Missing The Woods

According to a recent news report in the Asian Wall Street Journal, New Zealands log industry will receive a tremendous boost because of the restrictions imposed on logging in India by the Supreme Court. This should come as big blow to our forest department. Subsequently, the Indian government has also reduced tariffs on import of raw logs. These two things put together have really opened the gate, says a forest official from New Zealand. And New Zealands log volume is expected to rise by 80 per cent by 2010.

It is indeed amazing that a tiny country like New Zealand should be supplying logs to a large country like India, which has its own vast tracts of degraded land, and where plantations are growing at the cost of natural forests.

 

If only Indias foresters had responded timely to the growing demands of wood in the country, then today, we could have easily become a major exporter of wood. Indeed, the most successful component of Indias social forestry programme started in the early eighties, was farm forestry. This programme quickly brought several million hectares of land under eucalyptus trees.

The entire exercise had both positive and negative shades to it. The best thing was that our farmers were prepared to opt for tree crops over other crops, as long as they saw profits in them. The government should have carefully understood the emerging market for wood in India and advised the farmers accordingly, on how to respond to the growing demands.

However, foresters, ministers, and bureaucrats cannot be expected to understand the intricacies of markets and demands. Counting the number of trees planted became a more important pastime for officials; the wood grower should have been carefully nurtured and developed instead. As a result, a glorious opportunity to meet the growing demand for wood was lost by the country.

On the negative side of the social forestry exercise, most of the trees that were planted were eucalyptus trees, which is a non-fodder species. A better choice of species would have led to trees which not only provided fodder but also helped in nitrogen-fixation, even while they became marketable commodities. Secondly, efforts should have been made to reach out to the poor farmers who eke out a living on poor lands. These lands are ecologically far more suited to tree cultivation than agricultural crops. But due to lack of foresight and bad planning on the part of the official machinery these opportunities too were lost.

Indias industrialists have turned out to be the worst offenders in this entire exercise. They have constantly argued for more government-owned forest lands, so that they can grow their own wood. But if the government itself distorts the market by giving such a massive subsidy to these rich industrialists, then who would help the poor farmer who grows wood for the same market?

Besides, there is no dearth of self-centered politicians who do not think beyond fulfilling their own ambitions. While talking about economic liberalisation, these unscrupulous leaders would be happy to use the state machinery to distort the emergence of markets, especially if those markets have a potential to benefit the poor.

It is high time the government got its act together. It should develop a clear framework for the emerging wood market. It should also draw out plans such that both the private and state lands have a definite role to play and the poor people can draw maximum benefits from it. This should be done quickly. Unless, of course, we want to become perpetually dependent on tiny nations like New Zealand, while our own lands lie barren.

It is not as if things are not happening on their own at all. For years, Saharanpurs famous wood carvers have used Shisham (Dalbergia sissoo) to make beautiful wood products. These products were exported to the West and the Middle East. But with income levels rising in states like Haryana and Punjab, the demand for Shisham wood increased in these states. As a result most of the wood was diverted to these two states, to meet the emerging demand. Therefore, for a time, wood carvers in Saharanpur faced an acute shortage of Shisham. But over the years, the market has responded with its own supply of wood. All across the terai sub-Himalayan plains from Uttar Pradesh to Bihar farmers have started growing Shisham trees in their fields to get additional income.

Today, Indias wood market needs to be organised such that the millions of wood farmers can meet the growing demand. If that can happen, the Supreme Courts restrictions on logging in forest lands would have served a useful purpose. On the other hand, in the absence of proper government action, India will only be aiding the log industry of western countries. There is still time to wake up and get our act together.