata. Annual Report, 1999-2000. (Ambikapur, Sarguja, 2001).

32 From a meeting with Bhupen Singh, the director-cum-secretary of Sangata, in Ganeshpura, 29 December 2000.

33 Joint Forest Management Update, 1998. Society for Promotion of Wasteland Development, New Delhi.

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CCA/Chhattisgarh/CS1/Bastar/Ulnar and Junawani/Forest protection

Junawani and Ulnar villages, Bastar

BackgroundThe villages of Ulnar and Junawani situated in Bastar district of Chhattisgarh

follow a traditional system of forest protection. In Bastar cosmology, villages were founded on the basis of land given to the founding members by the Earth, which has therefore to be propitiated at all agricultural festivals. It is believed that the Earth includes the spirits of the river, the forest and the mountain, to each of whom separate offerings are made.

The appropriation and reservation of forests by the forest department (FD) in the 1950s1 meant that the forests were officially taken out of village boundaries. However, these forests often continued to be part of the village for ritualistic purposes. There has continued to be a strong tradition of managing the forests within the traditional village boundaries till quite recently, involving a system of charging residents of other villages a small fee (known variously as devsari, dand, man or saribodi) in exchange for use of one’s forest resources. In some villages in north Bastar, the fee was charged according to the amount of timber taken, and it usually took the form of some liquor or meat. Some villages charged only for good timber and not for dry or fallen wood, and other villages charged only if the wood was stolen. Similarly, in some villages, they expected man for grazing, while others allowed grazing free. In south Bastar, villages that used the forest of another village made collective contributions to the Earth of that village at festival times by way of offerings. This was not necessarily a system of forest protection as it is understood today, but it managed to regulate excessive felling and enabled a supervisory eye on what was happening. Invariably there were cases where this system did not work. The residents of Chitrakote, for example, complained that while paying this fee or offering, other villages had cleaned out their forests, and now they in turn had to pay another village to use its forests. However, by and large, in terms of forest protection it seems to have been fairly successful.

Two examples where this traditional system has worked till not so long ago are Ulnar and Junawani villages. Ulnar is a large village in central Bastar, comprising seven hamlets. In addition it is the head village of 12 villages: Bajawand, Peethapur, Nalpawand, Sargipal, Dasapal, Devda, Masigaon, Peelapadar-Karitgon, Talnar, Baniagaon, Belgaon and Tarapur.2 Ulnar had a nistari3 sal forest of about 6000 acres (according to one villager) that was distributed among the villages with Ulnar keeping the largest share.

Towards community conservationThe system had an exchange system for forest use. In return for the use of the forest, the

other villages each contributed some money, rice and a goat (as saribodi) to the Earth festival in December and to the Chornia Mandai , another festival, in April. Each village had their own jungle (forest) sarpanch or headman and also engaged watchmen to look after their forests. On the last day of the Chornia Mandai festival, a meeting would be conducted whereby all the jungle sarpanches met. They would discuss the state of the forests and protection efforts, and warn villages that engaged in excessive tree felling.

In 1937 this system of traditional forest protection was discovered by the Chief Forest Officer in charge of Bastar while he was on tour. Subsequently, a formal working plan was drawn out, according to which the forest was divided into 7 or 8 felling series. Each felling series was assigned to a set of villages, which were then responsible for its management and the payment of the watchers. The felling series were further divided into forty coupes, one of which was opened every year for tree felling, the produce being distributed among the relevant villages. Certain trees, such as mahua, tamarind, harra, mango and trees forming the sacred grove around the local deity’s shrine, were not to be cut.

In addition to the contributions at festival time, the sarpanches collected 1.5–2 kg of paddy per rupee of land revenue, which was stored in a central depot that was utilized towards paying the watchman, buying uniforms, axes, the construction and repair of the grain depot, etc. The watchmen


were paid 30–60 kg paddy per year and exempted from corvee (crop tax). Apart from meeting at festivals, the jungle sarpanches met weekly (called the council by the then British Administration) at the bazaar (market place) in Bajawand. The council had to be approved and confirmed by the administration, which also had powers to revise the council’s judgment if necessary. The council was vested with powers to impose a fine (upto Rs 25) for offences connected with illicit felling or excessive removal of timber, fuel, grass, and non-timber forest products (NTFP). The money went into ‘the furtherance of the Ulnar forest conservancy’.

Although this official systematization of the unofficial system seems to have been disbanded around 1952, following the nationalization of the nistari forests and their conversion into protected forests (PF),4 it has carried on informally in some form or the other.

In the neighbouring village of Junawani, the villagers have been protecting their forests since at least the 1930s, when they contributed approximately 10–15 kg of paddy per household to hire three watchmen. Additional money (e.g., for festivals) was raised by selling wood to neighbouring villages which lacked forests of their own. Villages which used the Junawani forests on a regular basis contributed grain for the watchmen, 100–150 kg of paddy and one pig at festival time (first sowing). Timber for house construction or for a funeral was given on application to the jungle sarpanch who would consult with the other villagers. Those who took wood without permission were fined, or would have their tools and bullock carts confiscated and auctioned at the first sowing. The position of the jungle sarpanch would rotate.

Opportunities and constraintsThe forest department has recently started forest protection

committee (FPCs) in some of the villages (including Bajawand and Ulnar) under the government-sponsored JFM programme. This has apparently led to some tension and distrust between the forest department’s nominee for jungle sarpanch and other residents. For example, earlier if someone wanted timber to build a house, the jungle sarpanch had the powers to assign trees on his own, but now meetings have to be called for everything because of the breakdown in trust. Villagers are charged a fee of Rs 2000–3000 depending on what they cut, but the handling of this money is not always transparent. Despite all these problems, it still seems to be a fairly effective system. For instance, in 1999, Ulnar fined Tarapur Rs 5000 and a goat for stealing 30 logs of sal from Ulnar’s portion of the forest.

In Junawani, villagers claimed that while the other villages continued to use the Junawani forest, they have now stopped contributing towards it. The villagers justify so by saying that “We don’t say anything since people have become educated and tell us that it is not our jungle but belongs to the government.” The turning point came in 1983-84, when villagers from Devda tried to steal timber at night, and beat up the Junawani villagers who tried to stop them. The dispute is still in the court. Junawani then stopped asking any of the other villages for contributions, and forest protection by the villagers became lax.

Around 1995–6, the forest department staff held a meeting at Junawani and villagers were told about the FD’s plans to create a 50 ha plantation which would be handed over to the village after five years. This plantation took over some of the encroachments on lands under the jurisdiction of the revenue department of the state government. This land was being used to grow pulses and oilseeds to supplement paddy. Since a trench was dug around it, further encroachment has been stopped. A watchman was appointed to look after the plantation and paid from the VFC (village forest committee) funds. However, instead of planting mahua, tamarind, cashew (Anacardium occidentale) and so on, as was promised to the villagers, the FD has planted mahua, bamboo sp., eucalyptus sp. and acacia (Acacia melanoxylon). Once the FD money began to come in, villagers stopped contributing towards the payment of the watchman. According to them, their sense of ownership dipped even further, and they felt that if the FD was giving money, it would ultimately cut the forests.

On the other hand, protection seems to have improved over the past decade, despite all disputes and the lessening of enthusiasm of Junawani villagers. The presence of the FD as a third party has helped when offenders challenged the authority of the guards.

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ConclusionTraditionally these villages have unanimously followed the rules of forest protection bound by

rituals and with due respect to the village body that decides those. However there is a reduction in enthusiasm along with internal village disputes over timber smuggling. Despite these constraints, this case study highlights the importance of community management as well as authoritative legislation for forest protection. This case indicates that despite the emphasis by NGOs on complete community management, it is important not to forget that the presence of the state as the ultimate authority has been internalized by villagers over a century or more. Therefore, if used imaginatively, situations like this can become a perfect example of how the government can enhance traditional conservation practices towards forest conservation rather than subverting them.

This case study has been compiled from Sundar, Nandini. 2000. Is Devolution Democratisation? New Delhi, Institute of Economic Growth.

For more information contact:Nandini SundarInstitute of Economic GrowthNew Delhi-110007Email: [email protected]

Endnotes1 See state chapter on Chhattisgarh in this volume for more details.

2 The information on the Ulnar nistari jungle is based on conversations with villagers in Talnar and Ulnar (1999), in Peethapur (1996).

3 Patches of forests assigned to village communities for fulfillment of their customary rights, under the Lland Revenue Code of the Central Provinces.

4 Category of forests declared under Indian Forests Act, 1927.

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CCA/Chhattisgarh/CS2/Sarguja/Chamanpur/Watershed conservation

Chamanpur village, Sarguja

BackgroundChamanpur village lies in the Pratappur taluka of Sarguja district in Bilaspur Division of

Chhattisgarh. The total area of the village is 220 hectares. Chamanpur is one of the 29 villages that has been taken up for the implementation of the Rajiv Gandhi Watershed Mission of the government. The Chhattisgarh BGVS (Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti) is an organization which aims at the use of modern science as a mechanism for the development of the disadvantaged. In 1994 the government started the Rajiv Gandhi Watershed Mission in five areas of Bilaspur Division, aiming at improvement of agricultural productivity of some 12,00,000 ha of land, creating employment and recharging ground water levels. The BGVS was entrusted with the implementation of the Mission in five areas, including Chamanpur village. The BGVS decided to use this program for social engineering by involving local people, particularly small farmers, landless labourers and women, as leading implementers. Following a series of bad experiences with government water harvesting programs, people in the area had become accustomed to growing drought-resistant crops like kodon and kutki. Some communities like the Kodaku tribals switched from cultivation to collection of forest produce and daily wage labour for survival. The BVGS thus felt it necessary to initiate dialogues with villagers about water use and management.1 For the organization, watershed management emerged as an entry point for equitable and sustainable village development.

Chamanpur village is situated on the highlands of the Korba-Korea region, an economically backward but resource-rich area in the earlier days. Most of the area is either cultivable wasteland with sandy soil or forest area. The common tree species in forest lands are sal, tendu, harra, behara and amla, and shifting cultivation is a common feature. According to local villagers, soil erosion and run-off of water from the soil surface has had a negative impact on soil fertility. The low productivity of lands has also led to deforestation and unsustainable use of forest resources in the region.

Tribes such as Korba, Gond and Kodaku form the majority of the population in the region. The inhabitants do not own any private land individually, but do own some of it communally. Most of them have stopped their earlier agricultural practices and are now working on other people’s lands as wage labourers. For this they migrate seasonally to the plains. Out-migration (along with food and livelihood security) was one of the biggest challenges at the beginning of the watershed program.

Towards community conservationIn 1994–5, community conservation of water in Chamanpur began, based on both indigenous as

well as scientific knowledge. The villagers had good knowledge of the land classification as well as the drainage patterns of the area. They also had a clear idea about the problems of the traditional water harvesting systems. The most effective method to ensure that the entire process of planning was participatory was the initiation of participatory resource mapping exercises. A kalajatha (cultural troupe) preceded the mapping exercises and initiated dialogue with the villagers. BGVS volunteers went from plot to plot and mapped the resources of the area in collaboration with the villagers. During this process they gained an understanding of drainage patterns, patterns of production and soil conservation. This was to form the basis of further planning.2

Chamanpur belongs to a watershed comprising a radius of 129 sq km. In the village 235 ha of agriculture land and 25 ha of forest land had been conserved by the year 2000.

According to the local land classification, the watershed region was divided into three land use categories: 1) bahra or lowlands, where rice could grow and which remained moist throughout the year, 2) chawar or the midlands, which had seasonal water shortages and where both rice and wheat could grow seasonally, and 3) darh or the highlands, where only trees and some vegetables could grow. The challenge was to ensure that the water remained inside the chawar throughout the year so that the irrigated area could increase and an attempt could be made to grow two crops a year. A system had therefore to be innovated to channel the excess overflow of water from the bahra into the chawar and darh lands, so that the moisture in the bahra lands was maintained throughout the year. This land classification has played a crucial part in the creation of the system of water harvesting.

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Chhattisgarh was earlier known for its traditional water harvesting ponds and check-dams, which were rebuilt by the people every year. The semi-permanent structures were traditionally at regular intervals on the ridge-line where the speed of the water could be broken and slowed down. The conservation of water took place through stop-dams and check-dams and the foothills of the ridge housed traditional ponds and tanks made by the villagers. However, according to the villagers these check dams would get destroyed because of the speed at which the water flowed down the ridge-lines. Under the watershed programme, this system was modified slightly by creating permanent harvesting structures: ponds, check-dams and stop-dams, based on the drainage maps prepared along with the villagers.

In this context, the first year saw the construction of boulder checks on the ridge. The traditional structures were improved slightly to make them more durable in two ways. First, the boulder checks were made of stone and mud instead of just mud; second, they were now made on the intersection of two drainage points in addition to the higher slopes, in order that enough moisture would get accumulated in the soil. Contour trenches were also dug to collect excess water and stop soil erosion. Thereafter the work moved to the transition zone or the zone between the highland and the bahra land. There already existed two old ponds in this zone. These were repaired and stop-dams and earthen dams were built to recharge the groundwater level. These structures were spread over 32–35 hectares and were linked with the natural nala that was used by the villagers to finally drain the excess water from the rice field. This work was completed by the second year and the work on the agricultural fields started by the middle of this period. Transition bunds and checks linked the existing ponds to each other. New structures were also made to link the lowlands with the midlands and highlands. This meant that the excess water could be drained into the chawar and the darh lands. The points of transition between the lowlands and midlands were identified along with village elders, based on their years of experience.3

Institutionally, each of the water harvesting structure has a user group. The group consists of the person on whose land the water harvesting structure stands. It also comprises all those landed and landless people who use the water from a particular water harvesting structure. Each user group is represented in the Watershed Committee of the village and the secretaries of the committee are part of a federation that represents the entire watershed at the district level.

Since most of the area was earlier forested and inhabited by the Kodaku, Korba and Gond tribals, the committees also have a majority tribal representation. It was decided when the programme began that the villagers would contribute 10 per cent of the labour as a local contribution into the watershed works.4

The members of the committee are elected by all households of the village through the user groups that represent all households. Each user group elects their own representatives in the committee. This committee represents the entire village in the district-level watershed committee meetings. It determines how much water is to be allocated to each household and solves inter- and intra-village disputes.

The members of the watershed committees, all villagers and the BGVS activists initially prepared a water use map of the entire village. Accordingly they decided how much water each family would be allocated for their nistari (customary) and agricultural use. If some people are found to be using excess water or disturbing other people’s water supply, they are penalised by the watershed committee and the matter may even be brought before the gram panchayat.

Impacts of community effortThere were dramatic changes in Chamanpur as a result of water conservation, where only 35 acres

of irrigated land in the pre-Mission era increased to 40 acres in the first year of the watershed, 100 acres by the third year and 235 acres in the fourth year (the end of 2000). The highest increase in productivity was for wheat grown on chawar lands, increasing from 120 to 1500 quintals in four years. It was now possible to grow paddy for 4–5 months longer than earlier. Rates of migration were reduced drastically as a high number of person days of employment were generated by BGVS activities in four years.5

These developments would not have been possible without successful recharging of groundwater levels and sustainable water conservation practices. In the Chamanpur watershed, the natural nala of the village has been regenerated and the village was not much affected by the drought of 2001.The watershed has resulted in the re-invention of some traditions. Kodaku farmers have begun to practice collective farming. They work on each other’s land and also lend money and grain to each


other during lean periods. Together, they also conserve resources and decide on the ways in which agricultural inputs would be used. For example they decide how much forest should be closed for regeneration, how much water should be released in the fields, etc.

Outside Chamanpur village, 25 hectares of sal forest have been regenerated. Locally useful and traditional species like tendu, amla, behara and harra have also been planted as a part of the watershed mission.

Constraints and opportunities faced by the initiativeAmong the main problems faced while implementing the programme were the timely transfers

of funds, as is the case with all government programmes. In the Chamanpur watershed more than Rs 14 lakhs that were to be transferred as the last instalment were long overdue at the end of the project period. Despite this limitation, work progressed because the community was mobilised and oriented towards the project. This is in sharp contrast to government-run watershed programs where work stops when funds do.

Conflicts arose between watershed committees and gram panchayats, especially where the sarpanch represented a dominant caste and Dalit and tribal people were left out of decision-making processes. Chamanpur initially faced this situation, but once the majority of people started supporting the project, the panchayats themselves became sensitized and more supportive of the programme.6

The downside of the story is the fact that the cropping pattern has undergone a change since the increase in availability of water. High-yielding varieties of crop are being promoted because of the agricultural policy of the government that offers higher rates for hybrid varieties as compared to indigenous varieties. The biggest challenge for the villagers lies in the use of water conservation for regeneration of local wild species and crops. Instead of getting swayed by high-yielding varieties, BGVS needs to realise this and facilitate the preservation and regeneration of indigenous varieties of rice as well as minor millets like kodon, kutki and other millets.

ConclusionThis case study reflects on the effective combination of the scientific method and the traditional

method of water conservation. Despite its constraints, the methods have been applied to a certain extent for the benefit of the tribal people. The key attribute that has led to effective project implementation is the high spirit and focus of the tribal people, coupled with government legislation towards the watershed programme. The consequence of the programme has been the protection of the forests on the watershed.

This case study has been contributed by Archana Prasad, who is a Reader at the Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

For more details contact:Archana PrasadTRSA 58, NPL colony, New Rajendra Nagar, New Delhi-110 060Ph: 011-3017378 (0) 011-5773212 (R)[email protected]

Endnotes1 Interview with Tribhuvan Singh, President Gyan Vigyan Samiti, Sarguja District, 28 December 2000.

2 BGVS, A Handbook for Land Literacy, Participatory Resource Mapping for Self Reliant Panchayats (New Delhi, BGVS, 1994), pp. 9-12.

3 (As above)

4 Description of the watershed is based on field work in Chamanpur village, Pratappur block, Sarguja district, conducted on 28–29 December 2000.

5 Village meeting in Jagdalli (26 December 2000) and interview with Tribhuvan Singh (28 December 2000).

6 BGVS, Dagar. A newsletter of the Pratappur Milli Watershed, May 2000. (Ambikapur: BGVS), p. 3.

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CCA/Chhattisgarh/CS3/Sarguja/Ganeshpura/Watershed development

Ganeshpura village, Sarguja

BackgroundGaneshpura village lies in the Ambikapur taluka of Sarguja district in the Bilaspur Division of

Chhattisgarh. The conservation of 220 ha of sal forests by the women of Ganeshpura is an offshoot of the effort of women of Karundamuda village1 in the same taluka.

Towards community conservationIn 1995, an NGO called Sangta came in contact with Ganeshpura. Sangta had also recently got

involved with Karundamuda village, where women facing severe fuelwood shortage had started protecting and regenerating about 100 ha of reserved forest (RF). Realising that the women in Ganeshpura were facing similar problems as in Karundamuda, Sangta advised Ganeshpura women to approach Karundamuda women for advice and support towards forest protection. The women of Karundamuda responded positively and facilitated the process of conservation and forest protection in the village.

Ganeshpura is also now under JFM like Karundamuda and facing similar kinds of constraints.


For more information contact:Archana PrasadTRSA 58, NPL colony, New Rajendra Nagar, New Delhi-110 060Ph: 011-3017378 (0) 011-5773212 (R) [email protected]

Endnotes1 See Chhattisgarh case study on Karundamuda.

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CCA/Chhattisgarh/CS4/Sarguja/Karundamuda/Forest protection

Karundamuda village, Sarguja

Background Karundamuda village is located about 25 km outside Ambikapur, in Ambikapur taluka of Sarguja

District. The total area under community conservation is 100 ha of sal forest. The village has 100 households.

One of the villagers of Karundamuda, Rajmanbai, recalls that the village had a dense reserved forest (RF) near the roads till the early 1980s. Thereafter the rate of the degradation of the forests began to increase at an alarming rate. She recalls that contractors would come to the village, cut trees and take them to the timber depot in Badrinarai located at a distance of 10 km from the village. In addition to this, resettled Bengali refugees from East Bengal would frequent the village at night to steal wood and cut trees. Due to indiscriminate logging and felling, 100 hectares of sal forests were destroyed, leading to a shortage of fuelwood for the villagers. The women of the village now needed to procure fuelwood for their personal consumption from the forest depot. Along with this, the villagers were facing a threat of increasing theft and crime from those who were involved in cutting timber. In this context the women of Karundamuda decided to protect their forests through the formation of the VFPC (village forest protection committee) in 1990–1. This committee effectively managed to regenerate the forests and was subsequently included in the government-sponsored JFM (Joint Forest Management) scheme in 1994.1

Towards community conservationThe women who initiated the conservation efforts of the sal tract understood that regeneration

required the closure of forests to all felling activities. In order to achieve this they consulted with the village elders and laid down rules by which the forest tract would be effectively protected.

The women formed a VFPC with the objective of regulation, management and administration of their forest. The members of this committee consist of a woman from every family, one of whom is elected as a secretary. The committee also carries out certain functions as a savings group. Rajmanbai took the initiative of committee formation into her own hands and went to the panchayats and the village elders. Having thought over the matter, the villagers, though skeptical initially, decided to support the venture on an experimental basis. Thereafter Rajmanbai called a meeting of 40 women in the village and asked them to choose the secretary of the committee. Rajmanbai was elected as the first secretary.

The first step that the women took was protection of the forests against all kinds of illegal extraction. The women patrolled the forest in groups to prevent any timber theft or tree cutting during the day. At night they commissioned the men and the youth of the village to guard the forest. Apart from this they also sat with the representatives of each family on the first Saturday of every month and determined the nistari (customary) rights of each family. After the first germination of the sal seeds, the women decided to leave the seeds in the forests instead of collecting them for sale. Sale of sal seeds is otherwise a major source of income for the women. The villagers were banned from cutting any trees or their branches in the first year. In order to make the villagers conscious of their duties towards the forest, the women followed a custom of tying a rakhi (a thread indicating that they have vowed to protect the tree) to the trees.

Along with protection and natural regeneration, the villagers also decided to plant traditional species like tendu (Diospyros melanoxylon), amla (Embelica officinalis), mahua (Madhuca indica), sanjha (Terminalia alata), etc. around their village. The forest, which was along the main road and within the traditional boundary of the village, was also protected and allowed to regenerate.2

Simultaneously grazing was also regulated with only two cattle per household allowed to graze in the forest during the daytime.3 Surplus grass from the forest was cut and sold to those who owned more than two cattle.

The VFPC meetings are held on a weekly basis in order to review the protection measures. During the meeting the punishments for offences are finalized, depending on the nature and volume of the offence. The VFPC brings the cases to the gram sabha, where the issue is discussed and

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punishments are issued. For example if someone is caught cutting green wood for fuel they would have to pay a fine of Rs 100, which is redirected to the village development fund that is operated by this committee.

Impacts of community conservationWithin two years the system of regulated extraction had resulted in a more dense forest. This led

to an increase in the income from non-timber forest produce. Rajmanbai notes that this was not the case earlier, when only the contractors and the rich had access to timber and hence income from the forests. Apart from putting in labour in afforestation programs, the women also sell forest produce. They sell amla, fuelwood and tendu leaves in the local market that is 6 km away from the village.

The women’s group also decided to create some community assets from the income generated in the village fund. They, therefore, used the funds to install a tubewell for the use of villagers two years after forest protection had started. Simultaneously women also started realizing some income for their labour. For example, for pruning the trees the women get Rs 30 per day, and for sowing and watering they get another Rs 30 per day. This payment is made by the VSS that collects the funds from the village and also operates the village development fund.

The success of Karundamuda prompted the villagers of the neighbouring village of Ganeshpura to venture into protection of 200 ha of forest area.

Opportunities and constraintsThe interface of the forest protection committee with the forest department (FD) poses a major

constraint in the empowerment of VFPC. Whereas the protection was started spontaneously, the interference of the FD has reduced the power of the committee to intervene on the basis of its own experience. In 1994 the VFPC received administrative recognition from the FD under JFM. In the process, the committee suffered one setback: the forest guard replaced Rajmanbai as the secretary of the committee. Further the decisions of the VSS were now influenced by the rules and regulations of the JFM. This meant that the women VSS members were no longer in control of funds and could not make their own rules as freely as before.

In 1995 this village came into contact with an NGO called Sangata that brought about many changes in this area. The first change was that the VFPC of Karundamuda received an award from the FD for being the best of its kind in the district. The second was that the experience of Karundamuda was replicated in Ganeshpura, a nearby village in 1997. After being persuaded by Sangata to correspond with the women of Karundamuda, the women of Ganeshpura approached Karundamuda. Karundamuda women motivated and organized Ganeshpura villagers by working with them on the 220 ha afforestation programme. Finally, with the intervention of Sangata, more systematic efforts began on finding sustainable and long-term livelihood options. The first measure was the formation of SHGs (self-help groups). Through the working of these groups the women were taught how to operate bank accounts as well as manage their own money. Today there are 4 SHGs in these two villages. They are regularly provided training in running nurseries and bee-keeping and even have a project for the propagation of mulberry silkworms from the Madhya Pradesh Sericulture Project (MPSP). Most of these projects are given to the self-help groups under government schemes. Sangata creates the interface between the government and these groups and also arranges their training. Thus their link with the outside world has provided them with some livelihood support.

However, due to the control being taken over by the FD from Karundamuda forest committee and the forest guard becoming the secretary, their own leadership has been curbed and their decision-making powers interfered with. This is mainly because this committee is now subject to the rules of JFM programme that has given the control over surplus, technology and produce to the state FD.4

ConclusionThis case study exhibits a very successful initiative of the people towards forest protection that

is coupled with effective regulations for the same. However, with its inclusion under the JFM there seems to be a dilution in the power of the VFPC and its ability to resolve issues from the people’s perspective. The biggest challenge therefore lies in being able to maintain Ganeshpura


and Karundamuda as community-conserved and managed forests, with effective support from outside agencies as and when needed, rather than as an imposition of an alien system.


For more details contact:Archana PrasadTRSA 58, NPL colony, New Rajendra Nagar, New Delhi-110 060Ph: 011-3017378 (0) 011-5773212 (R) [email protected]

Endnotes1 The material for this section is based on a meeting with the Karundamuda Women’s Protection Committee in Ganeshpura, Sarguja district, on 29 December 2000.2 Meeting with Bhupen Singh, the director-cum-secretary of Sangata in Ganeshpura, on 29 December 2000.3 Annual Report of Sangata, 1999-2000.4 Joint Forest Management Update, 1998 Delhi, (Society for Promotion of Wasteland Development, 1998).

Documents

Chhattisgarh - Kalpavrikshkalpavriksh.org/images/CCA/Directory/M-7 Chattisgarh.pdf175 state chapter - chhattisgarh Conservation, local practices, and innovation: Natural resource management