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Joint
Forest Management Site
Showing Treated & Untreated
Areas
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Central
Ministry of Environment & Forests, in their Joint Forest Management
(JFM) Scheme Guidelines of 1 June 1990, enjoined on all the State
Forest Departments to involve village communities and committed
NGOs and voluntary agencies in regenerating degraded forest lands
through participatory management. Rajasthan adopted the JFM scheme
in March 1991. Its salient features in Rajasthan are :
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Constitution
of "forest protection and management committees"
(FPC) in villages exercising rights over a particular patch
of forests for meeting their needs of fuel-wood, fodder
and timber. Its membership is open to one adult from each
household. It has to be registered with the local Deputy
Conservator of Forests or under the State Societies Registration
Act;
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Up
to 50 hectares of degraded forest land to be allotted to
each FPC for development and protection; natural forests
are outside the purview of JFM;
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Financial
help to FPC from : (a) grant-in-aid from the National Wastelands
Development Board; (b) financial institutions; (c ) industrial
houses, social institutions, etc.;(d) on-going programmes
of the Forest Department; and (e) from its own resources.
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Agreements
defining the rights and responsibilities of FPC and the
Forest Department to entered into by both the parties;
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60
percent of the revenue earned at final harvest, after deducting
government expenditure on plantation, to the share of FPC
members; Society will invest 50 percent of its share in
plantation. The people are entitle to non-timber forest
produce without sharing them with the Forest department.
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Major afforestation programmes in Rajasthan, like the Aravalli
Afforestation Project, are in accordance with JFM principle. More
than 1,000 FPCs have been set up to regenerate 50,000 hectares
(ha) of degraded forest land. However, there is a question mark
on the extent of people's actual participation in the programme.
The reasons for it are many The institutions like panchayats
do not inspire confidence as they mostly promote the interests
of rural elite and are heavily dependent on and subservient to
government machinery. The people are yet to organise themselves
to make panchayats and government accountable to them.
They are able only to exert pressure to meet their short -term
needs or in getting those things where consensus is easily generated,
e.g. , schools, roads etc. In the case of complex issues like
management of natural resources, sustainable land use etc. they
have been unable to exert adequate pressure.
A factor responsible for this lack of common action is, having
alienated vast tracts of land, government permitted their ad hoc
and selective privatisation under the pressure of electoral polity
and thus pre-empted the potential of collective action. It also
resulted in concentration of power in the hands of forest officials
and their agents from amongst the rural community. The overall
result was the fragmentation of village communities along a number
of social fault-lines, land relations (tenure and access to forest
lands) , social relations (ties of solidarity among village people
), power relations (degree of autonomy of villages institutions
and groups), etc. Thus, these communities are unable to effectively
respond to participatory approach to forest management and sustainable
land use. The prevailing conditions in our rural society also
impede meaningful people's participation in such projects. There
is the need to address the deeper causes attenuating the success
of the peoples participation in forest management in the south
eastern region of Rajasthan.
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