CHAPTER 2 STATUS OF PARTICIPATORY FOREST MANAGEMENT IN INDIA: AN ANALYSIS K. S. Murali, Madhuri Sharma, R. Jagannatha Rao, Indu K. Murthy, and N. H. Ravindranath Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 1. Introduction Joint Forest Management (JFM) is a decentralized and people oriented forest management approach, which is being promoted in India since 1990. The rationale behind this approach lies in the assumption that only a willing and active partnership between the Forest Department and local village communities can promote regeneration of degraded forests and conservation, sustainable use and management of forest resources. The forests, which used to be a major resource in the past, are now not able to meet even the basic needs of the local communities, particularly forest dependent communities. In India, forests have been largely managed by the Forest Department, with the prime objective of maximizing the production of valuable timber. In the process, the forest dependent communities' rights have been marginalised. It is increasingly recognized that involvement of people in forest management not only contributes to regeneration of degraded forest, but also helps in cost-effective conservation of the forest, apart from meeting the community's subsistence needs. Efforts at involving local people in management of forest resources has produced encouraging results with respect to forest conservation and regeneration in states like West Bengal, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat (Chatterjee, 1996). Based on these experiences, the 1988 Forest Policy of India has categorically stated that the needs of the forest dependent local communities should be given priority. In 1990, the Government of India issued an order on JFM, a participatory approach to forest management involving the Forest Department and the local community. The JFM Guidelines 2000 clearly define the community’s role and responsibility and their right to a share in the forest produce. As of now, 23 states in India have issued orders on JFM and about 36,130 Forest Protection Committees (FPCs) have been initiated, (different states have different names such as Village Forest Committees or VFCs or Village Forest Protection Committees or VFPCs. Here we have used the term FPC as this was first to be coined in West Bengal) to protect and regenerate about 10.25 Mha of forest (Bahuguna, 2000). The JFM provisions are expected to promote peoples’