Post-War Forest Policy in India

Abstract

EIGHTY years have passed since the Indian Forest Service was inaugurated under the auspices of Sir Charles Wood, Secretary of State for India, Lord Elgin, Governor-General of India, and Mr. (later Sir Dietrich) Brandis, its first Inspector-General of Forests. It was the first forest service in the British Empire and Dominions, and the first attempt by the British Government to introduce a correct forestry administration into a country over which it ruled. Various factors, including the steady recruitment of its gazetted service from home and the high standard of training demanded by the India Office for its forest probationers, have gone to produce the forest service and the great forest estate it controlled up to the outbreak of the War of 1914–18. Perhaps one of the chief causes, accounting for the steady progress in achievement for the well-being of the forests and the people, so large a proportion of whom are dependent in many ways on efficient forest management, has been the presence of an Inspector-General of Forests as adviser to the Central Government without intermission down through this long term of years. Many a period of storm and stress, as one looks back, threatening one or more forest regions in different parts of India, were safely negotiated through the presence at the ear of the Central Government of a cool and far-seeing forestry administrator who, with his great experience, could weigh impartially the pros and cons of any policy suggested by a local administration, and advise accordingly.