Redefining community–state partnership in natural resource management: a case from India

Abstract

This article examines the role of the state in the Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme in the northern province of Haryana in India. In the past two decades, significant developments pertaining to institutional reforms in promoting community–state partnerships in protecting and managing forests have been undertaken in the province. By reviewing the experiences in management of water-harvesting structures and lease of forest area to local communities, the article demonstrates that the adoption of ‘joint management’ rhetoric does not guarantee successful partnerships at the field level. The implementation of the programme calls for a radical redefinition of the role of the state in order to establish credible commitments to the local communities in terms of both policy and practice.

Umar Shankar Vashisht is a retired forest officer and consultant to TERI. Besides working in his capacity as government official, he has more than 20 years' experience of working with village communities on Joint Forest Management projects in Haryana.

Chetan Kumar is a Research Associate with the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), a non-profit organisation based in Delhi, and was at the time of writing on study leave at the University of Cambridge in the UK. He has worked extensively with village communities in India on various projects related to community-based natural resource management using participatory methods. E-mail: [email protected].

Notes

Umar Shankar Vashisht is a retired forest officer and consultant to TERI. Besides working in his capacity as government official, he has more than 20 years' experience of working with village communities on Joint Forest Management projects in Haryana.

Chetan Kumar is a Research Associate with the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), a non-profit organisation based in Delhi, and was at the time of writing on study leave at the University of Cambridge in the UK. He has worked extensively with village communities in India on various projects related to community-based natural resource management using participatory methods. E-mail: [email protected].

Chetan Kumar is a Research Associate with the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), a non-profit organisation based in Delhi, and was at the time of writing on study leave at the University of Cambridge in the UK. He has worked extensively with village communities in India on various projects related to community-based natural resource management using participatory methods. E-mail: [email protected].

The term ‘community’ is hotly contested in the literature on community-based natural resource management (Agrawal and Gibson 1999). For the purposes of this article, however, the term is used in the general sense of local populations.

In the federal structure, the sub-national administrative entities in India are called states. To avoid confusion with the term ‘state’, we refer to these as provinces. The forests fall under the concurrent list of the Indian Constitution, according to which, while the jurisdiction over forests lies with the provincial governments, this is within the larger framework of policy guidelines issued by the federal government.

The state controls 23 per cent of India's land area (about 75 million ha).

In 1990, with the support from the Delhi office of the Ford Foundation, a National Support Centre for the JFM programme in Haryana was set up, the main activities of which were to provide support to the forest department and villagers in managing the programme. A non-profit organisation was appointed as the facilitating agency, which helped in implementing the programme.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chetan Kumar *