True green champions

These villagers are our real earth heroes. You may not hear of them, or see them on television channels receiving accolades for what they have done. But, listening to their stories of bringing a forest back to life was a truly humbling experience and for me a personal reality check on how marginalised rural and indigenous people in our country, are able to do the most extra-ordinary things. We were in village Mundhiari, in the eastern part of Gujarat in Vadodara district, about an hour’s drive from Vadodara.

It was in 1990 when Gandhian Harivallabhai Parikh appealed to the villagers in this area to protect their forests. It was no easy task for the 18 villages who decided to take this on. According to the villagers, the forests were destroyed earlier by the State government’s policy of clear-felling forests and making way for plantations. When the community in village Mundhiari decided to take on forest protection to regenerate the forests, they formed a committee, the Mundhiari Sahayogi Van Vikas Mandli.

The reactions from the forest department were initially unsupportive, even hostile. The department, they alleged, in fact tried to break the co-operation of the villages, saying that their efforts of protecting the forests would not get them any benefits. But the community persisted.

Two decades later, things are very different. Regular patrolling of the area by four teams of 15 villagers each, has allowed large patches of forests to regenerate. Today, Mundhiari protects 432 hectares, and neighbouring Haathipagla and Narvaniya about 482 hectares and 700 hectares respectively.

The villagers report that there is now more water in their wells and that their streams flow for longer periods of time. They are able to collect not only fuelwood from the forests, but also medicinal herbs, lac, mahua flowers and seeds, and fruit. The regeneration of the forests coupled with the fact that there has been significantly reduced poaching in the area for the last 20 years has meant that the forests now support increasing populations of leopard, porcupine, hare, langur, wild pig, bear, nilgai, and some deer species. One of the elderly men insisted that he had seen a tiger in the area very recently. He emphatically stated that he had not mistaken a leopard for a tiger, and had seen the striped markings on the animal’s body. If this be true, then it would create a buzz around wildlife circles, as the 2001 tiger census showed no tigers in Gujarat. 

Not an easy process

We walked through a small patch of forest with some of the villagers who were active in the patrolling of the forests. From high vantage points, we could get a 360 degree view of thick forest canopy. The protection of these areas, however, was no easy task. The villagers stated how they often dealt with threats from wood thieves and forest fires.

They pointed to a strip of forest in one of the hill ranges that caught fire last year from the base to the top. Forty five men helped to put it by out carrying pots of water from their village, almost half a kilometre away.

They recounted instances when they came across people both from within their villages as well as from outside who had felled trees.

Offences were dealt with in various ways, a system of fines (Rs 80 to 100 for green felling) after being pardoned with a warning the first time, selling confiscated firewood and putting the money in the community fund, and even handing over the logs to the Forest Department.

In 2006, the area came under Joint Forest Management (JFM) after the government received funds for this from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC).
Initially, the Forest Department tried recruiting villagers it had itself identified, to be members of trusts to be created under the JFM scheme, but the villagers insisted that the members would be the same as the committee already in existence. This has ensured that there is no duality in roles.

However, the residents did voice some grievances like not being consulted when budgets are worked out for the year or when decisions are taken about what “works” will be undertaken in the forests like building check dams. More seriously, villagers alleged that officials had made them sign blank cheques, presumably to be able to access money coming in the Trust’s name.

The fact that the Secretary to the Trust is a forester, this should have been easy to manage.

Though the Forest Department has given Mundhiari a certificate in honour of their outstanding work, it provides the community with no funds for protection, and is reported to be very lax in dealing with offenders when reported by the villagers. In one case recounted to us, the villagers of Haathipagla found six-seven teak logs being stolen, and reported this to the Department; they were promised 50 per cent of the sale proceeds, which has still not been given.

Claiming rights under FRA

Now the villagers have another chance to assert their rights and responsibilities: the Forest Rights Act (FRA). Under this they can claim not only rights to use the forest for various products, but also to manage and protect it. After two decades of reviving and protecting a forest, it would seem natural to expect that these villagers be given rights under the FRA.

However, their experiences with claiming rights have not been very encouraging. In Haathipagla, the village that protects almost 500 hectares of forest, all claims were rejected without a single site visit. The villagers mentioned that they had made three formal requests for a site visit, but it has not happened till date. In Mundhiari village, out of 74 claims that were made, six were granted including a community forest right.

Many individual claims were rejected on the basis that it was not forest land. The villagers said that they quoted the new survey numbers for their land and the officials probably went by the old ones!

It is to be seen if this legislation, the Forest Rights Act, will actually give these villagers legal rights to these forests which they have protected and guarded for years.