A short while ago, the Indian Penal Code was renamed the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. It was stated that this was being done to reduce the memories of the colonial era and the mark it left on our legal system. But the shadow of the colonial era hangs over more than just India’s penal code. There are many systems deeply embedded with colonial-era mindsets and perspectives, under which the indigenous knowledge and systems of this country lie buried.
In our country, at least 350 million (35 crore) people struggle every day with a system born out of another colonial idea: the management of our forests. Our forest management and forest laws are thoroughly soaked in that same colonial mindset. And this is not merely a matter of changing laws. What needs to change is the very mindset that organizes every part of our forest management system.
Forest management in our country has been turned into a law-and-order issue. In the second half of the 19th century, the country’s Forest Department came into existence to exploit our forests. Even today, the scholar whose books and ideas are treated like scripture to guide forest management is Dietrich Brandis, the founder of the Imperial Forest Department. Brandis began his career in the 19th century with efforts to convert the teak forests of Burma (now Myanmar) into plantations. He created a system that made even the aggressive local tribal communities dependent on the forest department's setup, weakening their resistance to government management of forests. There, he conducted research on the management and regulation of teak forests. His research gave rise to several critical documents and data regarding the care of teak trees, timber production, plantation productivity, tree growth rates, harvest rates, and plantation management manuals. Later, this work served as the foundation of modern—or rather, colonial—forestry.
Upon arriving in India, Brandis joined the Forest Department, which was then known as the "Imperial Forest Department." He served as Inspector General of Forests from 1864 to 1883. Right after his tenure ended, India received its Indian Forest Act of 1885, in the drafting of which he played a major role. Brandis established the first forestry school in India, known at the time as the "Imperial Forest School," which we know today as the Forest Research Institute (FRI) in Dehradun. Today, officers of the Indian Forest Service are trained in this very institute.
In 2014, 150 years were completed since Brandis became Inspector General of Forests. The Indian Forest Department organized several programs to mark the occasion, hailing him as the country's first forester. But was there no expert on forests in India before him? Did no one understand how to conserve forests?
Although Brandis also worked on sacred groves and the relationship between local communities and forest management, his primary contribution lay in separating people from the forests and alienating Indian forest management from its traditions. As mentioned earlier, Brandis gained fame precisely by detaching Burmese tribal societies from the forest and converting those forests into single-species plantations.
We can call Brandis the Macaulay of forest management. Just as Macaulay permanently altered India's education system, Brandis devastated the traditional forest management practices prevalent in many parts of India and imposed a colonial-minded "scientific management" upon them. The implementation of colonial forest policies suddenly turned millions of forest dwellers and tribals into strangers in their own homes. Thousands of years of accumulated knowledge possessed by our millions of nomadic pastoralists, forest-dwelling and tribal communities, fishers, and indigenous communities of the Northeast were pushed to the margins. This shift gave birth to an "historical injustice" that continues unabated to this day.
It is not as if forest management did not exist in India before the British arrived. India's indigenous forest management systems developed across millions of villages in our own country, evolved by forest-dwelling communities according to their needs and local natural conditions. For the purpose of this article, we refer to this as indigenous forest management. However, this varies from the north to the south and from the east to the west of the country. From the deserts of Rajasthan to the forests of Meghalaya and Nagaland, communities shaped this system based on local conditions. Only one thing remains common across all of them: the social cohesion, community organization, and deep understanding of local ecology and conditions that an outsider can hardly grasp.
How Indigenous Forest Management Works
In recent years, considerable research has emerged on indigenous forest management practices. In the 1980s, N. S. Jodha conducted widely acclaimed research on the management of common property resources in the country, which continues to strengthen the foundation of discussions on indigenous forest management in India today.
Let us discuss how indigenous forest management is actually practiced. In the following sections of this article, we will touch upon several aspects of this knowledge. To do so, we have categorized this wisdom into a few areas: forest monitoring, the community's role in fire protection, deep landscape knowledge, actions related to enhancing biodiversity, and conservation through grazing. However, this is merely an attempt to frame a vast body of knowledge; even with many such efforts, it remains like taking a single pitcher of water out of the ocean.
1. A Thousand Eyes Monitoring the Forest
When women and men enter the forest, they do not just return with firewood, fodder, or minor forest produce; they also witness every activity taking place inside. They understand what has transpired in the forest in a way a salaried guard from the Forest Department never can. They recognize the difference in sound between an axe and a saw, identify animal hoof prints and droppings, spot new saplings growing, and so much more. No one can patrol better than them—and that too at zero cost.
Village communities build a solid information network based on social bonds, capable of enforcing local and traditional rules regarding forest usage. They don't just count trees; they observe where new anthills/termite mounds are appearing, where water is located, where grass grows, birds, beehives, and much more. Even a slight change in the condition of the forest does not escape their gaze. There are many unspoken and unwritten codes of monitoring that only local people understand.
In many parts of the country, people still protect their forests today. Residents across hundreds of villages in Odisha take turns patrolling their forests. This system is known as "Thenga Palli." Thenga means stick/lathi and Palli means turn. Every household in the village takes its turn guarding the forest. This is a beautiful, cost-free system that keeps the village connected to the forest. Similar arrangements remain in practice across many regions of India today. In modern forestry terminology, this is also referred to as "social fencing." But as stated earlier, this is not a contribution of modern forestry.
Modern forest management neither understands this system nor relies on its assistance. Instead, it seeks to accomplish this task through a single salaried guard. Yet on one hand, ensuring the protection of remaining forests is becoming a major headache, while on the other, the Forest Department struggles with a severe shortage of resources. In such a scenario, it is the accumulated strength of communities that is keeping the forests alive. The Forest Department focuses most of its energy on protecting sanctuaries and national parks, which constitute about 5.28% of the country's total geographical area and roughly 25% of the total forest area. For the remaining forest areas, coordination between communities and the Forest Department is essential for conservation.
2. Women Removing Dry Wood
Generally, dry wood makes for better firewood—a fact known to all. Collecting dry and fallen branches reduces the risk of forest fires. When human footfall in forest areas decreases, this wood accumulates like fuel and during seasonal shifts rapidly becomes the cause of devastating forest fires.
If we look at it another way and force people to stop using wood, what will they do? You would have to provide them with an alternative biofuel, such as coal or cooking gas (LPG). Compared to those, wood is a cheaper and less harmful fuel because the carbon emissions from gathering and burning wood are far lower than the emissions generated by producing, processing, transporting, and burning cooking gas—not to mention bringing up carbon buried underground for thousands of years and releasing it into the atmosphere. While wood may be worse compared to a renewable energy alternative, we can state with great confidence that it is far better than coal, gas, and oil.
Even setting that aside, according to the 2021 NSSO survey, over one-third of households in the country rely exclusively on wood as fuel, and in rural areas, this figure stands at 47% (Dhruvika Dhamija, 2023, "How many Indian households use clean fuel for cooking?", Centre for Economic Data and Analysis, Ashoka University). An even larger number of Indian families use multiple types of fuel, including wood. Despite all intentions, I do not believe we will achieve significant progress toward reducing wood usage anytime soon.
Putting pressure on communities not to use wood has a negative effect. While gathering wood under the fear of getting caught, men and women might cause greater damage to the forest in a rush—damage they otherwise would not have caused. If they operate without fear, they might take only the wood they actually need or gather dry wood at a relaxed pace.
With the growing impact of invasive bushes in India (another negative legacy of colonial forestry), it is crucial that people find major uses for invasive species to help control the damage to some extent. I have observed in Mandla, Madhya Pradesh, that Lantana has become a major source of firewood. Similarly, Vilayati Babool (Prosopis juliflora) is being used to make charcoal in Rajasthan and Gujarat. All these adaptations came to us through the common sense of communities, not through colonial forestry.
Likewise, people know which trees and plants yield better firewood. Communities have traditionally identified and conserved such trees. However, colonial forestry consistently prioritized timber trees over these species. Even today, government nurseries primarily stock teak, shisham, or other timber-yielding trees. Because they carry out plantations without community participation, a major concern for them is that villagers' cattle will graze on their saplings. Consequently, they plant species that cattle cannot graze on and that also do not make good firewood. For example, in Madhya Pradesh, Karanj and Palash trees are planted extensively, or in the hills, Surai (Cypress) trees are heavily planted—wood that is considered poor for burning as it produces excessive smoke.
Another noteworthy aspect is the tools used by communities. Women typically carry a sickle while gathering wood or fodder. Men usually carry an axe for timber. Have you ever seen a local person carrying a saw or a motorized chainsaw? That is the tool of the mafia, not of the local people.
3. Livestock Grazing
Over the last 100 years, we have pushed forest-based communities toward agriculture while simultaneously portraying their livestock as villains. In scientific forest management, hostility toward livestock stems from three or four assumptions. The first is that livestock compete with wild animals for fodder. The second, expressed in Garrett Hardin's work (Tragedy of the Commons), claims that overgrazing pressure disrupts pasture balance and reduces productivity. Today, we know Hardin's research rested on flawed assumptions—for instance, failing to consider that herders communicate with one another to resolve shared problems.
The third assumption manifests as human-wildlife conflict: it is argued that open grazing or fodder collection brings pastoralists into contact with wild animals, leading to conflicts that breed hostility toward wildlife. While this cannot be entirely denied, shouldn't we also acknowledge the history of the past 150 years? Livestock also play a clear role in the forest as easy prey for wild animals—a role without which many carnivores might struggle to survive today. Young tigers and aging tigers cannot compete with prime adult tigers and thus stay away from their core territories. Consequently, they must move into the buffer zones of sanctuaries. Many tigers survive precisely by preying on livestock. In this light, human settlements are essential not just for humans, but for animals as well.
Grazing cattle do not merely derive benefits from the forest; they give a lot back to it. The primary contribution is cow dung, a key factor in fertilizing forest soil. Additionally, cattle help manage weeds and improve the soil's water-retention capacity through the impact of their hooves.
Herdsmen also play a vital role in forest management. In villages with an established system of a village herder who takes the livestock to graze, that individual looks after many details that benefit the forest. You may have noticed that herders walking with cattle carry a stick and, during the monsoon, an umbrella. Some also carry a flute and an axe. During rainy days, the umbrella is used not just for shade, but its tip is used to pull out weeds. A forest requires this continuous weeding. Because this activity has declined today, we are witnessing severe invasions of aggressive weeds like Parthenium (gajar ghas) and Lantana in our forests.
Herders perform another vital function: they consistently take cattle through different routes into the forest, a practice known as rotational grazing. This gives parts of the forest time to recover while naturally distributing weed control and manure across different areas. Recognizing this very practice among African pastoralists, a scientist named Allan Savory developed a process for restoring pastures in arid regions called "Holistic Grazing Management." He claims this approach can help resolve major challenges like climate change.
Colonial forest management viewed cattle and small livestock as a problem, and even today they are demonized as a "pressure" on the forest. In reality, the competition for fodder between livestock and wild animals is often somewhat exaggerated.
4. Biodiverse Forests
Community-managed forests do not look like neatly lined tree plantations. They hold the potential for numerous tree species alongside diverse shrubs and grasses. If you look closely at a community forest, it appears entirely different from a scientifically managed one. It contains hundreds of trees of varying ages. There is no clear-felling or coupe-cutting process. People harvest a tree from the edge of the forest or further inside based on their specific need. Most trees are not uprooted or cut from the base; often, only branches are lopped.
If we examine government-managed forests, we see pine forests in the Himalayan region, while central Indian state forests are filled with teak—raising major questions regarding its ecological value and connection to local livelihoods. In the south, government and scientifically managed forests were planted with harmful species like Eucalyptus. Even as research highlighting these mistakes was published over the years, tree-plantation drives over the last 20–30 years continued planting species that local communities do not use, simply to maintain high survival metrics. Examples include extensive planting of Karanj or, in the hills, Surai. The wood from these trees is unsuitable for fuel, nor do cattle eat their leaves.
In contrast, if we observe community management by Indian societies, we find an abundance of fruit-bearing trees. In the Eastern Ghats region of Odisha, including Rayagada and Koraput districts, you will find mango, jackfruit, and numerous other fruit trees inside the forests. Tribals in Mandla use a beautiful term for what they consider a healthy forest: "Satkatha ka Jangal"—a forest of seven types of wood or seven types of trees. Here, "seven" is a metaphor for diversity: a forest that provides timber, wood for agricultural implements, bamboo, firewood, and an abundance of fruits, flowers, and leaves.
Contrast this with colonial or scientific management—does the terminology used in its descriptions carry such beauty? Why do we not make space for the spirit of the Satkatha forest in our forest management?
5. Landscape-Level Management
In the mid-Himalayan regions of Uttarakhand, northern slopes of hills are typically covered with dense forest, while southern slopes are rich in grass and fodder. Local communities have shared such landscapes through mutual understanding. This perspective remains incomprehensible to colonial land settlements that viewed landscapes merely as parcels of land. Regrettably, even 75 years after independence, we continue to sideline our people's deep landscape understanding.
In several villages in Odisha, I have observed that people understand forests based on soil types. They can explain why one part of a forest holds greater biodiversity while another holds less. Similarly, many villages in Madhya Pradesh share a single large forest through mutual agreement. Thus, despite thousands of setbacks dealt by modern management, this indigenous management endures—a remarkable feat in itself.
The Dongria Kondh tribals living in Niyamgiri, Odisha, also speak of this holistic landscape perspective. Renowned anthropologist Felix Padel demonstrated the tribals' deep relationship with their "Niyam Raja" in his research. To understand this, one can draw a parallel to the bond between local indigenous people and their habitat depicted in the Hollywood film Avatar. It is quite similar. Because of this profound connection, the tribals there have refused to allow mining in the area to this day. Had this permission rested with a administrative department, it might have been secured with minimal effort. This story beautifully illustrates how a community's intimate bond with its habitat enables it to protect an entire landscape.
6. Use of Fire in Forest Management
The use of fire occupies a special place in the forest management practices of almost all tribal communities. In the Northeast, the Eastern Ghats of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, and several other regions, tribal communities practiced Jhum or Podu (shifting cultivation), which involved the controlled use of fire. It should be noted that these are high-rainfall regions known for rapid plant growth.
Modern and colonial management spent a century mocking this practice, but recent research has found these techniques to be superior to other management methods, particularly for biodiversity restoration. By using low-intensity fires, tribal communities cleared unwanted growth, keeping forest floors free from invasive shrub domination. Dr. Bharath Sundaram, whose interview we posted on this blog a few years ago, focused his research on how Soliga tribals maintained biodiversity balance in the Biligiri Hills through the controlled use of mild fire.
Additionally, research by Dr. Amalendu Jyotishi on Podu among the tribals of Koraput, Odisha is noteworthy (Ecological, Economic and Institutional Aspects of Shifting Agriculture: A Study in Orissa). According to Dr. Jyotishi, the Podu system is more effective for livelihoods and biodiversity than modern agriculture. He notes that if the natural cycle of Podu is followed, it is not ecologically harmful; rather, it represents a superior system for high-altitude agricultural societies in terms of livelihood, agriculture, and diversity. Yet, under the fog of 200 years of modern knowledge, this entire body of wisdom has been obscured.
In Conclusion
I do not mean to suggest that everything practiced in the past should be recreated exactly as it was. Rather, an effort should be made to re-understand this knowledge within the context of contemporary Indian needs. Dismissing it without understanding will yield nothing. Before a dialogue can occur between the two knowledge systems, a comprehensive understanding of both is essential.
I see promise in interdisciplinary fields like Social Ecology. For a forest management system suited to our country, we need to bring together knowledge not just from the superficial science of forestry, but from anthropology, forest-based economics, and numerous other disciplines.
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