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Village wins three-decade battle to sell bamboo by Jaideep Hardikar
Power comes through the barrel of a gun, Mao Zedong said. For Lekha-Mendha, though, such power seems rooted in bamboo.

The village in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli today became the first in India to win the right to grow, harvest and sell bamboo, a key goal of a five-year-old central law which aims to give tribal communities control over some resources of the jungles they live in.

“This is a historic day. Bamboo has been liberated (from government control),” saidUnion environment minister Jairam Ramesh as the forest department handed over the powers to issue permits over bamboo to the headman of the village, dominated by the Gondi tribals.

Chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, also present with several of his cabinet colleagues, echoed Ramesh. “This one’s not a small event. Your voice is bound to reach other forest villages in the country.” Old-timers in the area, which borders the Maoist-infested Bastar in Chhattisgarh, could not recall the last time a chief minister arrived with a VIP retinue as big.

“It took over three decades to get what is ours,” said Lekha-Mendha’s sexagenarian chief Devaji Tofa before he received the permits at the event. Then, thebespectacled leader rent the air with a slogan coined years ago: “Delhi-Mumbai mawa sarkar, mawa nate mate sarkar (We’ve our government in Delhi and Mumbai, but here in our village, we ourselves are the government).” The crowd of tribals chorused.

Mendha was being seen as a test case for tribals to get control of minor forest produce —the main aim of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, in short the forests rights act (FRA).

Earnings from minor forest produce — which includes bamboo and could later cover otheritems such as herbs and leaves — could top Rs 50,000 crore, says the Planning Commission.

The forest department had opposed the move. “Our main concern was that such sweeping powers could be misused by villagers leading to the degradationand overexploitation of bamboo forests,” said an official.

The first breakthrough came this January, when the Centre recognised bamboo as grass, not timber, something taxonomists and biologists have been sayingfor ages. Till then, the forest departments across the country had usedthe old classification to deny communities control over bamboo, arguingthat the Indian Forest Act, 1927, treated bamboo as a tree and, hence, it was not a minor forest produce.

Even last week, the principal chief conservator of forests (Maharashtra), Alok Joshi, said in a letter to the additional chief secretary (forests) that it would be illegal if village communities cut and sell bamboo from forestsunder the FRA without the prior permission. Joshi cited a provision in the forest conservation act of 1927 to drive home his point.

But Ramesh appeared to reject the argument outright today. “We can change the law, the rules, but it’s time we changed our mindset,” the Union minister said in an apparent snub to the forest officials. “There is no need to amend or make any other law to implement to give a community a right to harvest or sell bamboo under the FRA. It is a violation of law if any forest official is not giving the right to the villages that have been granted the community rights under the FRA and we will legally proceed against such officials,” he warned.

Chief minister Chavan worked over the past two months behind the scenes to convince the forest department to change its stand.

R.R. Patil, the Maharashtra home minister who oversees Gadchiroli as “guardian minister”, went a step further and said Tendu leaves too should be handed over to the villages. Tendu leaves are used to make bidis and wrappers.

Village head Tofa pledged to protect the forests. “Remember, with the power comes the responsibility. It’s now our responsibility to protect our forests.”