A group of lumberjacks who came with their axes to chop down the trees was stopped by villagers in the Alaknanda Valley. These villagers hugged the trees, despite being threatened, and did not let the loggers proceed with their task. The movement was headed by Sundarlal Bahugana in 1973 and came to be known as the famous Chipko(to embrace/tree hugging) Andolan(movement).
This movement was on a vast scale, with women at the nucleus, as they were most directly affected by the lack of firewood caused by the felling of trees. Chipko Andolan brought the issue deforestation to the public attention. It is at this outset that a critical inquiry into the New Forest Policy of 2018 needs to be looked into.
The National Forest Policy of 2018 can be mainly looked into through two dimensions, one being the Natural side of the forest which includes the multi-layered ecosystem and a landscaped home to 80% of all terrestrial biodiversity, where thousands of species of plants, animals, and micro-organisms thrive and interact. The other being the human side of the forest.
The 1988 policy had sections called ‘Rights and Concessions’ and ‘Tribal People and Forests’, both of which have been replaced by ‘Production Forestry’ which seeks to increase the productivity of forest plantations’ and facilitate forest industry interface. All of which focus on increasing the timber yield as per the latest National Forest Policy of 2018. The draft stresses the “need to stimulate growth in the forest-based industry sector” and encourages forest corporations and industrial units to “step up growing of industrial plantations”.
The 2018 draft aims to use degraded land available with forest corporations to produce “quality timber” and proposes a public-private partnership model for afforestation in “degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests”. Worse, the document also recommends “commercially important species like poplar and eucalyptus”, both known to be water-intensive species with deep root systems that deplete groundwater. The policy’s introduction of timber as a commodity of privatized interest reads as below –
The productivity of the forest plantations is poor in most of the States. This will be addressed by intensive scientific management of forest plantations of commercially important species like teak, sal, sisham, poplar, gmelina, eucalyptus, casuarina, bamboo etc. The lands available with the forest corporations which are degraded & underutilized will be managed to produce quality timber with scientific interventions. Public-private participation models will be developed for undertaking Afforestation and reforestation activities in degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests.
This sort of sensationalizing of one particular commodity is highly fetishistic in nature, and its underpinnings can be better delved into by looking back at what Marx had predicted through his economics and philosophical writings–
A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. So far as it is a value in use, there is nothing mysterious about it, whether we consider it from the point of view that by its properties it is capable of satisfying human wants, or from the point that those properties are the product of human labour. It is as clear as noon-day, that man, by his industry, changes the forms of the materials furnished by Nature, in such a way as to make them useful to him. The form of wood, for instance, is altered, by making a table out of it. Yet, for all that, the table continues to be that common, every-day thing, wood. But, so soon as it steps forth as a commodity, it is changed into something transcendent. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than “table-turning” ever was.
Hence, it can be concluded that this policy raises more questions than it answers. It remains to be seen how these objectives shall be achieved, considering the competitive demands for forestlands. After all, the planet as we know of today has been marred by a lot of disastrous events which happen to be the consequence of ecological imbalance. But even this knowledge does not help in coping with the destruction caused by natural disasters, and people go about living their lives comfortably, without acknowledging the negative impact on the natural environment.