Nagpur: With forest governance undergoing transformation, the Maharashtra forest department has decided to present an exclusive and rigid working plan into an inclusive, live, vibrant, and responsive document. For over a century, the working plan has been the sacred document for forest management.
Talking to TOI, Praveen Srivastava, PCCF (production & management), said, forest governance has undergone a transformation with the enactment of the Forest Rights Act (FRA). Recent denotification of bamboo from the category of notified forest produce from the Indian Forest Act (IFA) was yet another jolt in the sequence of shaking forest governance.
Srivastava said though the National Working Plan Code (NWPC) 2014 attempted to make this document more science and technology-centric, besides assimilating emerging trends of biodiversity, ecotourism, carbon assessment and trees outside forests, ironically, most of these changes continued to remain on paper, and little translated on to the ground. Capturing of concerns of people critically was missing.
“There is a strong reason to introspect as to how far forest governance sans people concerns remain relevant? Ideas like ‘We the people’, the guiding light of our constitution did not impact the existing statutes even after seven decades,” he said.
Srivastava added that forest governance remained equally untouched. Apathy towards concern for people at large and their representatives already is showing itself in commensurate apathetic response from policy-makers. No policy indifferent to people nor any institution insensitive to popular aspirations may have any future in democratic governance.
“It is with this background that an attempt is being made to transform the present exclusive, rigid working plans into the responsive document. The trigger certainly was the ongoing unsettled conflict between the forest department and tribal community,” the PCCF said.
Taking a cue from a successful experiment in Baripada in Dhule, where the Joint Forest Management (JFM) under Chaitram Pawar has worked wonders, Srivastava said, “Baripada is a live example of pro-active efforts of JFM coupled with soil and water conservation works undertaken by the forest department has resulted not only in augmenting forest density but also rising water table in agrarian fields.”
In order to assimilate popular aspirations, now the working plans will also include a chapter wherein the gist of all legislative assembly and council questions, response by the forest department, findings and observations of assembly and parliamentary committees about the issues related to the forest divisions concerned would be captured.
“This would help assimilate concerns of people in a systematic manner the credible document. Also, it has been decided that a meeting would be arranged with the local representatives, including MLAs, MLCs, and MPs before writing the working plan and after completing it. This would ensure internalization of people concerns as well as help in educating about the working of the forest department to people at large,” said Srivastava.
“Future working plans would be more grounded in terms of their connectivity with the people. Prime intent remains to strive to adapt the basic document in sync with the constitutionally mandated principles which so far had eluded in the past,” he stressed.