Is the Chipko Movement Towards Forest Appraisal

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15234 - Is the Chipko Movement Towards Forest Appraisal

Is the Chipko Movement Towards Forest Appraisal

by: M.Aparna

?Let us protect and plant the trees

Go awaken the villages

And drive away the axemen.?

- Ghanshyam Sailani
The forests of India are the unique resources for the survival of the rural people of India which were exploited greatly for commerce and industry. The Chipko Movement of India taken birth in Himalayan foothills gained great significance throughout the world?s environmentalist circles for its successful efforts against deforestation. Chipko, which means literally ?to embrace? has spread to many other parts of India and has drawn worldwide attention for its resourceful efforts to fight against deforestation and thereby protecting ecology and society. Women played a unique role in making success of the Chipko Movement because they being the dependents on the fuel, wood and fodder for survival found it difficult to procure them for over the last several decades.
In an Indian Civil Society, the workday of the women starts early in the morning. Particulary in the hilly areas, they should fetch water, grind wheat for bread, fulfil the needs of the husband and children, and finally sets out to forest for fuelwood, grass and leaf fodder for animals, etc. Bearing bundles on the head for hours they come home before noon and prepare mid-day meal. Durning the dry season, when upto 80% of the livestock feed is supplied by the forests, their afternoons are also taken up to search for the leaf fodder. This is the need of the forests for the women and her family?s survival.
The forests in the Himalayas play the same role today - two harvests in a year, i.e, rice and millets in the monsoon season and wheat in winter, observing a heavy toll on nutrients in the soil. To make for the shortage of the nutrients it is necessary to collect organic matter in the form of leaf fodder and leaf litter over extensive areas of the forest which may be as large as thirty times the size of a typical cultivated field. If the distance between the village and the forest becomes too far, or if there are no more trees, then it is impossible for the women to bring enough organic matter to keep the nutrient supply in balance. To compensate this shortage, it becomes necessary to burn dried dung in place of fuelwood which further results into fertiliser deficit resulting into poorer harvests and even lower yields of buffalo milk. Further towards compensation of this food shortages, women are many a times forced to sell their gold jewellery and other costly important items which are originally intended to keep as a dowry for their daughters.
In the 19th century, British colonial administrators in India took control of vast areas of forestland and subsequently exploited them through Imperial Forest Service where a reasonable portion of this land was originally been managed communally in accordance with the local rules and regulations. With the advent of British Raj (Colonial Rule) conflicts broke out between rural population and the Forest Service because the village systems of resource use broke down and forest degradation accelerated rapidly. The Chipko Movement, founded in 1973 was the outcome of this conflict, started with an objective to conserve forest in the Himalayas.
Deforestation on the hills is at peak during British rule being they did it greatly to fulfil their commercial ends because of which the hill stations rapidly became black holes as wood is needed to fire limestone and large quantities of timber for the construction of government offices, official residences and for infrastructures to make their rule convenient, effective and commercial, which were architecturally of very high standard and costly to both economy and ecology. In 1844 an English contractor named Wilson obtained a concession from the Feudal Lord of Tehri-Garhwal permitting him to harvest Himalayan cedars which grew at altitudes above 1,800m and had to be rafted for months down the Ganges to reach the plains. Wilson?s contract permitted him to fell as many trees as per his requirement for a fee of 400 rupees per year for twenty years which resulted into disappearance of the magnificent cedars within a span of a decade.
The arrogance or exploitation of power was apparent at a Forest Service Conference in 1875 where it openly declared that the ?victor? is entitled to enjoy the ?rights of conquest? which gives a clear admission of the rationale behind the setting aside of reserved forests in accordance with the provisions contained in the Forest Act of 1878. Reserved Forests which ordinarily covered the half of the total area of the village had been foreseen wherever timber was produced profitably or where the forest had a protective function. It became the property of the colonial government immediately after the available rights like right to obtain leaf fodder or to graze goats had been rescinded and after informing the local population through a public notice.
In 1920 Mohandas Gandhi, who lead India to Independence in 1947, began his first nation-wide campaign of civil disobedience to protest unjust laws. Gandhiji characterized the newly established forest reserves as a symbol of oppression. However, in the following year, the local population as a regular practice just before commencement of monsoons set fire to forests of Chir, a newly established reserved forests by the British Government owing to the World War I, so that the coming rains would generate the growth of hardy fodder in soil fertilized by ashes. But this year the fire broke out wildly consuming hundreds of thousands of pines known as Chir which resulted into the regional protest by people in the Himalayan Foothills forcing the British Government to abandon the newly established reserved forests.
>From 1920 onwards the population growth increased steadily, particularly in the lowlands. Timber was transported from the hills to the lowlands where it was a great demand for energy and construction. Very often it was auctioned even before it is felled. The forest officials closed their eyes towards this slipshod (Slipshod means without any authorisation and recklessly) felling and the inclination of the contractors to fell the timber even where it has not been marked. Infact they even exercised strict police powers in dealing with the local people like destroying sickles which women used to cut branches and meted out with severe punishment even for petty offences. Further, successful contractors appointed the workforce for a low wage from outside places in place of the resident population. This phenomenon resulted into very costly for the ecology, economy and residents especially.
The significance of forests on environment and society is first recognized primarily by the women in India when the deforestation was taking place in the Himalayan Mountains of India where the forests are logged excessively. The Chipko Movement was a revolutionary step adopted to save Himalayan ecology and society from deforestation. Women, the badly effected class due to deforestation, were simply the strongest, dedicated and the active participants in this movement. Infact, besides environmental movement it was a women?s movement where a women played a vital role within the Chipko Movement against the State for more promising logging and forestry policies so that both the Himalayan environment and society are protected.
Devoid of good forests in England, the British realized the commercial value of Indian Forests and attempted to hold rigid control over them. Accordingly, the Governor General, Lord Dalhousie issued a memorandum on forest conservation called the charter of Indian Forests through which he suggested that the teak, timber, etc be as State Property and its trade be strictly regulated. This paved the beginning for a systematic forest policy of 1855.
During 1856, the Forest Department was established and the first Forest Act was legislated under the guidance of Dietrich Brandis, a German Botanist, the first Inspector General of Forests. He made a record of trees in India and classified them. In 1865, the first Act for the regulation of forests was passed. It gave the power to the government to declare all lands covered with trees and or brushwood as government forest and to make rules to manage them. This Act is applicable only to all the forests which are under the government control which made no provision for the rights of the users.
The Act of 1865 was replaced by a more comprehensive Indian Forest Act of 1878 which divided forests into protected forests, reserved forests and village forests. Several restrictions were imposed upon the people?s rights over the forest land and produce in the protected and reserved forests. Further, the Act empowered the local government to impose duty on timber produced in British India or brought from any other place whereby encouraging them to earn revenue from forests. Infact, this Act radically changed the common property into State property. It then resulted into protests which fuelled a wide ranging debate on the reform of forest policy, to make it more democratic and accountable and into argument that State-citizen relations in the realm of forestry have gone through four overlapping stages: conflict, conversation, negotiation, and abrogation.
The government declared its forest policy by a resolution on 19th October, 1894 which stressed on State control over forests and the need to exploit forests for augmenting state revenue. This resulted into the enactment of Indian Forest Act of 1927 replacing the earlier Act of 1878 which includes all the major provisions of the earlier Act, extending it to include those relating to the duty of timber, which is still in force together with several amendments made by State Governments with the enactment of the Government of India Act, 1935, giving a clear emphasis on the revenue yielding aspect of forests.
Historically, the Indian Himalayan region which was under the control of foreigners, especially Britishers and Germans, since 1855, used to produce lumber for railroads. Further, the then government nationalized one-fifth of the total forest area and enacted legislation in this regard. To make things still worse, the Indian Forests Act of 1878 restricted the peasant access to those forest areas not deemed commercially economical and sanctions were levied on those who violated such restrictions. As a step forward, the Forest department passed an order to excavate the complete forest land area, mainly by cutting down the ash trees, to utilise the same for commercial purposes. This approach developed the revolutionary attitude among the Himalayan residents, mainly one person called Shri Chandi Prasad Bhatt, leader of Dasholi Gram Swarajya Sangh, who had been converted to the idea of Sarvodaya by Sunderlal Bahuguna some years earlier suggested to hug the trees when the fellers came to cut down of trees. Particulary women and their children hugged the trees to prevent them from felling thereby giving birth to Chipko Movement in 1973.
The Chipko Movement - a green venture started by Shri Sunderlal Bahuguna, Leader of Sarvodaya Movement, in the first half of 1973 in the area of Uttarkhand in Uttarpradesh comprising of eight Himalayan districts which is rich in natural resources exploited by the outsiders paving way to deforestation. Infact, the state managed Forest Department used the most of the forests for timber showing no attention towards the employment and welfare of the local people and towards serious ecological damage arising out of such deforestation. This seriously had a negative impact on economic and social conditions in the Himalayan region. The most affected are the local people, mainly the women. In this movement especially the women hugged the trees by interposing their bodies between the trees and the contractor?s axes.
The advent of independence and the dawn of the princely states unfortunately accelerated the deforestation in the Himalayan region. The formulation of new guiding principles towards economic growth and development made the government to extract natural resources on an unreasonable scale which even exceeded to that of the colonial era which badly effected the conditions for forest ecosystems and destabilized the hill communities. Further, end of the border war between China and India in 1962 resulted in the construction of roads by logging many trees in the forests though initially accepted by the local people for the employment, these infrastructure projects are created but had a considerable adverse impact on the hill society that remains in effect even today. These negative impacts on the Himalayan ecology and society resulted in further growth and success of the Chipko Movement against deforestation.
Inspired from Chipko Movement, many popular movements developed with an objective to protect and manage natural resources for the benefit of the rural population in many parts in India. In Bihar and Gujarat, these movements arose to revolt against conversion of natural forests to teak plantations, a move which deprived the indigenous forest-dwelling Adivasi people of their only resource base. Further, in Karnataka, the Appiko Movement arose when the forest service did nothing to stop the activities of the contractors who were felling 35 trees per hectare instead of the stipulated 2 per hectare.
After independence, the Constitution of India adopted a number of provisions from the Government of India Act of 1935 and retained forest as a state subject in the 7th schedule. The National Forest Policy Resolution adopted by the government in 1952 stressed that the forest policy shall be on national needs but not on commerce, industry and revenue. For the first time, the resolution highlighted on the ecological and social aspects of forest management. But this remained as a pious declaration without any execution.
The Ministry of Forest was initially a part of the Ministry of Agriculture which the National Commission on Agriculture treated it as such. The National Commission supported the commercialization of forests giving no importance to the survival of adivasi and other forest dwelling communities because it is on the strong belief that they have not contributed much towards the maintenance or development of forests and so they don?t have the right to expect that somebody else provide them with the forest produce with free of charge. Further, the commission recommended that the revised National Forest Policy be formulated basing on the important needs of the country, the forest lands be bifurcated into protection forests, production forests and social forests giving high priority to production forests and least to social forests, with the object that the forest management be that each hectare of forest land shall be in a position to yield a net income of many more times than is being obtained at present. For this purpose it further recommended to the revision of all India Forest Acts.
In 1985, the Forest Department was shifted from the Ministry of Agriculture to the Ministry of Environment and Forests thereby changing the emphasis from revenue to environmental concerns. In December, 1988, the Parliament passed a new forest policy resolution called the National Forest Policy, 1988 rejecting the recommendations of the National Commission and emphasizing on the welfare of the adivasis and other forest dwelling communities. As per this policy, the survival of adivasis and other forest dwelling communities revolves within and near the forests which is to be fully protected. But in spite of this resolution which was a pro-tribal policy, the old Act of 1927 with all the subsequent amendments remained unchanged.
In 1994, the Ministry of Environment and Forests prepared a draft of the new bill called the Conservation of Forests and Natural Eco-Systems Bill, 1994 to replace the Indian Forests Act, 1927 which generated a lot of debate on it. Infact, a number of voluntary organizations presented an alternate draft and submitted it to the Ministry of Environment and Forest. The bill was not presented to the Parliament and the old Forest Act, 1927 with all its subsequent amendments is still in operation.
Some salient features of the draft bill prepared by Voluntary Organizations are as follows:

Preamble has been expanded to include the objectives of meeting the basic needs of the people, especially fuel-wood, fodder and small timber for rural and tribal people and maintaining the intrinsic relationship between forests and the tribal and other poor people living in and around forests by protecting their customary rights and concessions on forests as laid down in the National Forest Policy Resolutions 1998.
Definition of Gramsabha, Resident, Community and monoculture have been added.
In place of Forest Settlement Officer, Forest Settlement Board has been suggested with its composition and thereafter Forest Settlement Board has replaced the Forest Settlement Officer.
References to practice of Shifting Cultivation in Chapter 11 on Reserved Forests, Chapter ?III on Protected Forest and Chapter V on the Conservation of Forest and Lands, not being the Property of Government has been deleted and a separate Chapter 4A on Shifting Cultivation has been added.
Rules for the publication of notice to constitute a Reserved Forest or a protected Forest have been explained in detail.
The Provisions of penalize the entire community by taking away its right to pasturage or to forest produce in case of willfully caused fire etc. have been deleted.
Procedure of formation of Village Forests, and in particular constitution of Village Forests committees has been elaborated in detail and their powers expanded.
The powers of management have been given to the State Forest Committee instead of the Forest Officer.
The constitution of Urban Tree Authority has been changed and the formation of Urban Forest Committees has been suggested.
The constitution of Central Forest Policy and Law Monitoring Committee has been amended. A new committee called State Forest Policy and Law Monitoring Committee (in brief Central Forest committee) has been suggested and the powers Forest Officers have been made subject the control of State Forest Committee.
New Committees called District Forest Committee have been suggested at the District level and the major decisions relating to the forest in the District have been made subject to their sanction.
It has been specifically mentioned that the Act will be extended to the States in the North East India and the scheduled areas only after necessary amendments have been made.

All these and other amendments have been suggested to encourage the preservation and development of the forest more participatory and effective and to achieve the main objective of Forest Policy Resolution 1988 of creating a massive people?s movement with the involvement of women, for achieving these objectives and to minimize pressure on existing forest.
Source : forestlegislation.pdf
Environmental deterioration and the fall of the great forests increased the natural disasters. Commercial contractors from the plains carried out on large scale the extraction of natural resources like timber, limestone, magnesium, and potassium by unreasonable means like blasting mountainsides, clear cut forests, excavated quarries, etc. and consumed the resources for their own corporate needs. This resulted in massive disruptions of the fragile Himalayan ecology, flooding and landslides claimed more victims and caused extensive damage. This massive destruction of Himalayan ecology, flooding and landslides claimed more victims and caused extensive damage like in 1970 the Alaknanda river flooded destroying many homes and killing hundreds, in 1978 the yamuna river floods had their origins in the erosin and in 1977 the landslides in Pithoragarh district resulted in falling rocks killing 44 people and ruined 150 acres of land. These unbearable conditions and loss of life resulted in revolution among Himalayan residents, particularly women, who holded Chipko Movement as a weapon in their hands to protect and safeguard the Himalayan Ecology from further deterioration.
The areas of conflict between the forest departments and tribals and other forest dwelling communities living within and near forests are many. Some of the important ones? are discussed here. Encroachments on forest lands where a number of lands under the jurisdiction of the Forest Department are in actual possession of the people whose occupancy was being regularized from time to time in different states. But in some areas the orders of regularization are not properly implemented by the forest departments because they were reluctant to part with the forest lands under their jurisdiction. Infact, though there is no bar to the extent of issue of regularization orders till the promulgation of the Forest (Conservation) Ordinance passed in 1980 which made impossible to issue any orders in the future. Attempts to evict tribal households from forests and the removal of encroachments resulted into severe and violent clashes between the people, police and forest officials. Further, the projects, pertaining to construction of dams, defence, industrial complexes in both public and private sectors for habitation and cultivation, also resulted into the eviction of tribal households from forests lands. Being the rehabilitation plans for the evicted tribal people are poorly implemented they refused to vacate the forest lands due to lack of other source of livelihood inspite of severe oppression from and the law which is on the side of the officials.
Infact, the earlier accomplishments through adopting the strategy of ?Chipko? encouraged the villagers to demand for consultative and democratic management of shared resources, greater accountability and environmental sensitive development. Through this approach, villagers also learned the value of their own forests and the need to protect and preserve them. Thus, the scope of the movement widened dealing with different issues that came to existence towards environment and society. Dasholi Gram Swarajya Mandal (DGSM) is one such voluntary organization led by Shri Chandi Prasad Bhatt which combine local participation with developmental activities. It was an organization worked against logging of forests and the state decision to allocate forest resources to a sporting good factory at the expense of the local enterprise. It is an active participant in the development programs such as social forestry and in the Chipko Movement which has become replica for grass-roots environmental actions. These movements infact have shaken the Apex Court resulting in the amendment of the law of land to prevent, protect and safeguard the environment from hazardous environmental degradation.
In the words of Shri Chandi Prasad Bhatt, the movement strives for ?Judicious use of the trees? and not the ?Saving trees?. People in the plains are alone eligible for the products of our forests. Their struggle for survival gave them the management of their forests. He was a strong believer that the people be well off in their existence if the forests are managed by those who dwell in them.
The Chipko Movement played a vital role for growing environmental activism which had an impact on moulding Village Cultures towards environment protection. This is illustrated by the tree planting ceremony of the Maiti. As per this ceremony when a Maiti girl gets married, the other girls get saplings from the nursery to plant near the bride?s house. Further, the bride gives a sapling to the groom to plant it while the Brahmin chants the sacred verses. The Maiti tree has a special meaning to the bride and her family. This new tradition which expanded to 500 villages, blended with the culture without any large investment where the women of Uttarkhand played a key role in making this cultural movement a great success to preserve diversity and to protect the natural heritage of the Himalayas.
Chipko was quite successful in influencing government policy at both centre and state level. After multiple bans had been ordered on green felling in various regional forests, in 1980?s this movement targetted a great victory when Smt. Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, ordered a complete fifteen year ban on cutting down of trees above 1000 meters in the Himalayan forests which was further extended to the forests of Western Ghats and Vindhyas. This created a pressure for a Natural Resources Policy to meet the people?s and ecological requirements. The movement took its foot steps to Himachal Pradesh in the North, Karnataka in the South, Rajasthan in the West, Bihar in the East and to the Vindhyas in Central India.
The active participants in this movement were primarily village women who fought for their livelihood and communities. Men were also involved too where some of them rouse as great leaders of this movement like Shri Sunderlal Bahuguna, Shri Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Shri Dhoom Singh Negi, Shri Ghanasyam Raturi and Shri Indu Tikeker. Shri Sunderlal Bahuguna, a Gandhian activist and philosopher, is a prominent man whose appeal to Smt. Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, resulted in the green felling ban and whose trans Himalayan footmarch upto 5000 kilometres in 1982-83 helped in spreading the Chipko Movement. He is the person who coined the Chipko Slogan ?Ecology is permanent economy?, Shri Chand Prasad Bhatt, one of the earliest Chipko activists, who nurtured locally based industries for conservation and sustainable use of forest wealth for local benefit, Shri Dhoom Singh Negi alongwith Bachni Devi and many village women first protected the trees from logging by hugging them and coined the slogan ??what do the forests bear? Soil, water and pure air.?, Shri Ghanasyam Raturi, the Chipko poet, whose songs echo throughtout the Himalaya of Uttar Pradesh and Shri Indu Tikekar, a doctor of philosophy, whose spiritual discourses throughout India on the ancient Sanskrit scriptures and on comparative religion have stressed the unity and oneness of life and placed the Chipko Movement in this context. The prominent women leaders were Ms.Gauri Devi and Ms.Ganga Devi who formed vigilance parties to act as a watchdog on the axemen to protect the Reni forest from deforestation. Infact, the women of this movement were very strong willed, very creative and extremely empowered to protect the forests from deforestation even at the cost of their husbands and their lives. The women participation in the Chipko Movement not only protected the ecology and environment but also developed the world?s consciousness on environmental aspects.
Infact, the Chipko Movement inspired Ms.Vandana Shiva for the development of a new theory called as ?Ecofeminism? which specifically explains the link between the women and the ecology. It inspired for development of literatures and discussions on ?Women and Ecology? which were in great demand in the market. To be more clear, Vandana Shiva?s Ecofeminist Movement brought imperialism inscribed in the colonial practices, into the center of the Environmentalist debate.
Gaining moral support from the Chipko Movement, another environmentalist movement called Narmada Bachao Andolan led by Medha Patkar gathered popularity globally. It is the Narmada campaign which is to protect Narmada river against the construction of various dams on it in the state of Gujarat. However, it?s main objective is to protect the rights of the people whose villages and livelihood will be submerged in the process of construction of dams on the Narmada river. The people strongly believe the proposal to construct such dams is unjust, iniquitous and the cost-benefit analysis is grossly inflated in favor of building the dams on Narmada River. Further they also believe that they are many other suitable alternative(s) to provide water and energy to the residents of the Narmada Valley, Gujarat and other regions which are expected to be socially just and, economically and environmentally sustainable.
In India, the collective movements connected with indigenous rights predate the Global Non-Governmental Organizations. Environmental activism in India is in the forefront of organizing movements for alternative ways of life because it became vital for the Britishers to make progress. It has been critical of the colonial imperative of progress, manifested in the commercialization of natural resources and the use of seemingly retrogressive modes of organization of land and collection of revenues that broke the backbone of the peasantry.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which are strong supporters of Chipko Movements are increasing their influence on global and national forest policy. The functions of the NGOs are from promotion of wilderness protection and land purchase, through campaigning on issues such as old-growth forest logging and pesticides use, to the development of the coherent vision of forest stewardship. They are linked to the environmental existence being many ecosystems are undergoing an apparently inexorable degradation that Post-World War II worsened this situation and further the centralized governments rarely have the long term proposals to cater the needs of the local people. Forest NGOs are actively participating in the role of ?environmental conscience? helping in identification and publicizing threats to both the ecology and society. It?s work received appreciation from both the Government and by those people who had a negative approach towards the work of NGOs in the past. Concerted action of the NGOs on the particular issue is capable to drag towards global attention. The growth of the modern environmental movements, following Stockholm Conference in 1973 observed many NGOs involving in high spirits against logging in natural forests, large scale dam construction, the use of pesticides and intensive forest management.
During 1990 NGOs nature of activity has been changed in different aspects like recognition has been increased that temperate and boreal forests are facing the serious environmental problems though the concentration is on the quality of the forests as the area under the trees. Further the participation is also more in restricting the logging for roads and occupation for offices. The entry of Greenpeace into the international forest debate through a series of high profile operations in British Columbia, Kare has drawn global attention to issues that were previously of only local concern and has increased direct action. More recently, some international networks are formed to work as liaison bodies between different NGOs, large and small, including Taiga Rescue Network in Boreal region and the Native Forests Network throughout the temperate countries. Infact, The 1992 Earth Summit and the subsequent spate of forest initiatives like Intergovernmental panel of Forests, World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development regional criteria and indicator initiatives all provided fora for NGOs to engage with governments and intergovernmental bodies.
The movement of Chipko Movement was carried on and became successful mainly through Public Interest Litigations. It resorted to demonstrations, pickets and letter-writing campaigns to draw public attention for the objective it was striving for and on the state of affairs it felt unjust and felt the need to reform for the benefit both in terms of environment and society. Tehri Bandh Virodhi Sangharsh Samiti campaigned against environmental degradation and loss of habitat for nearly 10 million people. Sastra Sahitya Parishad in the Kerala State was instrumental in the final giving up of a proposed hydo-electric project which would have drowned a rare rain forests known as Silent Valley.
Infact, Human rights is the basis for much of the work in which the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) or Social Action Litigation groups are involved in. Thus, Public Interest Litigation groups are litigated around rights where much of the research was done around rights and the law reform is based on the superior recognition of rights. Infact, the alternative tribunals tried to adjudicate on principles of rights. PIL was proved to be successful being it became a boom to the civil society for active participation in questioning public decision making, including decisions on political structure and democratic space. It became a weapon in the hands of the civilians to challenge and bring a change in the major public policy decisions and ca

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