British Forest Policy in India : 1800-1947

1
British Forest Policies in India devolved from or were framed to cater to the colonial agenda of
extracting the maximum profit from its colonies. Initially there was a vigorous drive to clear forests for
cultivation because agriculture consistently yielded the most revenue and was much easier to
administer than forests. Subsequently, when it became apparent that the demand for timber was
growing exponentially and the scale of deforestation might lead to an acute shortage of timber the
practice of scientific conservation and management of forests was introduced to facilitate the sustained
availability of wood.

At the root of British forest policies in India was the fertile and overbearing soil of European colonialism
which had been triggered off by the ruling mercantilist theory of attaining political power through
economic profit. There had been an exodus of Europeans venturing out in search of new lands to
colonize and exploit for the profit of the motherland and her daring adventurers. They sought wealth in
all forms - from the procuring of gold and silver, spices and slaves, agricultural revenue and timber to
the marketing of the manufactured goods of the home country.

The Questions we will seek to answer in the course of this study are:
1. Did the British Forest Policy in India represent an Ecological Watershed?
2. What were the motives behind the early clearance of forests and policies adopted to achieve this?
3. What were the motives behind the subsequent conservation of forests and policies adopted to
achieve this?
4. What was the impact of the British Forest Policies in India ?
5. Conclusion and Bibliography.

The Ecological Watershed

THE ECOLOGICAL WATERSHED

The ecological history of British India reflects how the world economy had been profoundly altered and
disrupted by western capitalism and its dynamic expansion. Such interventions reshaped the habitats
they intruded upon for the benefit of Europe. Colonialism’s most tangible outcome was its global control
of resources (mineral, plant and animal) which inevitably contributed to Europe’s industrial growth.

The British forest policies represented an ecological watershed in terms of the environmental
imprudence introduced, the scale of the imprudence introduced and the usurping of the rights of the
forests dwellers and tribals to the access to forest and the use of forest produce. Madhav Gadgil and
Ramachandra Guha have stated in ‘This Fissured Land’ that pre-colonial Indian society had cultural
traditions of prudence and there was stability in the relations between agriculture and industry, and
between the state and society. The Mughals did not alter the existing patterns of resource use and the
social structures they were embedded in. If this view is valid, the British impact on the environment
was an ecological watershed because of the end of prudence in the relentless clearing of forests for
agriculture.

Mayank Kumar has provided an alternative view in respect of Rajasthan where there were instances of
imprudence as evidenced by the official records of punishments meted out to violators of ecological
customs and traditions such as cutting of young green trees and the killing of cattle. If this view is correct
the British forest policies and practices would still mark an ecological watershed on account the scale
of environmental imprudence they unleashed in India. The requirement of the railways and the two
world wars did unprecedented damage to India’s forest resources.

To forest dwellers and tribals who depended on the forests for their livelihood, British forest policies
brought about a watershed in their rights to the forest. Gradually and increasingly the state usurped
2
many of their rights to the forest to safeguard the forest requirements of the state.

The first systematic documentation of forest flora (categorized into fruit trees, flowering trees, timber,
fuel-wood, medicinal plants etc.) was started in the Aryan period. Excavations at Harappa showed that
they were familiar with four species of timber: Rosewood, Ber, Deodar and Elm. The Aryans did not
leave any evidence of forest management.

The origin and development of forestry as a state dominated subject is believed to have started with the
birth of imperialism in north India about 543 b.c. with king Bimbisara as king of Magadha. During the
Magadhan period forests were for the first time divided on the basis of geographical locations and
physical characteristics.

On the basis of Arthsastra of Kautilya, C.D.Chatterjee informs us that a forest department or a

department of forest products existed in ancient India. The duties of the forest department included
increasing productivity, pricing of products, classification of logs, timber, bamboo and medicinal
plants, maintaining law and order, imposing fines for illegal activities and even trading in wildlife
products. The references to reserve forests, forests for the public, forests donated to eminent
brahmanas, afforestation programmes and a set of eighteen forest laws indicate the outcome of a
process of deep thinking on conservation, utilisation and management of vital natural resources.

The next phase of chronicled history of forests and forestry can be traced in the memoirs of Hiuen Tsang
who visited India almost 900 years later between 629 A.D. to 645 A.D. His memoirs indicate that the
north west regions, which had been previously recorded as densely forested by historians accompanying
Alexander, had been desiccated and deforested. The rest of India had a large forest cover.

The Mughal rulers of India were keenly aware of the revenue generated by cultivated lands so they
nurtured a penchant for clearing forests for cultivation. It is rather surprising that the great Mughals
did not think of keeping an accurate quantitative estimate of forest area. But the Ain-i-Akbari by Abul
Fazal indicates the awareness of the commercial value of seventy two different types of timber on the
basis of weight of wood per unit area. The forest borders were in flux depending on revenue policies of
the time and military control. When revenue demands of the state were favourable for the peasants,
cultivation increased and forests decreased; when revenue demands were unfavourable cultivated land
relapsed into forest. Some forest areas were reserved for hunting or timber or strategic defence of forts
and some forests spaces were venerated as sacred groves.

In the wake of the Industrial Revolution, the Europeans brought to India some revolutionary ideas
about resource use, the transformation of resources from one form to another and transporting them
over large distances to the final user. Many resources became commodities with ever-increasing uses.
For example, wood that used to be consumed as domestic fuel or for the construction of shelters and
tools could now be converted to paper, used to power steamships and railways, and also used as sleepers
on railway tracks.

Three elements of the Industrial Revolution influenced the ecological encounter between India and
Britain:

There was a change in emphasis from resource gathering and subsistence production to the production
of commodities and trade. There was a shift from production for self-consumption to production for
market.

Cooperation with neighbours became less important. So there was a breakdown of cohesive local
communities. Human societies became atomized with individuals acting largely on their own.

With the increasing domination of manufacture and commerce, the institution of the market came to
receive the veneration that previous food-gatherers reserved for the spirits of the trees.
There was a radical transformation in the flow of materials. At the food-gatherer stage such flows were
confined to the territory of each group. With settled agriculture food-grain flowed from the countryside
to the towns where non food producers were concentrated. With advances in technology, as a
consequence of the Industrial Revolution, there were flows of a greater range of resources from
cultivated lands, non-cultivated lands and water bodies.
3
The Clearance of Forests

FOREST CLEARANCE

The early British mistreatment of Indian forests reinforced the claim that the British race was rapidly
converting forests into deserts. By 1860 Britain became the world leader in deforestation, devastating
its own forests and forests in Ireland, South America, and north east USA for farming, iron smelting
and shipbuilding.

The motives behind the British drive to clear forests in India:

To increase revenue by extension of agriculture which was a prime and consistent source of revenue

To increase political control by increasing land under settled cultivation which was easier to administer
than forests and wastelands

To meet increase in demand for timber for shipbuilding which was accentuated by (a) the Anglo-French
naval rivalry (b) shortage of timber in Britain (c) Baltic timber supply stopped because of strategic
isolation of Britain during the revolutionary and Napoleanic wars between 1793 and 1815 and the
neutrality of the Baltic countries during the blockade.

To meet increase in demand for timber for building dockyards, barracks, ordnance factories, and later
and most importantly railway construction.

To meet increase in demand for fuel for steamships, townships and later railways

To reduce the hideouts of disorderly social groups and revenue fugitives. Forests were the abode for
tribals who were considered to be primitive and prone to violence. And peasants from the settled
cultivated areas who were unable to bear the revenue demands of the state took refuge in the forests.

To honour the negative view of woodlands that the British carried into India from Britain. Forests were
considered by the British to have lapsed into a state of nature because of inadequate human care. The
British believed that forests were meant to be tamed by clearing them for cultivation.

Policies adopted by the British for clearance of forests:

Revenue demand was increased which forced cultivators to extend the land under cultivation by
clearing forests and wastelands and bringing those lands under cultivation. Sometimes it had the
opposite effect when revenue demands were too high - then cultivation was avoided by escapism.

Military campaigns were used to subdue belligerent forests users who resisted the clearance of forests.
The Paharia tribals of the Rajmahal hills were subdued by military action in 1772-78 and Santhals
brought in because they were good workers and generated more revenue.

A Baze Zamin Daftar (Wasteland Office) was created in Bengal to give priority to clearing wasteland for
cultivation.

Baze Zamin Regulations were instituted in 1788. The provisions included restriction of zamindars from
giving rent-free land grants - in normal times this was beneficial but in times of famine it had the
opposite effect of retarding agricultural recovery after famine conditions.
Conservation of Forests 4
FOREST CONSERVATION

From the late eighteenth century western scientists had begun to explore the links between
deforestation, desiccation and drought. The rapid clearance of forests, due to agricultural colonization
and industrial development, contributed to accelerated soil erosion, decline in rainfall, scarcity of wood
products and the steep rise in their prices. Foresters led the scientific movement which was held
together by a set of beliefs that was remarkably invariant across the continents and across the different
sectors (like forest, soil, water, wildlife and fisheries management) in which it was applied. Scientific
conservation was an ideology of doom and resurrection, predicting that agricultural and industrial
expansion would destroy the environment unless replaced forthwith by more rational and far-seeing
forms of resource use. The apocalyptic and redemptive ideology did not hark back to an imagined past
but looked to reshape the present with the aid of reason and science. The profit motive was incompatible
with conservation because individuals and corporations were notoriously short-sighted. The state had
to assume the responsibility of managing resources such as forests and water.

The motives behind the British drive to conserve India’s forests :

The prime motive of forest conservation in Indian was to reverse the threat of shortage of timber for
shipbuilding and railway construction and fuel which the British apprehended was imminent. Initially
forests were cleared for agriculture and then shipbuilding and steamship fuel. In 1853 it intensified
because of the introduction of railways which required wooden sleepers for its tracks and wood for fuel
until the coal mines of Raniganj became operational. In the Madras Presidency alone 2,50,000 sleepers
or 35,000 trees were required annually. The crisis became major because initially only teak, sal and
deodar timbers were found to be strong enough for railways (in 1912, years of research on treatment of
wood enabled the use of chir and blue pines as railway sleepers on a commercial scale). Teak and sal
were cut from peninsular India and deodar from the Sutlej and Yamuna valleys in the north. The pace
of railway expansion revealed that India’s forests were not inexhaustible.

Another motive was to allay the colonial fear that environmental imbalances perpetrated by
deforestation could cause drought and silting of rivers which could jeopardize agrarian prosperity and
social stability. Surgeons of the East India Company initiated this concern and pitted the stability of the
Company state against the short-term interests of those who cleared the woodlands.

There was an increase in the commercial value of forest products which would serve the empire better
if perpetuated.

The Government of India Resolution No.22F dated 19-10-1894 stated that the sole objective of forest
administration was to promote the general well-being of the country, primarily for the preservation of
the climatic and physical conditions of the country and secondly to fulfil the needs of the people subject
to the conditions that permanent cultivation should come before forestry and that the needs of the local
population should be satisfied free or at non-competitive rates.

Policies of forest conservation adopted by the British rulers:

A restriction was first imposed on the felling of teak less than 21 inches in girth on the basis of the report
of a Commission was set up in South India in 1800 to assess the availability of teak in the Malabar
forests.

The Government declared the right to levy a royalty on teak and prohibit the unauthorized felling of
teak on the basis of the assessment of forest resources and proprietary rights in forests by the Forest
Committee constituted in 1805.
The first Conservator of forests, Captain Watson, was appointed in 1806 to organize production of teak
and other timber for the navy. But the post was abolished in 1823.

The first teak plantation was established in 1842 in Nilambur by Conolly the Collector of Malabar.
5
Kumri, or shifting cultivation, blamed for accentuating deforestation, soil exhaustion and low
agricultural productivity was banned in Coorg (1848) and Belgaum (1856).

A ‘Charter of Indian Forests’ was issued by Lord Dalhousie in 1855 outlining the objectives and
principles of forest conservancy. It was based on the report of McLelland, then Superintendent of
Forests, Burma.

The first regular conservator of forests was Leghorn, a medical officer, appointed in 1856 in the Madras
Presidency.

The British then turned to and adopted the German model of scientific and systematized forestry. The
ascendancy of German forest science was a consequence of the quantitative methods developed there
to estimate growing stock and yield - from a simplistic area-based approach to a complex but more
reliable yield-based system that assessed volume and weight of trees of different ages, growth patterns,
soil and moisture conditions and provided fairly accurate yield tables. The model had previously been
successfully adopted by France, Prussia and Bavaria also. The objective was to optimize the foresters’
effort of assessing and harvesting the forests and annuitizing the yield of the forest so that a steady
output of timber is possible over the years without wasteful labour.

Dietrich Brandis, a German, was appointed as Inspector General of Forests to set up and administer
the Forest Department. He tried to initiate a system of conservation and management of Indian forests
through reservation of forests and progressive withdrawal of proprietary rights. He also initiated
measures to set up trained forest officers throughout India. He later authored the most important
reference book for Indian foresters "Indian Forestry". Two more Germans, Wilhelm Schlich and Bertold
von Ribbentrop followed him. So the Indian Forest Department was guided by Germans for half a
century.

The All-India based Forest Department was created in 1864 to ensure a steady supply of timber for
railway construction. The Forest Department came to own one-fifth of the land in the subcontinent and
became one of the largest forestry enterprises in the world.

The first countrywide legislative step towards the rule of property for forests in British India was taken
in 1865 by the institution of the Forest Act of 1865. Local state governments were empowered to draft
their own rules to enforce the Act. It provided for only a limited degree of state intrusion and control.
The 1865 act was hurriedly drafted and passed to establish the claims of the state over forests required
for railway supplies, subject to the proviso that existing rights would not be abridged.

Almost immediately there began a search for a more stringent and inclusive piece of legislation. State
control was considered but there was no unanimity of opinion among officials about the extent of state
control that should be introduced - Baden Powell led the group that recommended extensive
government control; Thomas Munro was strident voice among those who recommended minimal
control; other officials including Dietrich Brandis, the Inspector General of Forests preferred limited
state intervention to monopoly by state or a completely free market.

The Forest Act of 1878 was designed to remove defects and inadequacies of the Act of 1865. The Act
focussed on removing the ambiguity about the "absolute property right of the state" because villagers
had become accustomed to graze cattle and cut wood wherever they wished, even in states where the
state retained absolute proprietorship. It provided for the constitution of reserved and protected
forests. It provided more extensive powers for officials. It did not yet apply to Madras, Coorg, Burma,
Bihar and Hissar (in Punjab). The Madras government resisted until the passage of a separate Forest
Act in 1882. Separate Acts were also passed in Burma (1881) and Berar (1882).
A more absolute nature of property (as a hierarchy of user rights) was applied than in the past : Grazing,
illegal tree-felling and cultivation, and forest fires were curbed to enhance reproduction of valuable
species. In some areas in Punjab even access was regulated. No rights could be acquired in reserved
forests unless explicitly ceded by the Provincial Government under the Act. In protected forests rights
were recorded but not settled. (In permanently settled areas like Bengal and Benares, the Zamindar
6
owned the wastelands. In ryotwari areas like Madras the government owned all the wasteland).

A forest school was established at Dehra Dun in 1878.

A Provincial Forest Service was set up in 1891 to recruit and develop a cadre of forest officers.

But from the outset the Government of India appeared to have been mindful of the need to reconcile
the requirements of sound forest management with the traditional rights of the rural people and their
changing needs. The British were fully conscious of the seeds of future conflicts with tribals and villagers
as a consequence of bringing forests under public administration.

The Government of India Resolution No.22F dated 19-10-1894 redefined and reiterated the central
objectives of forest policy.

The needs of scientific forestry were to be subordinated to the preservation of existing rights and
customs of tribals and the promotion of their well-being.

Forests were classified into four categories: (i) forests whose preservation was essential on climatic or
physical grounds; (ii) forests which provided valuable timber for commercial purposes; (iii) minor
forests; and (iv) pasture lands.

Forests on hill slopes were considered to be in the first category because they were necessary to preserve
to prevent erosion on the hills and the consequent destruction of soils below.

Needs of local people were to be satisfied at concessional rates, if not free, from the second category of
forests of valuable commercial timber like teak, sal and deodar.

Minor forests of inferior timber were to be managed mainly in the interests of the local population
preserving the wood and grass from destruction. All considerations of revenue were to be secondary.

The principles enunciated for the grant of privileges to local people in minor forests would apply
mutadis mutandis to pasture lands because it was found that local people had acquired maximum usage
rights in these.

Forest areas were to be relinquished if there was an effective demand for cultivation, provided (i) the
cultivation was permanent and not shifting, (ii) forests were not being honeycombed with patches of
cultivated land, and (iii) cultivation was not encroaching on the minimum forest requirements of the
country.

Forest administration after 1894 continued to reduce the customary rights of the local people because
(i) forest regulations were extended over ever widening areas of forests (ii) there was a bias in favour of
conservation and against the interests of the local population, and (iii) compulsions were imposed by
the five year plans for the maximization of revenue.

The Indian Forest Act of 1927 classified the forests in three categories: (i) Reserved Forests; (ii)
Protected Forests; and (iii) Village Forests.

Reserved forests consisted of compact and valuable areas well connected to towns for sustained
exploitation. Total state control was safeguarded by a permanent settlement, which extinguished,
transferred or limited private rights. The administration of reserved forests was contingent upon
imperial interests like the railways and the two world wars.
Protected forests carried rights that were recorded but not settled. There were detailed provisions for
the reservation of particular tree species and for the closing of the forests to grazing and firewood
collection when required. Protected forests were gradually converted to reserved forests because of
increased demand for wood. [1878 - 14000 square miles of state forests; 1890 - 56000 sq mi of Reserved
Forests (RF) & 20000 sq mi of Protected Forests (PF); 1900 - 81400 sq mi of RF & 3300 sq mi of PF].
7
The Village Forests option was not exercised by the government over mosts parts of India.

Forest Settlement Officers were appointed to adjudicate on rights and privileges claimed by people in
reserved forests.

The Government would pass final orders permitting or prohibiting shifting cultivation on the basis of
inquiries and recommendation of the Forest Settlement Officers.

There was a constant search for markets for the multiple species of India’s tropical forests because the
Forest Department had to generate an adequate revenue as per the cardinal principle of imperial policy
that the administrative machinery had to be self-sufficient

Impact of British Forest Policies

THE IMPACT OF COLONIAL FORESTRY

Colonial forestry has had wide ranging consequences. Apart from enriching the British and their
collaborators, the impact was overwhelmingly negative. It caused irreparable environmental damage,
jeopardized the livelihood of communities who subsisted on forests, and became the role model of
India’s post-independence forest management, thus ensuring its insidious continuity.

The Forest Department’s revenues rose from Rs.5.6 million in the five years between 1869-1874 (or
Rs.1.12 million per annum approximately) to Rs.56.7 million in the two years between 1924-25
(Rs.28.35 million per annum approximately). The surplus or profit rose from Rs.1.7 million in the five
years between 1869-1874 (or Rs.0.34 million per annum approximately) to Rs.21.3 million in the two
years between 1924-25 (Rs.10.65 million per annum approximately). Between 1869 to 1925, annual
revenues grew twenty five times, and profit grew thirty one times.

The expansion of railways reduced teak and sal forests of peninsular India to such an extent that deodar
forests of north India were required to be tapped. Cleghorn in "The Forests and Gardens of South India"
wrote that the Melghat and North Arcot Hills, formally crowned with timber was almost laid bare. The
deodar forests of the Sutlej valley was rapidly exhausted after 1864 leaving only some deodar forests in
the Jumna valley. In the north west Himalayas where the finest quality of deodar were found in the
forest of Tehri Garhwal and Punjab were rapidly exploited by the agents of the colonial state and in the
later stages directly by the raja. This introduced a qualitative change in the relationships between the
ruler and the ruled. As a result there were sporadic ‘dhandaks’ or forest movements in Tehri Garhwal
since the early years of the nineteenth century. Even Verrier Elwin has talked of the melancholic effect
forest reservation had on the tribals of Central India for whom nothing aroused more resentment
against the government than the taking away of the forests they regarded as their own property.

The history of forest conflict and struggle can be seen essentially as emanating from alternate
conceptions of property rights and obligations. There did not exist a developed notion of private
property in the tribal and peasant communities of India where the relationship to the overlord was
expressed in terms of mutual obligations which had to be fulfilled. Colonial rule on the other hand was
based on a notion of private property that ran contrary to the experience of these communities. The
tribals were confronted with the vagaries of the colonial market economy that continually eroded their
lifestyles. Moreover the assertion of state primacy over natural resources deprived them of an important
means of subsistence.

Environmental movements in the colonial period were responses to the British policies which: (i)
tightened state control over forests areas (ii) banned or restricted shifting cultivation, (iii) curbed
8
hunting, timber use and grazing and (iv) instigated an influx of outsiders from the plains
(moneylenders, traders, land grabbers, and contractors) into the forests.

In the nineteenth century tribal movements remained an endemic feature in many parts of India. At
the lowest stratum of the peasantry tribals subsisted as agricultural labourers, coolies in plantations,
mines and factories and through shifting cultivation. The colonial state tightened control over forest
zones for revenue and banned shifting cultivation in the reserved forests.

The Santhals of Chhotanagpur revolted in 1855. A more formidable rebellion took place in 1879-80 of
the Gudem-Rampa in Tamil Nadu. They rose against their overlord’s efforts to enhance taxes on timber
and grazing, police exactions, excise regulations restricting domestic production of toddy, exploitation
by moneylenders and traders, and restrictions of shifting cultivation.

The best known tribal rebellion of this period is the Ulgulan or the Great Tumult of Birsa Munda south
of Ranchi in 1899-1900. The Mundas had seen their khunt katti land system (joint holdings by khunts
or tribal lineages) being eroded during the nineteenth century by moneylenders and traders. Birsa
Munda, their leader, urged the killing of moneylenders, merchants and Christians. The revolt was
suppressed but the Mundas got recognition of the khuntkatti system, and forced labour was banned.

A powerful Forest Satyagraha was held in Cuddapah during the Non-Cooperation Movement after the
traditional rights to the forest produce of the primitive food gathering Chenchu tribe were restricted by
the government from 1898.

The old ‘Rampa’ country of the Godavari hills also remained restive. There was a revolt in 1916 serving
as a prelude to a major rebellion under Aluru Sitarama Raju in 1922-24.

In 1910 British troops suppressed a rising in the Jagdalpur region against the Raja of Bastar because of
the recent banning of shifting cultivation and the free use of forest produce. The rebels disrupted
communications, attacked police stations and forest outposts, burnt schools (being built with forced
labour and compulsory levies on tribals) and even tried to besiege Jagdalpur town.

In 1914, Jatra Bhagat started a Oraon movement calling for a return to shifting cultivation,
monotheism, and abstention from meat liquor and tribal dances. The movement took on a more radical
millenarian colour in 1915 and was quickly repressed. A more pacific ‘Tana Bhagat’ movement survived
among the Oraons and developed important links with Gandhian nationalism from the 1920s.

Conclusion

CONCLUSION

British forest policies, initially inclined heavily towards clearing forests and later towards conserving
forests, did attain their objective of enriching the home country and its adventurous officials and their
government in India. But it left a swathe of ecological destruction and socio-economic distress in its
colony.

The actual experience of scientific forestry was quite often at odds with its professed aims and supposed
achievements. The strengthening of state control had as its corollary the denial of customary rights of
use of peasant and tribal communities. Peasants and pastoralists, swidden cultivators and wood-
working artisans, all looked upon the forests as a provider of their basic means of subsistence: the
source of fuel for cooking, grass for livestock, leaf for manure, timber for homes and ploughs, bamboos
for baskets, land for extending cultivation, herbs for curing ailments, and so on. When access to these
resources was restricted by the creation of strictly protected government reserves, escalating conflict
between local communities and forest departments was the inevitable outcome.
The government was warned by a dissenting official that the Indian Forest Act of 1878 would arouse a
sense of injustice, resentment and antagonism toward the government. When the act was in place
peasant and tribal groupings resisted the operations of the Forest Department in all kinds of ways:
through arson, breaches of the forest law, attacks on officials and on government property, and
coordinated collective social movements aimed at restoring local control over forests. These rebellions
9
formed part of broader nationalist upsurges. Sometimes they engulfed thousands of square miles and
were quelled only by the superior firepower of the colonial army or police.

Recent work by ecologists suggests that, in the tropics, sustained yield forestry was honoured mostly in
the breach. In India scientific forestry was complicated by the fact that India’s tropical forests were
more diverse than the temperate forests of Europe and therefore more difficult to manage. An
additional complicating factor is the monsoon, the two or three months of torrential rain which quickly
washed away soil exposed by logging, thus rendering regeneration extremely difficult. In such
circumstances, it is highly questionable whether sustained-yield forestry on the European model can
be successfully practised, a scepticism that is borne out by the record. The strategies of resource use
introduced by the British and continued thereafter were neither scientific nor conservation oriented.
130 years of state forest management have left forests in much poorer condition than they were when
scientific forestry first made its appearance. Their objectives have been threefold, namely (i) the
demarcation and consolidation of forest land taken over by the state and alienated from access to the
local people: (ii) the imposition of certain restrictions on the rate at which harvests are made from the
forests. These restrictions do not ensure sustainable harvests, rather they have served to regulate the
quantity of the material harvested to match commercial demands; (iii) the conversion of natural forests
with a wide variety of resources valued by the local population into plantations of a relatively small
number of species of maximal commercial value. While the environmental consequences of these
objectives have been disastrous, the unpopularity of scientific forest management with the mass of the
Indian population is a powerful indicator of its social inappropriateness.

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