The Van Panchayat Movement and Struggle for Achieving Sustainable Management of the Forest : A Case Study of Uttarakhand in North India

Abstract

During the nineteenth century, the denial of customary rights of people by the British colonial forest department, led to conflict with the local society. Our study shows how this conflict paved the way for the origin of van panchayats (VPs) in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand at the beginning of the twentieth century. The objective is to analyze such conflicts and see how VPs appeared and eventually evolved into people’s participatory forest management. VP as a system was institutionalized in 1931. The end of the British Empire and the emergence of independent India (1947) began a new era in the history of forest management. Several experimental attempts were undertaken. VP rules were revised and amended to accommodate the evolving changes in the relationship between local villages and the state Forest Department. This led to the birth of the system of joint forest management (JFM) in early 1990s. In one sense, VP could be regarded as a people’s movement for the restoration of customary rights, which eventually resulted in the Forest Rights Act of 2006. This Act substantially restored people's sovereign rights over forest, independent of either the state or Forest Department interference. Nevertheless, struggle for full empowerment of local villages over their surrounding forests and other resources continues.