Seeds of successful forestry

Seeds of successful forestry
Yoginder K. Alagh

Two-hour drive from Mangalore up the Ghats takes you to Dharmasthala. There is an old temple there. Head priest Virendra Heggade is the latest in a long line. For a temple chief, he is unusual. Apart from the fact that he is a Jain and this is a beautiful Hindu temple, he is a man of science and action. The forests were dwindling and, in some areas, existed only in the records of the foresters, as in other parts of India.

This land meant for trees grew only a little cereal, while populations and poverty were increasing. Trees were being cut and soil was eroding and being washed into the sea. Yet, it is a very beautiful part of this great country and every time I get a headache, and see man brutalising the land and air around him, I yearn to go back to my friends at Mangalore, Udipi, Manipal, Dharmasthala, and the lovely campus of Mangalore University, visit the ghats again and pray in the centuries-old temples.

Getting back to Heggade, for 28 generations, his predecessors were giving charity to the poor peasants of the parish in the finest religious sense. He decided to put an end to the need for charity. The climate-governed farming style for the region, promoted by the local bankers and progressive farmers, was to stop growing cereal, grow tree crops, make money and sustain the environment. In the late eighties, we had changed the rules and allowed employment programmes to be used to fund soil treatment and even days spent on growing trees by poor peasants. But it was working only when pushed, which was seldom.

The poor peasants were insecure, hu-ngry and wouldn't bite. In forest areas, they were not eligible anyway, because they were encroachers, perhaps for centuries.

Heggade cut the Gordian knot. He said that, for an approved programme of tree culture, a farmer would get bushels of rice, as long as it was recorded in a passbook given to them. I am told the only change made to the agroclimatic plan was to make labour eligible when they spent time on digging a moat, because wild animals had not been anticipated. The Syndicate Bank worked with Heggade and, after a few years, economist K. N. Raj and I were invited to see the success of the experiment. The trees had grown now and, though they were encroachers because the bureaucracy moves slowly, the poor peasant of yesterday was now a man of substance. The need for charity was gone. Heggade was a legend in the area.

As for area under forests, India has not done too badly. The UNFPA, in keeping with its general practice, has bad-mouthed India's performa-nce, this time on forests. But since 1981, from the time comparable data from satellite imagery has become available, India has lost very little land under fo- rests, as compared to countries like China and Pakistan, leave aside champion losers like Brazil and Indonesia.

Logging has been banned and independent estimates of illegal felling are compensated by farm forestry and community forestry. But, in a growing economy, the demand for forestry products has been rising, as a part of a generally buoyant and diversifying agricultural demand, but agricultural supplies have not increased from the domestic forestry sector. The GDP from forestry has declined and the increased demand has been met from imports.

The import demand has rocketed and there is a fair complaint that Indian imports have led to large-scale deforestation, for example in Malaysia.

In the late eighties, the Prime Minister's Advisory Board on Energy, then chaired by K.C. Pant. persuaded the policy-makers to put forest products on the OGL with a low tariff. The World Bank was reported to have been pleasantly surprised that India had followed a progressive policy towards reform in this sector early on in the game. Since the liberalisation process for the rest of the economy proceeded much more slowly, this meant that the forestry sector got powerful negative signals on investment and profitability. This still continues.

The ban on logging must continue, so that we continue to save our forests. But the rest of the forestry sector, including what is euphemistically called `minor forest produce' for which there is a rapidly growing demand in domestic and foreign markets, needs at least a level playing field, if not some protection in real terms. Also it needs powerful technological support and improved marketing and funding arrangements.

Experts like N. C. Saxena have made the point that India has successfully met the challenge of meeting food needs without deforestation by a policy of irrigation development and intensification of agriculture. India's net area sown was growing by around half of one per cent annually because of these factors. If we can keep up our technological progress on this front, besides strengthening the policy regime, there is no reason why the forestry sector should not become a leading sector with annual growth rates of above five per cent.