Over the past decade or so, India’s forests have reached a crossroads. Even as the official monitoring agency claims that the forest cover in the country has been steady at about 21 per cent of the geographical area (Forest Survey of India 2011), tigers and other biota are disappearing from these forests (Tiger Task Force 2005) and forests are also being increasingly converted for developmental purposes (Das 2012), thereby displacing forest-dwelling communities (Sahu 2008). Even as the government claims that the official participatory forest management programme is a huge success (Singh et al. 2011), communities are beginning to claim forest management rights under a new law in the teeth of fierce opposition from foresters (Joint Committee 2010). Even as new concepts, laws, and procedures are being framed, the judiciary continues to micro-manage forest-related decision-making in a variety of ways (Rosencranz and Lele 2008). Even as the state pushes forward with an overall agenda of growth-through-industrialization, its committees are proposing a minimum support price programme for non-timber forest products (MoPR 2011). It appears that the forest sector is undergoing a churning as never before.