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Conference Paper Ensuring 'Collective Action' in 'Participatory' Forest Management(2004) Ghate, Rucha; Mehra, Deepshikha"After a decade and half since policy change in India, there are evidences that 'participatory' efforts in forestry are becoming acceptable at various levels of governance. Although community initiated and NGO promoted collective action based resource management has emerged sporadically throughout India in last 20 years, government has also come up with three subsequent resolutions related to joint forest management (JFM) since 1990, each more liberal than the earlier. "This paper is based on three case studies, each belonging to one of the three types of institutional structures: Self-initiated, NGO promoted, and government sponsored JFM. Despite similar basic objectives of all the three institutional structures i.e. strengthening the ecological security and meeting subsistence biomass needs of the local people, each institutional structure is different, with its strengths and weaknesses. If these factors can be identified it could have useful policy implications. The three case studies undertaken belong to similar eco-geographical area; have comparable forest area, and all the three communities with heterogeneous population belong to similar socio-economic background. The data has been collected by using International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) methodology, which helps combine the botanical information with the socio-economic information, with the help of ten research instruments. The study brings out the importance of autonomy for the communities to make decisions. Indigenously formed rules and conflict resolving mechanism are found not only to be more flexible and acceptable to the community, but also helpful in the development of mutual understanding, common norms i.e. in building social capital. Although both, the community-initiated and NGO promoted communities, have eventually adopted government sponsored JFM program because of the authenticity/legality that the program provides, the two have continued with the institutional provisions that were developed through their informal efforts. Thus, rather than oscillating between the simplistic models of either state or 'village community', there is a need to conceive of more complex arrangements in which forest areas are protected for multiple objectives, under the working of multiple institutions."Conference Paper Significance of Traditional Practices and Indigenous Institutions in Forest Management: A Case Study from India(2004) Mehra, Deepshikha; Ghate, Rucha"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."Conference Paper The Issue of Equity in Three Institutional Structures in India(2004) Ghate, Rucha"Management of forests by communities has completed a full circle in India. Beginning with 'forests under communal ownership' till 19th century, passing through 'state' ownership during and after the British era, once again the involvement of communities in resource management has come into practice. Real participation of communities as a result of participatory policy adopted by the Government of India varies from state to state and from 'name sake' or 'on paper' participation to decentralization of decision making in real sense. While de jure decentralization in forest management is less than 15 years old, in the form of Joint Forest Management (JFM) in India, there are instances of de facto community managed forests, initiated either by communities themselves or by non-governmental organizations (NGO). This paper is based on primary data collected from three case studies, each representing one of the three types of forest management regimes namely the Governments JFM program, NGO promoted, and community initiated. The data has been collected using IFRI protocols. The three communities are located in central India and are similar in geo- physical, socio-politico-economic and demographic set-up, and hence are comparable. Strategies adopted towards benefit sharing by the three types of management systems are apparently not very different. Although equitable distribution of benefits is an important determinant for collective action to succeed in any types of management regime, the field study revealed that it is not an immediate consideration for the communities for initiating collective action. Despite being a government sponsored, well thought out program, even JFM is insensitive towards distributional aspects as it treats the community as one cohesive group and ignores intra-community. Its emphasis seems to be on 'equality' and not 'equity'."