A lot of noise has been made for quite some time in various quarters on ecological imbala¬nces in general and on forest denudation in particular. But it is only lately that some attention is at last being devot¬ed to the practical questions of the inter-relationship bet¬ween forests and the people. Do people exist for the good of the forests, or the forests for the good of the people? Or is there an intrinsically and mutually beneficial relationship between the two? In any case, who are the ‘people’? And since ‘people’ would be made up of various human com¬munities with different kinds of interests, which of these interests would be ‘national’ and which ‘sectional’?
WOOD OR TREES ?
Alok Sinha
Towards a New Forest Policy: People's Rights and Environmental Needs/People and Forests: The Forest Bill and a New Forest Policy by Walter Fernandes & Sharad Kulkarni Indian Social Institute, New Delhi/Indian Social Institute, New Delhi, 1983, 155 pp., 25.00/7.50
Nov-Dec 1983, volume 8, No 3