India celebrates the Van Mahotsav in the first week of July. This is one of the initiatives to encourage the people for plantation of saplings and tending with a hope to create more forests in the country. Also, awareness is created on the utilities forests apart from alternative fuels, reduction of drought and prevention of soil erosion through plantation. As the period coincides with monsoon, so it is the right time for planting of saplings. Both the Government machineries and civil societies join their hands for increasing the plantation initiatives across the country.
Earlier, the people of forest areas were not in a way to understand and think the utilities of plantations; they mostly focused on guarding the forests. However, with the passage of time the realisations have come to undertake plantation drives in the barren hills and compensatory drives where the trees are lost or cut down.
Most of the hilly, mountainous and forest villagers are still dependent on firewood for cooking. Women sometimes walk far-off places to collect firewood and fodder for their families and animals. To face the challenge of deforestation women of some of these areas have set up van-panchayats for the development of nurseries and nurture saplings for planting on the hill slopes. The members also guard nearby forests and stay vigilant on illegal felling of trees. In this age of information, ecological movements across the globe are able to join together having regional and international networks comprising non-Governmental organisations, religious and humanitarian groups, environmental activists and others who campaign for the plantation drives and protests against the unplanned developmental projects.
Van Mahotsav shows a particular character across the country. The initiatives cannot be explained satisfactorily by reference to plantation drives alone although this dimension is important. This is a struggle for plantation drives and its sustainability in all the areas. It is a struggle for achieving and getting power for the management of forests and a space for self-determination. It is a struggle for stopping all types of deforestations.
As the trees and forests have been the issues of people’s subsistence, conflicts arise when the Government permits for cutting down the trees. The environment has been pitted against the economy of developmental projects and profit.
Most of the development projects have also been criticised for considering that all sections of people will be the beneficiaries of development by clearing the trees. Unfortunately, the new projects displace people from their homes and sources of livelihood. The impact of industrial pollution is bypassed.
Compensatory aforestations are not done on a war footing basis. So Van Mahotsav is an occasion to remind the people and Government about the commitment for plantation drives in the deforested areas.
The emergence of plantation organisations and drives as political entities has occurred in the post independent era. The respective Governments often distributed funds and extended their patronage on the basis of registration of organisations or political mileage. It made sense for people to stay within their social and political identities in their institutional lives. It also influenced similarly placed environmental groups to unite themselves. So the plantation campaigns are now growing more political than environmental.
It is obvious that Van Mahotsav is of great social, economic and political significance. But its impact on different sections of society is very different. There are sharply divided views about the impact of plantation. Some believe that it is necessary for merely fulfilling the Corporate Social Responsibilities while others think that plantation drive is initiated to divert the public attention from different deforestation initiatives of the State. They argue that while many in the more privileged sections and corporate houses may benefit, the condition of a large section of the already excluded population is not so much developed because they have not experienced the utilities of plantation drives in true sense. There are yet others who argue that plantation is not a new development at all. So the importance should be given to minimise deforestation and accept the recommendations of green tribunal in letter and spirit. Van Mahotsav should not be observed and confined to one week only; rather it should be the philosophy of our life and continue throughout the year. Priority should be given to the compensatory plantation initiative of the Government before deforestation for any of the reasons.
(Mob-9778764394; Email-tripathysk1947@gmail.com)