Significance of Traditional Practices and Indigenous Institutions in Forest Management: A Case Study from India

Abstract

"Forest management has been in the tradition of indigenous communities and gets reflected in their traditional knowledge base through their diverse forest dependence, product utilization and management practices. In India too the indigenous populace had various management and utilization practices developed as a result of constant interaction and dependence on the resource. Their long standing experience ensured a common understanding and mutual trust in the communities, which could be termed as social capital. But this capital got eroded as the link between man and forest was broken by the adoption of policy of exclusive management in India for more than 150 years. Once again an attempt to involve communities in resource management is being made through programs like Joint Forest Management. But the common experience is that the program has varying quality of implementation as well as acceptability by the targeted communities. In this paper we present two case studies of indigenous communities from Gadchiroli district in Maharashtra State of India. Although both communities have homogenous indigenous population, high resource dependence and abundance of resource, the two have demonstrated varying degree of enthusiasm in collective action. The experiences of the two communities bring out the fact that though it is possible to revive dormant social capital, it may not be possible for the communities to do it all by themselves. A supportive role played by government agencies or non- governmental organisations may become essential for initiating collective action and/or for ensuring its sustainability."