The forest service as a vestige of the colonial regime
Scanning any writing on Indian forestry from the 1980s
onward, will throw up repeated criticisms of the forest departments and
especially of the Indian Forest Service. A few examples will suffice to
illustrate the general tone and tenor of these declarations of non-confidence.
The works of Gadgil and Guha (e.g. 1992; 2000), of course, are the
quintessential statements of the position that the forest departments are a
creation, and thus a vestige, of the overbearing and exploitative imperialistic
regime in the erstwhile colonies like India . The labels so proudly
applied to themselves by the members of the forest service, such as
‘scientific’, ‘modern’, ‘organized’, and so on, are in the eyes of these social
historians and environmentalists, so many pejoratives. Other prominent writers
in the same vein include Sharachchhandra Lele, who started off as a straight
physical-organic researcher but metamorphosed into yet another social
environmentalist (see the recent volume Democratizing
Forest Governance in India, Lele and Menon, eds., 2014). There are numerous
other authors whose names will be familiar to the reader, and need not be
listed out here. Suffice it to say that thanks to this sustained campaign, the
top-down ‘colonial’ strategy of forest conservation has been judged a failure,
and the alternate bottom-up approach has been given constitutional status
through the Recognition of Forest Rights Act (ROFR) 2006 which passes the power
to legalize individual occupation and collective rights in notified forest to
the general body of the village, the gram
sabha.
A pdf of the entire article is available at https://www.academia.edu/24965216/Modernizing_the_Indian_Forest_Service_from_command_to_collaboration
This line of thinking is not restricted to a group of
Indian environmentalists alone, as the general approach in world bodies like
the UN and FAO has also veered round to the ‘empowerment’ paradigm in place of
the old ‘command and control’ regime. Just to give one example: the Rio conference
of 1992 (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, UNCED, Rio
de Janeiro, 3-14 June 1992) brought out the “non-legally binding authoritative
statement of principles for a global consensus on the management, conservation
and sustainable development of all types of forest” or Annexure III (available
at http://www.un.org/documents/ga/conf151/aconf15126-3annex3.htm).
These “Forest Principles” emphasize the need to examine forestry issues in a
“holistic and balanced manner … taking into consideration the multiple
functions and uses of forests, including traditional uses, and the likely
economic and social stress when these uses are constrained or restricted…”
(Preamble (c)). Forests should be “sustainably managed to meet the social,
economic, ecological, cultural and spiritual needs of present and future
generations…” (Clause 1b). “Governments should promote and provide
opportunities for the participation of interested parties, including local
communities and indigenous people, industries, labour, non-governmental
organizations and individuals, forest dwellers and women, in the development,
implementation and planning of forest policies” (Clause 1d).
“National forest policies should recognize and duly
support the identity, culture and the rights of indigenous people, their
communities and other communities and forest dwellers. Appropriate conditions should be promoted for
these groups to enable them to have an economic stake in forest use, perform
economic activities, and achieve and maintain cultural identity and social
organization, as well as adequate levels of livelihood and well-being, through,
inter alia, those land tenure arrangements which serve as incentives for the
sustainable management of forests” (Clause 5a).
“The full participation of women in all aspects of the
management, conservation and sustainable development of forests should be
actively promoted” (Clause 5b).
And so on. These forest principles are carried forward by
inter-governmental forums, such as the UN Forum on Forests (UNFF), that “works
closely with representatives of major group networks and organizations who
function as focal points to facilitate their participation in the
multi-stakeholder dialogues of the UNFF….that have specialized interest and
expertise in forest related issues—such as associations of forest-products
related businesses, organizations of young people who are students of forest
management, or trade unions from the forest products related sectors” (UNFF
webpage, http://www.unngls.org/index.php/engage-with-the-un/un-civil-society-contact-points/137-united-nations-forum-on-forests-unff).
Participants
at the 11th session
of the UNFF (5 to 15 May 2015) were being urged to “strengthen
the global political commitment to sustainably manage one of the planet's most
cherished resources…” According to the report on the World Agroforestry
website (http://worldagroforestry.org/newsroom/media_coverage/un-forum-forests-calls-bold-action-and-international-cooperation),
Jan Eliasson, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, said as he opened
the session that "(T)he sustainable management of forests - in partnership
with those who live in the forest regions - will be critical for meeting our
ambition to eradicate poverty," and “stressed the need for the forest
sector to be integrated in the sustainable development agenda at local,
national, regional and international levels, with the broad participation of
indigenous and local communities, and civil society groups, which possessed
forest-related knowledge. In particular, he highlighted how women’s role in
forests must be recognized and their participation in decision-making ensured”
(ibid.).
It is, therefore, abundantly clear that the concept of
sustainable forestry has moved far beyond the narrow sustained yield (of
timber) of the mid-nineteenth century. A paper by Phil Janik (undated, but
post-2012), Chief Operating Officer, USDA-Forest Service, has a useful
chronology of these international declarations, and the US Forest Service
response, although what is intriguing and interesting in this document is a
“Preface” that states that Agenda 21 principles aim at the “redistribution of
wealth” (to India and China), which is “contrary to the interests of the
American people” and that its “consequences will be devastating to our national
sovereignty, security, prosperity, and self-reliance”.
In many ways, the international opinion is reflected in the
changes that have occurred in India ’s
own declared national forest policy (see Sarin, 2014, for the social environmentalist account of these). Most often, the forest
service is made an independent villain of the scene, as it is assumed that it
has actively worked to stifle dissent and consolidate its hold on its
‘territory’ (this a sizeable 20% of the land area).
Given this situation, the forest services may need to respond in some positive, constructionist, and synergistic fashion rather than adopting either an affronted silence, or reacting aggressively in a knee-jerk manner. Being a government service, there are definite limits on the types of response that the serving members themselves can adopt; since they are explicitly barred from using the press and media to “vindicate” their actions, they usually adopt a stoic silence to the barbs (Lele misinterprets this as the service having “closed ranks” against democratization and the FRA, and having “abandoned any constructive engagement with these questions”, see Lele & Menon, 2014, p.403).
Given this situation, the forest services may need to respond in some positive, constructionist, and synergistic fashion rather than adopting either an affronted silence, or reacting aggressively in a knee-jerk manner. Being a government service, there are definite limits on the types of response that the serving members themselves can adopt; since they are explicitly barred from using the press and media to “vindicate” their actions, they usually adopt a stoic silence to the barbs (Lele misinterprets this as the service having “closed ranks” against democratization and the FRA, and having “abandoned any constructive engagement with these questions”, see Lele & Menon, 2014, p.403).
Increasing scientific content and specialization in the forest service
A second demand made on the forest service is that it
increase the scientific content of its activities. After all, the initial
design of the superior forest services (set up in the British colonial era) was
that the candidates should be graduates in science subjects. One form this
expectation could take is that more scientific research goes into the silviculture and management decisions
on the ground. Related to improving the scientific basis of forest operations
is the recommendation that there be more specialization
in the forest service. This has been
urged, for example, in the last National Forest Commission report (Government
of India, 2006, p.255), where it was recommended that separate cadres be formed
for each of the following subject streams: forest management, social forestry,
wildlife, and research.
A third, related but fairly distinct, expectation is that members
of the forest service be more productive
in terms of peer-reviewed publications.
A prominent social environmentalist (I think Lele, but have been unable to
trace the reference) commiserates with the forester who is able, at best, to
produce some “semi-academic” writing. A much stronger attack is made by
Ramachandra Guha (2012: p.5), where he upbraids the service for having failed
to produce a single forester who “has made any kind of name or impact in the
international community of scientists” in the hundred and more years of
forestry research under state auspices. Other successful academics also
frequently hold this up as a vindication of their loss of faith in the service:
one prominent climate change specialist does not neglect to point out how he,
as a lone researcher, has produced 300 papers on forests and climate change,
whereas 300 so-called scientists in the
forest research institutes of the country have failed to produce even one such
paper.
Source of forest service personnel
Another issue (the fourth so far) is the question of how
foresters are recruited, and trained. Many years ago, this author had attended
an FAO workshop at Santiago de Chile on forest education; the burden of that
was that all over the world, forest services drew their personnel from amongst
forestry degree holders, whereas India seemed to be the odd man out by sticking
to the old colonial practice of allowing
graduates of all sorts of disciplines (but only from the science stream) to
compete in the recruitment examinations. This is true even today, and is
applicable as well to the subordinate levels like the Range Forest Officers (RFOs)
and even Foresters. Whichever way it is looked at, the service is not ready to
restrict candidates to the forestry degree holders, and in fact there was a
certain unease at the disproportionate number of forestry graduates who were
getting into the IFS in the past few years (there were insinuations that the
optional forestry papers were being
marked too liberally). A couple of years back, there was a consultation by the
central minister for environment and forests about the proposal of opening out
the IFS recruitment to non-science people as well; as this author remembers it,
the service members were almost unanimous that it should not be done. The one
small concession made was to recommend the post-graduate diploma of the Indian
Institute of Forest Management (IIFM), Bhopal
as a valid qualification for entering the competitive process. Another (and,
for the forest service, a revolutionary) change was to put the IFS candidates
through the same ‘preliminary’ test as the rest of the All-India Services and
the Central Services, rather than have a completely independent series of
examinations. This may have removed some of the unintended advantage to forestry graduates: if they were not as good as
the rest, they would be screened out at the initial prelims. However, there is
a residual concern that the general run of candidates passing through the
prelims might not have forestry as a high priority, and may drop out later,
leaving empty slots in each year’s cohorts. One would have to look at the
actual numbers to judge this.
On the other hand, if the recruitment process is resulting
in too many physical science and technology graduates entering, this may be a
reason why critics like Valmik Thapar (Thapar, 2015) and others find a lack of
commitment to conservation and a general lack of liveliness in the forest
services (in comparison to, presumably, biology candidates). However, there is
no guarantee that a biology graduate would necessarily be passionate about natural
history and nature conservation, as they may have been conditioned by their
training to favour the commercial or technological aspects of biological
organisms (much as foresters tend to be partial to the business of forestry).
One possible explanation for the lack of bonhomie between
civil society and government officials (‘babu-dom’) is that apart from the stodginess and built-in
inhibitions to open communication that characterize bureaucracies everywhere, there
may also be a cultural factor operating here. The recruits to the services
come from diverse regions and strata of society, with very middle class values
and funny accents. On the other hand, the natural history writers and broadcasters may be
over-representative of English-educated, urban, upper-crust people with
independent sources of finance.
The barriers to open communication alluded to are diverse:
being basically graduates from the science stream, the IFS officers (and the
subordinate levels too, for that matter) tend to talk in terms of physical
realities, and are not very conscious of socio-economic undercurrents, least of
all the leftist and post-modernist jargon favoured by social environmentalists.
The official etiquette, the primacy of the politician (and the IAS cadre), and the constant public exposure require the officer to maintain a poker face under
all circumstances and exercise extreme circumspection in expressing personal
views; any falling out of line or exhibition of uncalled-for initiative or
originality calls forth a reprimand, countermand or side-lining to ‘punishment’
postings, especially if the officer tries to be academic or show erudition.
On the other hand, this also makes the forest department
eminently down-to-earth and practical, and rather effective in implementation in
the field; the general tenor being that there is nothing that the Range Officer
cannot pull off even with very with little advance notice and meager government
resources.
However, it is in the choice of what to do (rather than how
to do it) that the service falls foul of intelligent and learned academics and
NGOs. Valmik Thapar, in fact, is so disenchanted that he recommends that a new
service should be set up for wildlife conservation, winding up the Indian
Forest Service and reverting to the State Forest Services pattern. He prefers
local persons instead of sending officers across states as per the All-India
Service rules, for instance south Indians to Rajasthan (Thapar, 2015, p.41),
and so on.
In the following sections, these issues (and others that
may crop up on the way) will be explored in more depth.
A pdf of the entire article is available at https://www.academia.edu/24965216/Modernizing_the_Indian_Forest_Service_from_command_to_collaboration
This article, as all others on this site, is the
intellectual property of the author, P.J.Dilip Kumar (IFS, Retired). You are
welcome to reproduce it with due acknowledgement. Suggested citation is as
follows:
Dilip Kumar, P.J. 2016. “TITLE”. Forest Matters, Nos. xx-xx (Month & Year). Available at: www.forestmatters.in or www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
References
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Ramachandra Guha.1992. This Fissured
Land. An Ecological History of India Oxford University
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Gadgil,
Madhav and Ramachandra Guha. 2000. The
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Press, New Delhi .
Government of India .
2006. Report of the National Forest Commission. Ministry of Environment &
Forests, New Delhi .
Guha,
Ramachandra. 2012. The Past and Future of Indian Forestry. Chapter I in Deeper Roots of Historical Injustice: Trends
and Challenges in the Forests of India Washington ,
D.C.
Janik, Phil.
USDA-Forest Service’s Commitment and Approach to Forest Sustainability.
Submitted to the Society of American Foresters. Available at http://www.defendruralamerica.com/files/ForestSustainability.pdf
Lele, Sharachchhandra
and Ajit Menon. (Eds.). 2014. Democratizing
Forest Governance in India Oxford University
Press India , New Delhi .
Sankhala,
Kailash. 2008. Sankhala’s India
Sarin, Madhu. 2014.
Undoing Historical Injustice: Reclaiming Citizenship Rights And Democratic
Forest Governance through the Forest Rights
Act. Chapter 3, in Lele and Menon (Eds.), 2014.
Shahi, S.P. 1977
(2001). Battling for Wildlife in Bihar .
Excerpts from Backs to the Wall: Saga of
Wildlife in Bihar , India New Delhi .
Thapar, Valmik. 2015. Saving Wild India New Delhi .
UNCED. 1992. Non-Legally Binding
Authoritative Statement Of Principles
For A Global Consensus On The Management, Conservation And Sustainable
Development Of All Types Of Forests. Annex III. United Nations
Conference On Environment And Development. Rio de Janeiro , 3-14 June
1992. Available at http://www.un.org/documents/ga/conf151/aconf15126-3annex3.htm
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