I would not be an exaggeration to say that the major focus of the debate on forest policy in India since the 1980s has been on whether and how to transfer control over forests to local communities. Interestingly, both the proponents of such transfer or decentralisation and its opponents have assumed that rural communities are substantially dependent on forests for incomes and livelihoods. The proponents of greater devolution have cited the substantial evidence of forest dependence that has emerged from various studies to argue that access to common pool resources including forests is vital for rural livelihoods. The assumption that rural communities or “forest-fringe” communities are forest dependent, and hence they are eagerly awaiting the transfer of forest management to their hands has been what I call the ‘zero-th’ assumption in the series of assumptions on which the concept of Joint Forest Management programme rests (Lélé 2001b). The Tribal Forest Rights Act, in seeking to facilitate individual hamlets taking over rights and responsibilities over individual forest tracts, makes the same assumption—that once their tenure over agricultural land and dwelling space becomes secure, forest-dwelling communities are waiting to take control and start managing ‘forests as forests’.1
Interestingly, the opponents of decentralisation, primarily the forest bureaucracy, have also indirectly supported this proposition by always citing the ‘pressure of population on forests in the form of grazing and firewood collection as the major reason for forest degradation