Forest Resources In India

Description

Forest Resources In India

The conservation of Nature is deeply ingrained in the ethos of Indian society at large through scriptures, folk tales, Indian Knowledge System and wisdom, community beliefs and religious rituals. However, the policy of the government sets the tone in any aspect of life and forests and related issues are no exception to this. Nevertheless, policies are dynamic in nature and depict the vision of the government at any particular point of time of that particular sector. But the policies need to be within the boundary of the nation’s Constitution. Once a policy is made, the acts, rules, guidelines need to be aligned in such a way as to achieve the objectives of the policy. Additionally, governance mechanism also plays a very important role in achieving the policy goals. Any policy has direct impact on major chunk of population including local communities and women. And it is well established that if any change, which is aspirational, women as a stakeholder group play a very crucial role as part of local governance specially in the field of natural resource management and then only the change is sustainable and long lasting which any policy aims at.

It is also known that subjects of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Fisheries, Horticulture, Tribal Development, Environment, Rural Development, Panchayati Raj Institutions, Forestry and Climate Change, etc. are inherently interwoven and have symbiotic relationship. While rest of the subject matters are in the State List of the Indian Constitution, Forestry is in the Concurrent List of the Constitution. Therefore, the State governments and Union Territories have a critical role in maintaining an ideal balance between development and conservation as part of governance mechanism.

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