Country | India |
Area (ha) | - |
Ecosystem Type | Forest |
Number of households | 130 |
Number of people | - |
The forests consist of teak,
tellamaddi, billagodisa, gotti, bitluga, palaguidisa, sandra, pedda manu and nallamanu.
The village comprises 130 households with their main occupations being agriculture, livestock
and agricultural labour. They utilize the forests resources for their regular requirements. Most
of the villagers belong to the officially designated backward classes, including the mutraj, gaud,
yadav, pichakutta, wadla, and carpenter communities and 11 households of scheduled castes.
There are 8-9 landless households in the village, which depend on daily wages for subsistence. The
smallest landholding owned by the villager is half an acre and the largest is 9 acres. Many youth
migrate to nearby towns and cities in search of employment, while most others are unoccupied
throughout the year. Their educational qualifications are around secondary school level. They are
neither inclined towards village-based agricultural activities nor they are qualified enough to gain
employment in the cities.
The important crops cultivated by the villagers include groundnut, paddy and sugarcane. Villagers
mainly depend on the forest mainly for firewood and grass. Some knowledgeable individuals also
depend on the forest for medicinal plants. There is not much NTFP in the forest except for some
tendu trees, but the Mantoor villagers do not collect the leaves. Sometimes these leaves are
collected by people from other nearby villages.
Origin | - |
Year of Formation | - |
Motivations | Livelihood |
In the early 1970s due to failure of the monsoons for three consecutive years this area faced
a severe drought. Because of this the villagers started depending on the surrounding forests for
their major source of income. They sustained themselves through this period by tapping gum
from the Tapasi Gum Tree. The villagers began to protect the trees by sleeping under them,
since the demand for gum was high and the trees were few and therefore under threat. This
practice continued for three years until the monsoons regularized in the village, finally diverting
the villager’s attention towards agriculture.
Neglect of the forest due to presence of the People’s War Group, unregulated resource use by
the locals and neighbouring villages, presence of migratory graziers and increase in agriculture
reduced people’s involvement in forest protection and resulted in its fast degradation.
In 1994, the people of Mantoor got together and decided to regenerate one of the adjoining
revenue hillocks where vegetation had been reduced to a few shrubs. The event that triggered this
initiative was when the villagers could not find enough wood to even erect stalls for the preparation
of the annual festival of the local deity inhabiting the hillock. The temporary solution was to bring
one pole from each household in the village to perform the ceremony. However, this experience
shocked the villagers and in the very next village meeting they took stock of the rapidly degrading
natural resources around them. A unanimous decision was taken to strictly protect the 60-acre
hillock, which they also realized was once a sacred grove.
The villagers decided to impose a fine of Rs 500 on anyone who extracted resources from
the prohibited area. A village committee was formed to monitor and control the issues of this
sacred grove. Through this practice the hillock started steadily regenerating, giving the villagers
tremendous encouragement.
In mid-1999, the Andhra Pradesh Forest Development (FD) allotted 60,000 acres of state-owned
Reserved Forest to the Andhra Pradesh Forest Development Corporation (APFDC).1 Mantoor village
was adjacent to part of these leased-out forests. The APFDC started commercial monocultures.
Mechanized techniques were adopted to uproot existing root stock to be replaced with eucalyptus
plants. The villagers opposed this action of APFDC, foreseeing the consequences, such as depletion
of the groundwater table due to monoculture plantations and severe shortage of firewood and
grass.
The villagers had not been informed about the lease given to the APFDC or the future activities
planned. The villagers’ contention was that instead of leasing out the forest to the APFDC, the
government should hand it over to the villagers for management. Encouraged by the impacts of their
efforts at conservation on the hillock, they were confident that they could take on the responsibility
of managing the Reserve Forest falling within their boundaries as well. They demanded that they
should be included in the joint forest management (JFM) scheme of the government. A struggle
that followed resulted in some villagers being kept in police custody, which invoked a debate in
the meeting of the van suraksha samitis (VSS) of the neighboring area. The Andhra Pradesh NGOs
network on JFM took up the issue and held a joint meeting with the villagers of Mantoor, the VSS
members and the district NGO network. All the major newspapers and television channels covered
the story of the village struggle. Subsequent to this publicity, the lease to APFDC was cancelled
and the forests were decided to be jointly managed by the FD and the villagers under JFM.
Collective of CCAs | - |
Decision Making Body | JFM committee , Van Suraksha Samiti(VSS) |
Rules and Regulations | - |
Community activities through the year | Patrolling, watch and ward |
A VSS was formed for the management of the forests and the meetings of the executive of
the VSS are now held every month with minimal women’s participation. All the members of the
executive and concerned officials are intimated about this meeting. The minutes of all the meetings
are recorded by the villagers.
The general body of the VSS includes one male and one female member from each household,
which means a total membership of 256.
The general body meetings are held once in three
months.
So far the VSS has not explored or received any external sources of funding for its operations.
Most of their expenses are met from the compound fee collected from the offenders against the
forest rules and contributions from all members of the VSS general body (Rs 10 per person as and
when needed). They received a small financial grant from the FD in 2000-1 for the desilting of
water conservation tanks in and around the forests, which they successfully completed.
The villagers feel that they do not need large sums of money for carrying on with the VSS work
as they can generate funds from within the community through personal contributions, compound
fee, etc. However, they stressed that at critical and crucial times, when the community is in an
urgent need for funds and they are unable to generate them internally, there should be a provision
for funds during such times. The chairperson is not paid any remuneration for his services nor
provided any reimbursement for the expenses incurred by him. He invests his time and energy in
the VSS work purely out of commitment
The VSS has taken up a number of steps to control and regulate forest resource use. These
include:
1. The VSS has appointed forest guards to patrol the forests regularly. The forest guards are paid
Rs 500 per month. Apart from this the villagers keep a vigil on the forest as and when they are
in the forest. Forest watchers are especially appointed in the period between July and October.
According to the villagers, this is the timber-felling season, as it is believed that timber felled in
this season is not affected by pests.
2. The villagers have installed 30 gobar gas plants in the village in last two years. Many villagers
also have an LPG connection. Before the conservation efforts started in the village, headloads
were extracted from the forest for sale. But as of now only poor families and those who do not
have biogas are allowed to collect headloads from the forest for personal consumption only.
3. Villagers have also restricted the use of forests by outsiders. A few villagers were concerned
about those poor people who were earlier dependent on these forests for biomass needs and
said they were unaware of how they were meeting their needs currently, while others felt that
protection activities have had little impact on the outside communities. A much more detailed
study of the area and the initiative is needed to understand the social implications of the
conservation efforts on the villagers.
4. For personal use, people are also allowed to extract certain species for fuelwood. While earlier
there were about four villages dependent on the resources of Mantoor forests, now only the
villagers of Mantoor extract resources from the forest.
Legal Status | Forest Area under IFA → Reserve forest |
FRA Applicability | - |
Community Forest Resource Rights (CFR) | - |
Date of filing CFR claim | - |
Level of CFR claim | - |
Date of recognition of CFR claim | - |
Management plan status | - |
Land Ownership | - |
Other Recognised Status | - |
Sacred Landscape | - |
Impact on Livelihoods and Subsistence | Timber |
Social Impacts | Community empowerment, Mitigation of external threat, Prevention of distress outmigration |
Ecological Impact | Natural habitat preservation |
Internal Threats and Challenges | Conflict with other communities, Over-harvesting from within the community |
External Threats and Challenges | - |
The villagers have benefited after the introduction in the following ways:
1. A greater sense of empowerment and stronger association with forests.
2. Regular availability of daily wage labour from forestry works.
3. Under JFM the FD has asked the villagers to carry out thinning of vegetation. The wood that is
collected is then auctioned by the villagers and the revenue obtained from it goes to the VSS
account.
4. After ten years compartment wise felling may begin. Villagers were not very clear about the
benefit sharing arrangement under JFM in the long run. However, they felt that such extractions
should be carried out in a regulated manner not harming the forests. It appeared to us that the
major benefit that the villagers saw from this program is not how much money will they be able
to generate eventually but the fact that the forests were under their control and management.
Also the facts, concerns and decisions made by the villagers about their forests mattered and
was taken into account.
5. The use of biogas, and regulated internal and external use of forest has reduced dependency on
the forest resources.
Presently the villagers are receiving some logistical help from an NGO called CARPAD. CARPAD
has been focusing on local empowerment and resource management. With the NGO’s help a few
self-help groups have been formed in the village
There are many issues related to forest management that the VSS still has not been able to
resolve. These include the unabated grazing in the forest area by livestock such as goats and cattle
from within the village and outside the village. The attempts to prevent the goat owners from
outside villages have been futile.
The women’s participation in decision-making for conservation activities is extremely poor.
Although the village has formed a woman’s group (mahila mandal), the presence of this group
does not seem to have affected their participation in decision-making.
Mantoor villagers were in conflict with some of their neighbours because of restricting the use of
forest resources. Two incidents in particular led to serious physical clashes. The Mantoor villagers
explained to the offenders that if the issues were not sorted out locally they would have to seek
judicial help. At present there are fewer offences from the neighbours.
Data Source | From publicly available sources |
Year of Study | 2001 |
License | - |