Drying money plants

Gokawadi village, about 65 km from Pune, is one of the 1,75,000 villages in India that lies on the edge of a forest. It8217;s also one of t...

Gokawadi village, about 65 km from Pune, is one of the 1,75,000 villages in India that lies on the edge of a forest. It8217;s also one of the 55,000 villages under the Joint Forest Management programme that began in 1997. Now in the programme8217;s seventh year, Gokawadi shows the greening power of a community.

Villagers8217; participation in protection of forests that began with the backing of the forest department, was first floated by politician-turned-envrionmentalist Mohan Dharia.

Dharia suggested the plan to the government in 1991. It was accepted by the Janata government then headed by V P Singh and finally took off in 1997.

Under the programme, Gokawadi comes under a 30 year scheme that ends in 2027. Villagers are given the responsibility of guarding their forest from illegal felling, grazing and encroachment.

THERE are rewards for guarding the forest. The village community can auction non-timber trees once they reach maturity or plant fruit-bearing trees. The money from the auction is divided between the village and the forest department. This income is meant for community development.

At the launch of this scheme, the forest department gives Rs 1 lakh as incentive, which the villagers can spend on any community project. So, the villagers of Gokawadi bought utensils, pandal material, loudspeakers and storage tanks which they rent out for weddings and earn up to Rs 30,000 every year.

The objective of the JFM is also to jointly draw up a microplan for improving village infrastructure as well as afforestation. Gokawadi was chosen because of its successful watershed development programme under which contouring on the hill slopes, making of earthen and stone bunds and percolation tanks had augmented the water level of the village.

And the results of the JFM are visible. Before the programme was launched, villagers would cut trees and let their cattle graze in the forest. That8217;s all in the past now.

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Gokawadi has 90 hectares of forest land in its periphery that comes under the JFM. The area was turning barren. According to Krishna Bandal, a village member of the JFM, 8216;8216;About 120 villagers worked for three months, digging pits the undersoil is rocky here so the rainwater does not percolate and planted 10,000 trees.8217;8217;

Village Voice

The man behind Maharashtra8217;s increasing community participation in forest projects is longtime politician Mohan Dharia. Dharia left the Congress post-emergency and left politics in 1982. He then formed Vanrai, an environmental organisation, with the aim to make villages self-reliant. He was awarded the Padmavibhushan this year.
The former union minister also served as the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. He successfully persuaded the central government to set up the National Wasteland Development Board NWDB for greening wastelands. He headed the committee for use of wastelands which culminated in the Joint Forest Management JFM Scheme. It has been adopted in 55,000 villages all over India.
Vanrai has also undertaken watershed development programme in rural Maharashtra in 200 villages, building cost effective Vanrai bunds. By 2004, one lakh bunds came up all over Maharashtra. Dharia has also taken the initiative to save the hills of Pune from turning into mountains of concrete.

BUT there are patches of brown in this green. After the initial tree planting drive there have been none. At the beginning of the programme, the workplan showed a budget of Rs 4.75 lakh for five years with Rs 4.54 lakh coming from the Maharashtra Forestry Project World Band-aided project and the balance from other forest schemes. According to the villagers, the funding hasn8217;t come yet.

Even as far as guarding tress is concerned, success has come with failures. Says Pandurang Pawar, a resident of Gokawadi: 8216;8216;Until now at least 5,000 sandalwood trees have been cut.8217;8217;

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The Forest Department has registered four cases since 2000. Sub-divisional forest officer, Bhor Division, A N Pawar says: 8216;8216;While the villagers are alert, inadequacy of men and ammunition in our department makes the exercise a failure.8217;8217;

While the enthusiasm of the Gokawadi villagers in catching poachers has been appreciated with the forest department gifting it a cheque of Rs 10,000 for temple renovation, Pawar makes the point that 8216;8216;to sustain the interest of villagers, monetary benefit is crucial.8217;8217;

In Gokawadi, there has been no auction of trees ever since the JFM programme was launched and so no money came to the villages. Without the money, it could be a stunted growth for this partnership.