21st March 2002
The greening of Haladpada-Shisne
People’s initiatives in forest management are best conceptualised by the people themselves, because their lives depend on it.
by Pradip Prabhu
Third World Network Features
In a little over a decade, two tribal communities of Haladpada and Shisne have come full circle. In 1978, these hamlets decided that they had had enough and decided to challenge the high-handedness of the foresters in their area. This confrontation, which earned several of them a severe thrashing in jail, had an unexpected outcome—the Range Forest Officer sought an abrupt transfer, his subordinates vacated their quarters and withdrew. The forest was free for them. It however took a little more than a decade after that for the elders from both the groups, alarmed by the degradation of the forest, to decide to formally restore it. They took on the challenge to preserve the forest which was bordered by their hamlets.
Both Haladpada and Shisne lie alongside the Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway and have neighbours who make a living from illegal forest felling. They are both centres of resistance to oppression. On an invitation from elders of the two groups, the communities that depended on the forest tract met and debated the future of their survival resource. This was in 1990. The discussions were not easy. Even though the rapid degradation of the forest had become a matter of concern, the villagers were not willing to introduce a ban. The villagers blamed clear felling of the forest by the forest department, which had wiped out all tree varieties that did not coppice. However, the trees that did coppice were cut to the bone every year for firewood. Returns from the forest were declining with every passing year and people were beginning to dig the rootstock. Loss of rootstock would result in loss of soil cover and the area would never recover. The initial meeting ended with each community passing the blame on to the other. The only positive outcome was that the communities decided to meet again and speak with other groups who accessed the same forest.
Four months and several meetings, most of them inconclusive, seemed a long time. But perseverance paid off and by the beginning of June that year, six communities—Patilpada, Khivarpada, Bandhanpada and Radhvanpada of Haladpada, Patilpada of Shisne, Jadhavpada of Ambholi, sufficiently disturbed by the situation, worried for the future and vaguely interested in preservation, came together. They were unsure at first about how they would go about this. A simple decision of not loping any tree in the monsoon was taken. It was easier said than done. For the Patilpadas of both villages, other stretches of forest where they could collect fallen timber were not very far. The other hamlets of Haladpada could access some forest area at a considerable distance, but it was within the boundaries of their village from where they could collect firewood without restriction. The situation of Ambholi was extremely problematic since two large orchards hedged them and village lands. Getting firewood meant travelling long distances into the forest area of other villages, which is never the best option. Khivarpada and Bandhanpada were in the centre of a storm that the decision had created because residents of other villages were accessing the areas of the forest closest to their hamlets. So these two hamlets had to organise patrols to drive out “outsiders” who tried to resist this with violence and abuse. However, they persisted. Six months later, the decision to abstain from loping bore fruit. Left to herself, nature let loose her creative energies. The area was green in a manner people had not seen in a decade. Half the battle was won.
The discussions that had taken nearly a year resulted in the development of a community pact: to allow nature the space and time to renew itself. The pact had four practical elements: a) all human and cattle interference with the forest would stop; b) no human would enter the forest with a sickle or an axe; c) the forest would be open for four to six weeks in the year decided by the community to allow everybody equal opportunity to collect leaf litter and twigs for their fields and home; d) any person refusing to abide by the pact would have to pay a penalty, fixed by the community. The enforcement of the pact took another three months of meetings and discussions. The meetings were slowly allowing the concept of the pact to sink in and take concrete shape in the minds of the people. By the time the response of the elders to the challenge of “jungle bachao” finally took shape a full year had gone by.
In retrospect, the process had resulted in a maturation of consciousness and deliberation. It resulted in a commitment to preserving the natural environment, but not through social fencing or people’s policing, but in collective self-restraint. A new committee met periodically to discuss and review the situation, but all decisions were taken only when all communities were present. Except for the fourth element of the pact, which the community adjudicated on twice and found virtually impossible to implement the second time, all the other elements of the pacts were observed. They continue to be observed until today.
The process in Haladpada and Shisne was very different from the sixty-six communities who had also responded to the challenge along with them. While a few like Haladpada-Shisne are still active, many initiatives lie dormant, others have lapsed into inaction and a few have lost their energy. Perhaps the best lesson that can be learnt from Haladpada, Shisne and Ambholi is the organic-ity of the process and the maturity that it created. This was tested through the immature and illogical introduction of joint forest management (JFM) by the forest department. After nine years of preservation, the forest of the people had surpassed all expectations. Nature had responded with its bounty, the trees were back and so were the birds and wild animals. In an area where political slogans have made encroachment on forestlands a virtue and timber smuggling a symbol of power, it is not surprising that there have been no successful JFM initiatives in Dahanu taluka. The Haladpada-Shisne initiative in the area of preservation remained an eyesore for the forest department, which had been singularly ineffective in initiating JFM.
In 1999, at the behest of some of the village leaders who had no association with the efforts of the community and motivated by political expediency, the forest department initiated a JFM programme with much fanfare. Sadly, but not unexpectedly, the guidelines were laid down by the government with no participation of the communities actually involved in the preservation. A committee was formed of political bigwigs who had maintained a studied distance from the community initiative, primarily because they had no space in the democratic processes it subscribed to. The imposition of JFM was met with opposition, the forest personnel returned to the forests they had withdrawn from for more than a decade. Money was given to the committee to build community halls in hamlets that had never participated in forest preservation. Money was also given for a community feast enjoyed by those who had never spent a minute to preserve nature. The voluntary labour contributed by over a hundred families in the earlier period of preservation and conservation allowed the forest to regenerate. This, in turn, became a showpiece for the forest department to initiate a ‘joint forest management progamme’, the employment generated from which was captured by the cronies of the committee members.
The verdant hills had provided an opportunity to the forest department to restore their belief in their rightful role as protectors of the environment. It was also an attempt to take charge and subvert the belief that common property resources belonged to the community. JFM was the weapon of the new politicians to disempower the community and re-assert the power of the department and the local elite. JFM distributed money to these elite to celebrate their new-found environmental consciousness with big dinners and new buildings, provided income for their hirelings through tree plantation, replaced voluntary self-restraint with ‘watchmen’, substituted self-motivation with paid employment, it displaced re-generation with plantations, it subverted convergent community action with state-sponsored activity, it replaced voluntarism with income generation. It left the communities involved in the protection both alienated and angry.
It was good that the communities were angry because they boycotted the elite, confronted the forest department and strengthened their resolve to assert their rights to control the preservation of a community’s survival resource. The forests, cared for and nurtured by the communities, still survive and with them the hopes of the communities to restore sanity into their human and natural environment. The initiative of the people was co-opted by the bureaucracy but only on paper. JFM pushed some community members to threaten destruction of the tree cover that they had so caringly encouraged. Better wisdom prevailed, motivated no doubt by the commitment of the communities to preservation of their environment. This itself is remarkable.
The Haladpada, Shisne and Ambholi initiative was a response to the campaign of the Kashtakari Sanghatna called “Jungle Bachao Adivasi Bachao Abhiyan.” The logic of the campaign was to link protection of nature with the preservation of tribal culture. While making a departure from the romanticised notion of tribal symbiosis with nature, the Sanghatna believed that restoring the inherent enviro-sensitive strengths of Warli tradition would be a strong force to revive traditions of protection. The Warlis have also created sophisticated philosophical fables to locate the various forces of nature and the animals in the forest as central to the well-being of human beings. After a decade, the hill slopes that were under community control were un-recognisable. The latent re-generative power of nature needed human co-operation or better still non-interference to manifest itself. The rootstock that was still available burst into new life, and in less than half a decade the growth was so dense that movement in the forested hills was impossible during the rainy season.—Third World Network Features.
-ends-
About the author: Prabhu is an advocate and activist working with tribal communities, with the Kashtakari Sanghatna. The Sanghatna is a non-funded people’s organisation, working for the past 24 years for food & livelihood security and a life with dignity for tribal communities in Thane district. He can be contacted at
pradip_prabhu@yahoo.com This article first appeared in Humanscape December 2001.
When reproducing this feature, please credit Third World Network Features and (if applicable) the cooperating magazine or agency involved in the article, and give the byline. Please send us cuttings.
*****
Third World Network Features is a unique, reliable, independent features service, monitoring the world through Third World Eyes, rather than blindly reproducing the self-serving assertions of the Western media. The feature service is available by email. We have special low rates for medium and small newspapers.
Our phone numbers: 91-832-263305; 256479
Fax: 91-832-263305
Email:
oib@goatelecom.com Postal address:
Third World Network Features
Above Mapusa Clinic
Mapusa 403 507
Goa
India
URL::