Community Forest Management in Colonial and Postcolonial South India: Policy and Practice

Abstract

In the past two decades, South Asia has undergone robust reforms in the forestry sector which claim to be initiating a transformation from state-centric to people-centric forest management. This shift is perceived as an important move towards decolonisation in governance processes in India. Examining the forest policies in colonial and postcolonial South India, this article finds, however, that community forest management in postcolonial India remains substantially rooted in the colonial framework of forest resource management policies. In practice, this means that exploitation of forests gives some consideration to the requirements of forest-dependent communities today, but does so now under the control of a state that fails to protect the most basic rights of many of its most vulnerable citizens. The article thus argues critically that supposedly people-centric community forest management in India is not sensitive enough to local development needs, nor indeed sufficiently protective of the basic needs of many forest-dependent people.