Mantoor

Mantoor village

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sowmithri V.R. AP NGOs Committee on JFM 3-4-142/6, Barkatpura Hyderabad – 500027 Ph: 040-7564959/ 7563017 E-mail: [email protected] Mr. Satya Srinivas

The above information has been compiled from information received from Mr. Satya Srinivas, APNGO network , Andhra Pradesh, and an interview with Hanumayya (VSS member) during a field visit to Mantoor by Neema Pathak (Kalpavriksh) , Girija Godbole, and Sowmithri and Satya Srinivas (AP NGOs Committee for Community Forestry) in June 2001.