46 Summary and conclusions. Modernizing the Indian Forest Service-X.

Revisiting the issues

This final section is to go over the main points made previously, and pull together the various suggestions made. The essay seeks to understand the current feeling of discontent with the forest service in India, and the various pressures for change and modernization from different quarters; and what sort of response the forest service has made, or should be making, in dealing with actual activities as well as dealing with public perceptions.

A pdf of the entire article is available at https://www.academia.edu/24965216/Modernizing_the_Indian_Forest_Service_from_command_to_collaboration

Section I (Post 37) set the broad background and agenda of the essay, by recounting the main strands of contemporary critique of the forest service. These include such issues as: 1) the identification of the forest service with the colonial regime, serving those interests under cover of concepts like ‘scientific’ or ‘sustained’ forestry; 2) the need to replace the top-down agenda of the forest service with an alternative ‘bottom-up’ approach predicated by transfer of rights to the people; 3) the need to infuse more scientific content into the activities of the forest service; 4) the related need to develop specialization and professionalism, e.g. in wildlife management, even to the extent of splitting the service; 5) the need to test the competence of forest officers as specialists through their success in publishing papers in peer-reviewed media; 6) the need to broad-base lines of recruitment into the service, even bringing in people from civil society through lateral entry, and reverting to the state services by doing away with the all-India service; 7) giving primacy to civil society influence on the priorities and strategies to be adopted rather than allowing the service to take final decisions; and so on.

Section II (Post 38) drew the parallels of the present-day forest service with the classical bureaucracy described by Max Weber, the German sociologist, in his early 20^th century writings. Reference was also drawn to contemporary American political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s analysis of the early success of the US Forest Service, similarly based on recruitment of young aspirants from the open market, strong professional ethos, shared values and esprit-de-corps, etc., that made the USFS one of the best examples of effective state bureaucracy. However too much acquiescence to diverse agendas from civil society, especially for fire prevention, resulted in the USFS losing its original focus, leaving it in a less than happy state today. Something similar seems to have befallen the once fighting-fit Indian Forest Service as well, although the seed of its decline was probably an over-indulgence of industrial interests, rather than over-emphasis on fire protection as in the US case.

Section III (Post 39) traced the hoary traditions of social scientists’ engagement with the forest rights question, starting from the great Karl Marx’s essay on the “Wood Theft Law” in 19^th century Germany. This clearly demonstrates how matters of forest control, that appear to the forester to be straightforward questions of the administrative set-up, are transformed into much larger questions of the relationship of the state to the individual and the status of basic human rights. However, the founding father of colonial forestry, Dietrich Brandis, observing the aftermath of the distribution of forests to the communities in the 1848 ‘revolution’ in Europe, could discern the ill-effects of such divesting of ownership, confirming his championing of a certain degree of state control on use and misuse of forests to guarantee sustainability to posterity. Another example of social commentary on state control of forests was drawn from James Scott’s work on the repeated failure of state-sponsored social engineering, of which the ‘scientific’ sustained yield forestry of 19^th-century Europe, especially Germany (on which much of organized forestry in the colonies is modeled), was once again the favourite case study.

Section IV (Post 40) took up the call for improving scientific expertise and developing foresters as scientists of international repute. The impediments to developing a scientific or scholarly career in the midst of the routine demands of the job, were explained. In order to provide opportunities for the brightest among the forest officers to develop such a scholarly, advanced, academic competence and recognition, a few schemes had been proposed in the ministry during 2010-12. The first of these to be implemented is the Hari Singh Fellowship for IFS probationers, which sends the selected officers to a year’s specialized course in subjects like wildlife, immediately after the initial professional training at the IGNFA Dehradun. Other parallel proposals, i.e. the C.R.Ranganathan award for overseas study, the S.K.Seth award for middle-level officers, and the Dietrich Brandis award for senior and retired officers, have not yet been initiated. The point was made that developing excellent specialists does not end with the initial specialized course, but calls for a protracted period of dedicated effort on the part of the aspirant, complemented by support and approval from the service and department, as well as mentoring and collaborative work with persons of eminence in the chosen field, both at home and abroad. This is how the current experts like Ullas Karanth (wildlife) have been developed, and the forest service needs to study and emulate such processes if the current crop of young hopefuls (the Hari Singh fellows) are to make something of their initial start on the road to eminence as specialists.

Section V (Post 41) explained the traditional resistance of the forest service to splitting the service between forestry and wildlife, and to the even more extreme suggestions of the National Forestry Commission (2006) of making additional cadres for social forestry and for research and working plans. It was suggested that the disillusionment with the service of prominent personalities, like Valmik Thapar, could be ascribed to a basic cultural gulf from the middle-class members of the service. Another concerted effort, spearheaded again by persons like Thapar, was to split off the forests and wildlife as a separate department from the environment ministry. This was shot down by the committee of secretaries in the government of India, leading to much heartburn among the proponents, but it is suggested that the service should move towards integration with related fields like environment, rather than seeking to isolate itself. It was pointed out that the two pressures were internally discordant: one, for making the service sharply focused on specializations, and the other, making it inclusive and broad-based by opening recruitment to all types of graduates and providing for lateral entry from civil society at the highest levels, and so on.

Section VI (Post 42) addressed the tension between increased specialization and broader inclusive strategy in aspects such as recruitment to the service and applying science in forest management. The point was made that there cannot be a fundamental objection to allowing graduates in social sciences to compete in the IFS recruitment process conducted by the UPSC, but because classical sustained yield forestry had a strong base in measurement of trees and crops and calculation of financial criteria, a certain level of mathematics has been traditionally demanded at entrance itself. This is provided for in the UPSC exams by the requirement that at least one of the science papers should have been given in the undergraduate degree, and Statistics being one of these, it is conceivable that social sciences graduates could find themselves eligible if they had given Statistics at their Bachelor’s degree level. The suggestion was made that the eligibility clause could be expanded to include the post-graduate level as well, as many MA programmes do have Statistics as a mandatory paper (especially in economics, sociology, anthropology, if not others).

More critical for the modernization of the service, however, is the need to identify aspirants who have a certain flair or passion for nature, outdoors activity, and working with a field force and local communities. An analysis of the changes made in the UPSC selection process in 2012 was presented, with the clear indication of the rapid ascendance of engineering graduates in recent batches. This suggests great challenges to the training institution (IGNFA), as well as opportunities on the assumption that these engineering graduates will have superior mathematical, computer, and technical skills. The irony is that the most popular papers chosen in the exams were Forestry and Geology, not the physical sciences; the advantage imputed in past years to forestry graduates was thus eliminated and, ironically, the relative ease of scoring in Forestry was taken advantage of by the engineering graduates. For comparison, it was noted that a similar role was played by social sciences like Politics or History in the main civil services exams.

While the training institute (the IGNFA Dehradun) has made many changes to the training curriculum and techniques over the years that seem to have improved the competence and morale of the young entrants, it was suggested that an overhauling of the curriculum may be called for in response to the changed forest policy environment. For instance, the ecological and social role of forests being of the highest priority, in contrast to industrial material or financial returns, it may be desirable to reverse the very order in which these concerns are introduced. Rather than starting with measurement of volume and growth in the first hill tour, perhaps the initial emphasis should be on the environmental conservation angle of hill forests, followed by the patterns of dependence of local communities and the political economics of common property use and management. Production forestry could be introduced at a later stage, and the accent could be on the role of financial criteria in private forestry, rather than on conversion of natural forests. The main texts of the social (and judicial) critique of the traditional sustained yield forestry, and the modifications introduced by the concepts of sustainable forestry, should be presented and processed in depth.

Section VII (Post 43) discussed the knotty issues surrounding the role of forestry in the universities. It was argued that the very motivation for these courses (which were initiated in the 1980s) was somewhat confused, as protagonists of these courses seemingly thought that the graduates would be destined to take up the actual implementation of afforestation programmes. This approach was based on a wholly unjustified and unjust judgement that the forest departments were not capable of taking up the responsibility. The result is that these forestry graduates are caught between two posts: they are not guaranteed any positions in the state forest departments (they have to go through the same competitive process as all other eligible graduates for the forest services), and they have to strive extra hard to develop research projects as they do not have easy access to field forestry resources. Often university graduates drift to socio-economic critiques of forestry as an alternative to bio-physical research (which is highly demanding of time and logistics support), and thus become somewhat adversarial to the state forest departments. All this does not bode well for the future growth of forestry as a science. In this respect, some of the forest industries like MPM Bhadravathi, ITC Bhadrachalam, WIMCO, etc. seem to have done much better forestry research, utilizing the services of the self-same university graduates in collaboration with some retired forest officers. However, social environmentalists do not think much of these efforts as they have an ideological bias against forest industry, monocultures, etc.

Section VIII (Post 44) discussed the issues concerned with research, and the need to make the scientists in the forest research institutes feel an integral part of the forest establishment. Efforts may be required to improve access of scientists to some of the senior administrative posts in the Council. Recruitment processes of scientists may need to be decentralized, or at least dispersed to the outlying institutes and centers, to overcome the impression that persons from Uttarakhand state or Dehradun have a differential advantage. The two-edged nature of the move toward autonomy of the ICFRE was discussed; it appears that the more the Council attempts to ask for autonomy, the more it ends up as neither the ministry’s baby nor effective on its own. The budgets provided by the central government are now just sufficient for meeting the establishment and routine expenditure of the ICFRE, and it would be advisable to at least double the budgets over the course of the current Plan period, so that the institutes will be in a position to take up more activities. Since field forestry is the central mandate of the forest departments, the ICFRE institutes will need to forge strong ties with them, both for research agenda setting and for field activities. Some comparative figures of the size of forest scientist personnel from China and India was presented to show the need to increase the sheer numbers, so as to achieve a ‘critical mass’ in our forest institutes.

Section IX (Post 45) dealt with the need to make effective use of communication and information media, emulating some of the NGO groups who have been successful in their advocacy programmes. With the rising public interest in natural history, conservation, climate change, environmental conservation, sustainable development, poverty alleviation, protection of indigenous and traditional cultures, and so on, the type of information put out will have to be improved. No longer will official reports on annual budgets satisfy the hunger for information and intellectual stimulation. Actually the forest service is in a relatively advantageous situation here, as it has assured access to the best and remotest natural areas, tribal centers, and so on. The forest departments have undertaken innumerable experiments in all these spheres, including working with tribals. These experiences need to be described, developed as case studies and documentaries, and put out on the media in such a way as to bring out the voice of the people on the ground, rather than as drab official reports. The help of creative media persons could be taken to develop such material. Ideas for certain new institutions like a Knowledge Forum, a Center for Information and Documentation, and even an Institute for  Sustainable Forestry, have been presented to enable such creative work and provide appropriate forums for collaboration with civil society resource persons outside the walls of the ministry.

Should the forest service be responsive?

Finally, the question arises whether the situation is really so serious as to warrant a response. Many foresters may feel that the criticisms are merely idle commentaries by social academics and activists who seek to gain popularity by such activities, and that the forest department can continue with its traditional approaches and ignore them. On the other hand, many foresters themselves have striven to develop a new paradigm for the department, for example through the devise of joint forest management (JFM). With a large number of academics and professionals getting involved in research and advocacy on behalf of community rights, as exemplified by the Forest Rights Act campaigns, it is unlikely that the forest service will be allowed to go on with its activities without modification. Hence it will be necessary for the service to organize its own study and analysis of such questions, in a framework acceptable on the stage of public academic discourse, complete with comparative analysis, case studies, time-line studies, and so on, so that the forest service can take part in an informed and competent way in these discussions.

A similar question was examined in connection with joint forest management in the author’s paper in the Karnataka Forest Department’s journal Myforest (Dilip Kumar, 1990). The point was made that the forest department should be in a central leadership position in this sphere, rather than be at the receiving end of innovations imposed from outside. If the experiment were to prove a success, the positive contribution of the department would be recognized and the service gain some improvements in its image and influence. If the experiment were to come apart and become a failure, the department would at least be in a situation where the situation could be rapidly retrieved and the negative effects minimized. Keeping aloof would only reinforce public perception of the service as uncooperative or hidebound and inflexible. In any case, it would be to the long-term advantage of the service, and the cause of forests, that the service be sensitive to the needs and desires of the people, as well as to the aspirations, perceptions and frustrations of the political class and their fellow-travelers, the social activists.

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. Year. “TITLE”. Forest Matters, Nos. xx-xx (Month & Year). Available at: www.forestmatters.in or www.forestmatters.blogspot.in

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