NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

Mr Harnath Jagawat's Artcle on

NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT (NRM) :

A SOLUTION TO TRIBAL POVERTY IN INDIA
A sort of magical transformation has taken place in the tribal villages in western India. In several tribal villages, on account of agro forestry, large numbers of tribal families (each family) own trees worth more than Rs. one-two lacs (INR’1,00,000 to 2,00,000), which is an handsome amount in the hands of poor tribals in Indian conditions. Infact, large numbers of tribal farmers in these villages have each sold trees worth INR’1,00,000 to 2,00,000 in recent years to meet their requirements, particularly, during drought years. There are more than 110 tribal villages where tree cover is about 30-35 % of the village land from almost nil earlier. In village Mota Dharola, which has 50 % tribal population, the agriculture income of the village has gone up to more than INR 10 millions a year from INR 1.2 million a year on account of irrigation development. As brought out in recent research study sponsored by International Water Management Institute, in one hamlet in village Mahudi, a phenomenal increase in agriculture production has been witnessed. In this hamlet, before irrigation and other interventions under integrated watershed development, the annual agriculture production was about 82 metric ton which has now gone up to about 900 metric ton, more than 900 % increase. A tribal village Rozam has more than 200 horticulture plots raised by equal numbers of tribal families and about 160 floriculture plots raised by equal numbers of families. The families who have raised roses, each such family is getting INR’250 to 750 every day by selling roses for almost round the year and those who have raised marigolds, each family gets about INR’150 every day. This is an excellent income in Indian rural and tribal conditions. More than 300 tribal villages have now no drinking water problem even during successive drought years on account of NRM interventions. About 450 community water resources schemes in the radius of 70 kilometers have been managed fully, successfully on sustainable basis by the tribal communities themselves under the cooperative management, perhaps a rare development in any of the tribal regions world over in such a compact and intensive manner. The distressed migration which was earlier anything between 50-70 % of the total population in most of the tribal villages, has now come down to less than 10 % of the population in each village, with duration of migration reduced from 8 months to two months during a year. The school attendance in many of the tribal villages has increased by 300% on account of development taking place in the villages, resulting in the stability of people in their own villages. The above transformation was neither a magic nor a miracle. It was a result of appropriate development interventions and management of natural resources, particularly, land and water resources in those villages, carried out by prominent NRM NGO, N M Sadguru Water and Development Foundation. GENERAL SCENARIO However, against above amazing stories of development and improvement in the tribal villages, the overall scenario and the conditions of tribal regions in India is just pathetic. There is all-round degradation of natural resources in the tribal regions, resulting in rampant poverty among the tribal people. In human development index, the tribal regions and people are at the bottom of the table in every state and districts. No one can question the basic fact that the tribal people in India are the poorest of all. Whatever may be the statistics of below poverty line· population at the national level, any tribal region in India (excepting north east states) has safely more than 65 % of the population living below poverty line. In recent workshop at New Delhi, a prominent International Researcher, Prof. Tushaar Shah, who is heading research unit at International Water Management Institute, had shared that in the tribal regions of Gujarat, below poverty line population was between 60-80 % of the population of those regions / villages. If this is a situation in Gujarat, it cannot be better in any of the central-west-south tribal regions, where about 87 % of the overall tribal population of India is concentrated. Though the tribal population in India as per 1991 census ( unfortunately the census report of 2001 is not yet published by the Government ) was about 8 % of the total population, in bare numbers they were about 67 million people which is a colossal number among the largest concentration of tribal population in any of countries world over. Infact, this number is larger than the population of many countries. When most of these people are extremely poor, it is something that the country as a whole has to feel ashamed of and the international community has an important role to play in reducing such poverty. Incidentally, by and large international funding organizations have not done enough for the tribal people. To say the least, international organizations’ policies are often influenced by powerful vocal groups, rather than poor local groups. Same is true for the national Governments of poor developing countries. No one can question the fact that the tribal regions are the most backward and most undeveloped in India. It is also a well known fact that the tribal regions and tribal people are the poorest, inspite of rich and abundant natural resources. These natural resources, specifically land and water are either neglected or not developed or in other scenario, if at all developed in some cases, the benefits of the same are largely cornered by the non-tribals and so called progressive people. Whether they are forests, whether they are big dams, whether they are vast minerals, in most of the cases they are meant to benefit the non-tribals at the cost of the local tribals. POTENTIALS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT Though poor at present, these tribal regions offer immense potentials for the development around natural resources. The examples of the type of development that took place in the western India villages, quoted in the beginning of this paper, could be replicated anywhere in this country, particularly, in the central-west belt of India, stretching down to Andhra Pradesh, which have 99 districts having more than 10 % of tribal population as per the census 1991. There are 78 districts in this central-west-south region which have each 20 % or more tribal population. These are the districts which require serious attention and special focus. Each of the tribal districts has sizeable forest lands ranging between 20-30 % of the land. In some tribal districts forest land is more than 40 %. The benefits of such forest lands are not presently available to the local tribals. Funnily, most of these forest lands have no forest cover or very little tree cover. One doesn’t know why such forest lands without forest cover are called forest lands. These were the forest lands mostly owned by the tribal communities before the nationalization of forest lands effected by the Britishers in the later half of 19th century. This nationalization of forest lands which was the result of the need and greed of the Britishers, played havoc on the tribal people, who were exclusively dependant on the forests and forest products. In one stroke of pen, the tribals were dispossessed of their rich natural assets and deprived of their age old strong livelihood systems. In the recent history of last 500-1000 years, no other community has been deprived of its main source of livelihood to the extent and magnitude that happened in case of the tribal communities in India. The gross deprivation caused by the Britishers’ actions, has not been remedied by our own national Government, inspite of our own rule of more than half a century. On the contrary, our own rulers have further deprived these tribals of their inherent rights on the forests and forest products under the Forests Conservation Act. We in the development field in India sometime joke that the Forest Conservation Act has not succeeded in conserving the forests, but, it has succeeded in conserving and sustaining the Forest Department, which is the most powerful department in India, never influenced by the public opinion. It still acts as police and law and order department rather than development department. Ofcourse, we do have few good forest officials who are well motivated and development minded, but, unfortunately they are in minority. It is essential that the tribals are made partners in the development, conservation and management of the forests with due share of the tribals in this precious wealth, in which tribals have a great stake. The recent policy of the Joint Forest Management in India provides such an opportunity to make tribals the partners in the forest management, but, the Forest Departments are not that much sincere and committed for such partnership. These efforts are half heartedly and directionless, certainly not considering the tribals as equal partners, wherever and whenever such efforts are made. If healthy, open and equal partnership of the tribal community in the forest development is ensured and sustained, it will have singular effect on the revival of the forests and in turn on the improvement in the conditions of the tribals. Easily, more than half of the tribal population can pull out of the extreme poverty if these forest resources are capitalized in whole hearted partnership arrangements between the community and the Forest Department. Another equally important source is the land owned by the tribals themselves, half of which is more suitable for the tree plantation by virtue of topography, slope, undulation, etc. In most of the states each tribal household has land of its own and part of it is worth plantation activities. If this source which is owned by the tribals is well developed, as shown in the examples in the beginning of this paper, it can turn the table in favour of the tribals in improving their economy as well as ecology. The Government has to simply facilitate in providing inputs such as the seedlings and motivating farmers for this programme as better economic proposition, besides restoration of eco-system and environment. Most of our tribal regions had more than 60-70 % of their land under forest cover nearly 100 years back. It may not be practical in the present circumstances to restore that much tree cover, but, by virtue of sheer appropriate land use practices, atleast more than 40 % of the land, forest plus suitable private land in each predominantly tribal districts could be easily brought under the tree cover. If this happens it would simply transform the region as well as people. Recently and rightly, our national rural development planners have focused on watershed development programme emphasizing on people centered participatory micro watershed development. This is an excellent concept for the rural development, particularly, for the poverty reduction through NRM. No where this concept of watershed is more appropriate than the tribal regions. Because of topography, overall degradation, extremely low agriculture production and such other factors, the watershed development, as a concept, is most suitable for our tribal regions. This concept when implemented properly and scientifically can increase the productivity of the land through improvement in the moisture and soil texture and in regeneration of ecology, making food, fodder, fuel and drinking water available to the community. This programme of watershed has to be expanded manifolds in our tribal regions and entire landscape of tribal regions need to be covered under this programme in next 5-10 years. There are several examples of such good work under this programme resulting in good impact. An extremely precious natural resource in almost all our tribal regions is water. There is enough, perhaps more than enough water in almost all our tribal regions. The scientists claim that any region which has more than 500 mm annual rainfall need not be poor. The rainfall in all our tribal regions is much higher than above. Infact, it is reasonably good, averaging more than 900 mm annually and the network of rain drainage systems in the form of rivers, rivulets in any of the tribal regions is just more than enough to meet the water requirement of local people, if such water is optimally harvested through various technological interventions with community participation. There are now enough examples of such successful harvesting and utilization of water resources in the tribal regions. It is simply a question of will and mobilization of resources to replicate at massive scale. In the seven heavily concentrated tribal states in India, namely, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra, there is potential to construct about 45,000 masonry water harvesting structures on various small and large water sources. Even big rivers falling in above areas could be harvested with small structures which would be environment friendly, no damage to people, property and land and would bring in an important element of equity among most of the villages on these big sources, as often large systems, deprive upstream and downstream people from the benefits of such large systems. But, when the entire river at an appropriate distance is harvested, it can help virtually everyone around that source. The integration of big and small water harvesting structures could be an excellent combination. This integration of large and small systems may have another benefit that the large systems may release occasionally water for the smaller systems and thereby entire river may have water round the year. This has been demonstrated at some places in India, and as said earlier, it needs replication. In agrarian economy, irrigation is very important tool for the well being of people dependant on agriculture. There are hardly any tribal regions in our country which has 10 % or more irrigation coverage inspite of reasonably good water resources. Infact, average actual irrigation in our tribal districts is 5 % or less, leaving great scope for the water resources and irrigation development. This potential needs to be harnessed through appropriate technology. It should be possible to achieve around 30 % irrigation in most of the tribal regions through surface water harvesting as well as through ground water recharging technology. In most of the tribal regions, lift irrigation technology is the most appropriate due to undulating topography and uplands. When irrigation development in such region is combined with irrigated plantation and horticulture it may give amazing results as described in the beginning of this paper. Loren Eisley has rightly described that “If there is magic on the planet, it is contained in the water”. Undoubtedly and unquestionably, water can bring about magical changes in the tribal regions. Even half an acre horticulture under irrigation can help any poor family getting out of poverty. The above potentials in natural resources in the form of land and water if capitalized optimally in well designed and well implemented programme, it can benefit around 75 % of the tribal population in the tribal concentrated belt of India. This is only of direct benefits of these natural resources. Once agriculture and horticulture development takes place, it will have positive impact on the development of dairy, processing and small scale industries in the region. Such massive development will have its most positive impact on reducing the migration and improving the education level of the tribals as the stable life in their villages will make it possible for them to send their children to the schools. The process of the development suggested in this paper has to be exceptionally fast as there is already a big gap in the status of tribal regions and non-tribal regions in India. This gap is to be bridged as fast as possible. It is therefore, essential that the benefit of information technology have to be made available to the tribal regions so that not only the present gaps could be bridged, but the tribals could be brought at par with other progressive regions. When our tribal regions are converted into developed regions, the benefits will not be confined to the tribal regions alone, but, the same would be available to entire nation, making the nation healthier in environment and prosperous in economic area. It is easy to write such paper giving good suggestions, but, it is difficult to implement such suggestions at such a massive scale and speed. The Government record in India in the tribal development is mixed one. In some pockets, it has done good work, but in most of the cases, it has lagged behind in fulfstions, but, it is difficult to implement such suggestions at such a massive scale and speed. The Government record in India in the tribal development is mixed one. In some pockets, it has done good work, but in most of the cases, it has lagged behind in fulfilling the basic needs and expectations of the tribals. The massive actions have to be initiated by the right kind of people in the Government, right kind of NGOs, supportive International funding organizations and above all massive mobilization of the community. The development in the field of community partnership in the forest development has to be backed by policy changes and effective implementation of the same. The watershed and water resources development will require massive financial mobilization and implementation arrangements ensuring success of the programme. We just cannot afford even partial failure of any such programme. We cannot effort bad investment, wrong investment and mis-use of investment in such crucial programmes for the poorest section of our people, as if these people remain poor for another 10-20 years, it would be a point of no return and there would be perhaps no hope for the development of tribal regions and improvement in the conditions of the tribals. In rather emotional and passionate conclusion of this paper based on my 30 years intensive experience in the tribal development and NRM, I would like to state that the natural resources development interventions should precede any other development efforts in the tribal regions. In other words, unless natural resources are adequately developed and managed by the community on sustainable basis, there is no hope for significant development in the tribal regions. This is a real challenge to all those who have sincere and honest interests of the tribals in their hearts. Perhaps, time for talks, discussions, seminars, workshops, is over. It is time for massive, concerted, concrete actions on the part of everyone, at a scale and speed that would be unparallel in the field of tribal development vis-à-vis NRM. Can we do it ? Can we try It ? 24.09.2002
Mr. Harnath Jagawat Director, NMSWDF

A SOLUTION TO TRIBAL POVERTY IN INDIA

A sort of magical transformation has taken place in the tribal villages in western India.
In several tribal villages, on account of agro forestry, large numbers of tribal families (each family) own trees worth more than Rs. one-two lacs (INR’1,00,000 to 2,00,000), which is an handsome amount in the hands of poor tribals in Indian conditions. Infact, large numbers of tribal farmers in these villages have each sold trees worth INR’1,00,000 to 2,00,000 in recent years to meet their requirements, particularly, during drought years.
There are more than 110 tribal villages where tree cover is about 30-35 % of the village land from almost nil earlier.
In village Mota Dharola, which has 50 % tribal population, the agriculture income of the village has gone up to more than INR 10 millions a year from INR 1.2 million a year on account of irrigation development.
As brought out in recent research study sponsored by International Water Management Institute, in one hamlet in village Mahudi, a phenomenal increase in agriculture production has been witnessed. In this hamlet, before irrigation and other interventions under integrated watershed development, the annual agriculture production was about 82 metric ton which has now gone up to about 900 metric ton, more than 900 % increase.
A tribal village Rozam has more than 200 horticulture plots raised by equal numbers of tribal families and about 160 floriculture plots raised by equal numbers of families. The families who have raised roses, each such family is getting INR’250 to 750 every day by selling roses for almost round the year and those who have raised marigolds, each family gets about INR’150 every day. This is an excellent income in Indian rural and tribal conditions.
More than 300 tribal villages have now no drinking water problem even during successive drought years on account of NRM interventions.
About 450 community water resources schemes in the radius of 70 kilometers have been managed fully, successfully on sustainable basis by the tribal communities themselves under the cooperative management, perhaps a rare development in any of the tribal regions world over in such a compact and intensive manner.
The distressed migration which was earlier anything between 50-70 % of the total population in most of the tribal villages, has now come down to less than 10 % of the population in each village, with duration of migration reduced from 8 months to two months during a year.
The school attendance in many of the tribal villages has increased by 300% on account of development taking place in the villages, resulting in the stability of people in their own villages.

The above transformation was neither a magic nor a miracle. It was a result of appropriate development interventions and management of natural resources, particularly, land and water resources in those villages, carried out by prominent NRM NGO, N M Sadguru Water and Development Foundation.

GENERAL SCENARIO

However, against above amazing stories of development and improvement in the tribal villages, the overall scenario and the conditions of tribal regions in India is just pathetic. There is all-round degradation of natural resources in the tribal regions, resulting in rampant poverty among the tribal people.

In human development index, the tribal regions and people are at the bottom of the table in every state and districts.

No one can question the basic fact that the tribal people in India are the poorest of all. Whatever may be the statistics of below poverty line· population at the national level, any tribal region in India (excepting north east states) has safely more than 65 % of the population living below poverty line. In recent workshop at New Delhi, a prominent International Researcher, Prof. Tushaar Shah, who is heading research unit at International Water Management Institute, had shared that in the tribal regions of Gujarat, below poverty line population was between 60-80 % of the population of those regions / villages. If this is a situation in Gujarat, it cannot be better in any of the central-west-south tribal regions, where about 87 % of the overall tribal population of India is concentrated.

Though the tribal population in India as per 1991 census ( unfortunately the census report of 2001 is not yet published by the Government ) was about 8 % of the total population, in bare numbers they were about 67 million people which is a colossal number among the largest concentration of tribal population in any of countries world over. Infact, this number is larger than the population of many countries. When most of these people are extremely poor, it is something that the country as a whole has to feel ashamed of and the international community has an important role to play in reducing such poverty. Incidentally, by and large international funding organizations have not done enough for the tribal people. To say the least, international organizations’ policies are often influenced by powerful vocal groups, rather than poor local groups. Same is true for the national Governments of poor developing countries.

No one can question the fact that the tribal regions are the most backward and most undeveloped in India.

It is also a well known fact that the tribal regions and tribal people are the poorest, inspite of rich and abundant natural resources. These natural resources, specifically land and water are either neglected or not developed or in other scenario, if at all developed in some cases, the benefits of the same are largely cornered by the non-tribals and so called progressive people. Whether they are forests, whether they are big dams, whether they are vast minerals, in most of the cases they are meant to benefit the non-tribals at the cost of the local tribals.

POTENTIALS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT

Though poor at present, these tribal regions offer immense potentials for the development around natural resources. The examples of the type of development that took place in the western India villages, quoted in the beginning of this paper, could be replicated anywhere in this country, particularly, in the central-west belt of India, stretching down to Andhra Pradesh, which have 99 districts having more than 10 % of tribal population as per the census 1991. There are 78 districts in this central-west-south region which have each 20 % or more tribal population. These are the districts which require serious attention and special focus.

Each of the tribal districts has sizeable forest lands ranging between 20-30 % of the land. In some tribal districts forest land is more than 40 %. The benefits of such forest lands are not presently available to the local tribals. Funnily, most of these forest lands have no forest cover or very little tree cover. One doesn’t know why such forest lands without forest cover are called forest lands. These were the forest lands mostly owned by the tribal communities before the nationalization of forest lands effected by the Britishers in the later half of 19th century. This nationalization of forest lands which was the result of the need and greed of the Britishers, played havoc on the tribal people, who were exclusively dependant on the forests and forest products. In one stroke of pen, the tribals were dispossessed of their rich natural assets and deprived of their age old strong livelihood systems. In the recent history of last 500-1000 years, no other community has been deprived of its main source of livelihood to the extent and magnitude that happened in case of the tribal communities in India. The gross deprivation caused by the Britishers’ actions, has not been remedied by our own national Government, inspite of our own rule of more than half a century. On the contrary, our own rulers have further deprived these tribals of their inherent rights on the forests and forest products under the Forests Conservation Act. We in the development field in India sometime joke that the Forest Conservation Act has not succeeded in conserving the forests, but, it has succeeded in conserving and sustaining the Forest Department, which is the most powerful department in India, never influenced by the public opinion. It still acts as police and law and order department rather than development department. Ofcourse, we do have few good forest officials who are well motivated and development minded, but, unfortunately they are in minority.

It is essential that the tribals are made partners in the development, conservation and management of the forests with due share of the tribals in this precious wealth, in which tribals have a great stake. The recent policy of the Joint Forest Management in India provides such an opportunity to make tribals the partners in the forest management, but, the Forest Departments are not that much sincere and committed for such partnership. These efforts are half heartedly and directionless, certainly not considering the tribals as equal partners, wherever and whenever such efforts are made. If healthy, open and equal partnership of the tribal community in the forest development is ensured and sustained, it will have singular effect on the revival of the forests and in turn on the improvement in the conditions of the tribals. Easily, more than half of the tribal population can pull out of the extreme poverty if these forest resources are capitalized in whole hearted partnership arrangements between the community and the Forest Department.

Another equally important source is the land owned by the tribals themselves, half of which is more suitable for the tree plantation by virtue of topography, slope, undulation, etc. In most of the states each tribal household has land of its own and part of it is worth plantation activities. If this source which is owned by the tribals is well developed, as shown in the examples in the beginning of this paper, it can turn the table in favour of the tribals in improving their economy as well as ecology. The Government has to simply facilitate in providing inputs such as the seedlings and motivating farmers for this programme as better economic proposition, besides restoration of eco-system and environment.

Most of our tribal regions had more than 60-70 % of their land under forest cover nearly 100 years back. It may not be practical in the present circumstances to restore that much tree cover, but, by virtue of sheer appropriate land use practices, atleast more than 40 % of the land, forest plus suitable private land in each predominantly tribal districts could be easily brought under the tree cover. If this happens it would simply transform the region as well as people.

Recently and rightly, our national rural development planners have focused on watershed development programme emphasizing on people centered participatory micro watershed development. This is an excellent concept for the rural development, particularly, for the poverty reduction through NRM. No where this concept of watershed is more appropriate than the tribal regions. Because of topography, overall degradation, extremely low agriculture production and such other factors, the watershed development, as a concept, is most suitable for our tribal regions. This concept when implemented properly and scientifically can increase the productivity of the land through improvement in the moisture and soil texture and in regeneration of ecology, making food, fodder, fuel and drinking water available to the community. This programme of watershed has to be expanded manifolds in our tribal regions and entire landscape of tribal regions need to be covered under this programme in next 5-10 years. There are several examples of such good work under this programme resulting in good impact.
An extremely precious natural resource in almost all our tribal regions is water. There is enough, perhaps more than enough water in almost all our tribal regions. The scientists claim that any region which has more than 500 mm annual rainfall need not be poor. The rainfall in all our tribal regions is much higher than above. Infact, it is reasonably good, averaging more than 900 mm annually and the network of rain drainage systems in the form of rivers, rivulets in any of the tribal regions is just more than enough to meet the water requirement of local people, if such water is optimally harvested through various technological interventions with community participation. There are now enough examples of such successful harvesting and utilization of water resources in the tribal regions. It is simply a question of will and mobilization of resources to replicate at massive scale. In the seven heavily concentrated tribal states in India, namely, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra, there is potential to construct about 45,000 masonry water harvesting structures on various small and large water sources. Even big rivers falling in above areas could be harvested with small structures which would be environment friendly, no damage to people, property and land and would bring in an important element of equity among most of the villages on these big sources, as often large systems, deprive upstream and downstream people from the benefits of such large systems. But, when the entire river at an appropriate distance is harvested, it can help virtually everyone around that source. The integration of big and small water harvesting structures could be an excellent combination. This integration of large and small systems may have another benefit that the large systems may release occasionally water for the smaller systems and thereby entire river may have water round the year. This has been demonstrated at some places in India, and as said earlier, it needs replication.

In agrarian economy, irrigation is very important tool for the well being of people dependant on agriculture. There are hardly any tribal regions in our country which has 10 % or more irrigation coverage inspite of reasonably good water resources. Infact, average actual irrigation in our tribal districts is 5 % or less, leaving great scope for the water resources and irrigation development. This potential needs to be harnessed through appropriate technology. It should be possible to achieve around 30 % irrigation in most of the tribal regions through surface water harvesting as well as through ground water recharging technology. In most of the tribal regions, lift irrigation technology is the most appropriate due to undulating topography and uplands. When irrigation development in such region is combined with irrigated plantation and horticulture it may give amazing results as described in the beginning of this paper. Loren Eisley has rightly described that “If there is magic on the planet, it is contained in the water”. Undoubtedly and unquestionably, water can bring about magical changes in the tribal regions. Even half an acre horticulture under irrigation can help any poor family getting out of poverty.

The above potentials in natural resources in the form of land and water if capitalized optimally in well designed and well implemented programme, it can benefit around 75 % of the tribal population in the tribal concentrated belt of India. This is only of direct benefits of these natural resources. Once agriculture and horticulture development takes place, it will have positive impact on the development of dairy, processing and small scale industries in the region. Such massive development will have its most positive impact on reducing the migration and improving the education level of the tribals as the stable life in their villages will make it possible for them to send their children to the schools.

The process of the development suggested in this paper has to be exceptionally fast as there is already a big gap in the status of tribal regions and non-tribal regions in India. This gap is to be bridged as fast as possible. It is therefore, essential that the benefit of information technology have to be made available to the tribal regions so that not only the present gaps could be bridged, but the tribals could be brought at par with other progressive regions. When our tribal regions are converted into developed regions, the benefits will not be confined to the tribal regions alone, but, the same would be available to entire nation, making the nation healthier in environment and prosperous in economic area.

It is easy to write such paper giving good suggestions, but, it is difficult to implement such suggestions at such a massive scale and speed. The Government record in India in the tribal development is mixed one. In some pockets, it has done good work, but in most of the cases, it has lagged behind in fulfstions, but, it is difficult to implement such suggestions at such a massive scale and speed. The Government record in India in the tribal development is mixed one. In some pockets, it has done good work, but in most of the cases, it has lagged behind in fulfilling the basic needs and expectations of the tribals. The massive actions have to be initiated by the right kind of people in the Government, right kind of NGOs, supportive International funding organizations and above all massive mobilization of the community. The development in the field of community partnership in the forest development has to be backed by policy changes and effective implementation of the same. The watershed and water resources development will require massive financial mobilization and implementation arrangements ensuring success of the programme. We just cannot afford even partial failure of any such programme. We cannot effort bad investment, wrong investment and mis-use of investment in such crucial programmes for the poorest section of our people, as if these people remain poor for another 10-20 years, it would be a point of no return and there would be perhaps no hope for the development of tribal regions and improvement in the conditions of the tribals.

In rather emotional and passionate conclusion of this paper based on my 30 years intensive experience in the tribal development and NRM, I would like to state that the natural resources development interventions should precede any other development efforts in the tribal regions. In other words, unless natural resources are adequately developed and managed by the community on sustainable basis, there is no hope for significant development in the tribal regions. This is a real challenge to all those who have sincere and honest interests of the tribals in their hearts. Perhaps, time for talks, discussions, seminars, workshops, is over. It is time for massive, concerted, concrete actions on the part of everyone, at a scale and speed that would be unparallel in the field of tribal development vis-à-vis NRM. Can we do it ? Can we try It ?

24.09.2002

Mr. Harnath Jagawat
Director, NMSWDF