Effects of Forest Act on Lives of People

EFFECTS OF FOREST ACT ON LIVES OF PEOPLE:

The forest Act meant extreme hardship for and forest people across the country. Villagers could not take anything from these forests for their own use. For house building or fuel, they could take wood from protected or village forests.

Villagers wanted forests to satisfy different needs like fuel, fodder, leaves, etc.

The Forest department wanted trees for building ships and for these purposes; they needed particular species like teak and sal. So these species were promoted and other species of trees had been cut down.

After the Forest Act, cutting wood for homes, collection of fuel wood, grazing the cattles , collecting fruits and roots, hunting and fishing all became illegal. Forest guards take the bribes from the people if they were caught while stealing wood from forest.

Products from forests: In forest areas, people use many forest products as food or as medicine. They use roots, leaves, fruits, tubers etc for many things.

Fruits and tubers are nutritious to eat, especially during the monsoons before the harvest has come in.

Herbs are used for medicine, wood for agricultural Implements like yokes and ploughs, bamboo makes baskets and umbrellas. A dried scooped-out gourd can be used as a portable water bottle.

Almost everything is available in the forest. Leaves can be stitched together to make disposable plates and cups, the siadi (Bauhinia vahlii) creeper can be used to make ropes and the thorny bark of the semur (silk-cotton) tree is used to grate vegetables.

Cooking and to light lamps can be pressed from the fruit of the mahua (Madhuca indica) tree. Mahua flowers can be eaten or used to make alcohol.

Effect of Forest Rules on Cultivation: The major impact of forest laws was the ban on shifting cultivation or swidden agriculture.

In shifting cultivation, parts of the forest are cut and burnt in rotation. Seeds are sown in ashes after the first monsoon rain and the crops are harvested by October-November. Such plots are cultivated for a couple of years and then left fallow for 12 to 18 years for the forest to grow back. A mixture of crops is grown on these plots.

DEFINITION OF SHIFTING CULTIVATION: An area is cleared for cultivation for a period of time after that it left uncultivated so that it could gain fertility.

Note The shifting cultivation has many local names, like lading in South East Asia, milpa in Central America, chitemene or tavy in Africa, chena in Sri Lanka. In India also it has many local names like, dhya, penda, bewar, nevad, jhum, podu, khandad, Kumri, etc.

Banning of Shifting Cultivation:

European foresters regarded the practice of shifting cultivation was harmful for the forests. When a forest was burnt there was a danger of spreading flames and burning valuable timbers.

Shifting cultivation made it more difficult for the government to calculate taxes. So, the British Government decided to ban shifting cultivation. As a result, some communities were forcibly displaced from their homes. Some of them had to change their occupations, while some revolted against the law.

Taungya Cultivation: - It was a system in which local farmers were allowed to cultivate temporarily within a plantation. When the cultivators were sowing paddy, the men made holes in the soil using long bamboo poles with iron tips. The women sowed paddy in each hole.

PROHIBITION ON HUNTING AFTER FOREST ACT:

Before the forest laws, many people who lived in or near forests had survived by hunting deer, partridges and a variety of small animals. This practice of hunting was prohibited by the new forest law. Those who were caught hunting were punished. This illegal hunting was termed as poaching.

The forest law deprived the forest dwellers of their customary rights to hunt.

Under colonial rule, the scale of hunting increased largely and as a result many animals became almost extinct. The Britishers saw large animals as sign of wild, primitive and savage society. They believed that by killing dangerous animals they would civilize India. They gave rewards for the killings of tigers, wolves and other large animals so that there, would be no threat to cultivators.

Initially, certain areas of forests were conserved for hunting. Later, environmentalists and conservators begin to argue that all these species of animals needed to be protected and not killed.

NEW TRADES, NEW EMPLOYMENTS AND NEW SERVICES:

Due to control of forest department on forests, people suffered in many ways but some people benefited from the new opportunities that had opened up in trade. This happened not only in India but in the whole world. For example, due to growing demand of rubber, Mundurucu people of Brazilian Amazon began to collect latex from wild rubber trees for supplying to traders.

In India, trade in forest products was a regular practice from medieval periods on wards. After the arrival of Britishers, the trade for forest products was completely regulated.

British government gave sole right to large European trading firms to trade in forest products of particular areas. In this process, many pastoralist and nomadic communities of Madras Presidency like the Korava, Karacha and Yerukula lost their livelihoods. Some of them began to be called Criminal Tribes and were forced to work in factories, mines and plantations under government supervision.

Low Wages and Bad Working Conditions: New opportunities in trade of forest products did not improve the life of the people. Forest communities like Santhals, Oraons (Jharkhand) and Gonds (Chhattisgarh) were recruited to work on tea plantations in Assam, Their wages were low and working conditions were very bad. Also, they could not return to their home villages easily from where they had been recruited.

Rebellion in the Forest: - In many parts of India and across the world, forest communities rebelled against the changes that were being imposed on them. In India, Siddhu and Kanu of Santhal Paraganas, Birsa Munda of Chhotanagpur, Alluri Sitarama Raju of Andhra Pradesh who revolted against the new forest policy are still remembered today in many songs and stories.