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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Forest of problems
-The Business Standard

MSP for forest produce may not work

The government’s proposal to set up a minimum support price (MSP) commission to fix assured prices for minor forest produce has pros as well as cons, which need to be weighed carefully before a final call is taken. The proposal envisages the forest MSP panel as having its own elaborate establishment, allowing it to set minimum prices for non-timber forest produce while taking into account various criteria, including the minimum wages paid under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The commission will also identify cooperatives and other agencies in each state that will procure the items. Certainly, the idea’s objective – to improve the earnings of forest produce gatherers, mostly members of the Scheduled Tribes – is laudable. Most forest produce, including much-in-demand items like bamboo, tamarind, tendu leaves, mahua, sal seeds and medicinal herbs, is cornered from its traditional gatherers by local contractors who pay them ridiculously low prices. Continual economic exploitation of forest-dependent people is a key factor in the strength of left-wing extremism in such areas.

However, the system being suggested for this purpose is unlikely to effectively serve these objectives. Remember, the MSPs fixed by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices for a score of crops remain largely on paper, except in the case of rice and wheat in a handful of states. If the Food Corporation of India and the state marketing federations, both with extensive infrastructure, are unable to provide effective price support for field crops, it would be futile to expect far smaller agencies to do so for forest produce, given their limited resources, infrastructure and expertise. Indeed, a similar arrangement tried out in Madhya Pradesh, the country’s most forested state, showed unsatisfactory results. The state’s minor forest produce cooperative federation wound up procuring so little at the MSP that it had no impact on the market and overall prices.

This aside, legal issues could also potentially derail the government’s plans. The custodianship of forest produce and the government’s access to forest dwellers are governed by at least three statutes – the Indian Forest Act (1927), the Forest Rights Act (2006) and the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (1996) – which have mutually divergent, if not wholly contradictory, provisions. This mismatch is often used by forest officials, who actually control the forests, to obstruct both forest-dwelling Scheduled Tribes and Gram Sabhas from villages on the margin from exercising their due rights over the forests’ bounty. Given such complications and doubts over the effectiveness of the new system, the government would be well advised to let its proposal be thoroughly debated and, if need be, suitably modified before actually implementing it.