The Forest Is Her Inheritance: How Women Uphold Uttarakhand’s Van Panchayats

“Without the forest, we wouldn’t be able to live here,” Basanti Rawat clarifies. As the elected sarpanch (village head), she has watched the Shankhdhura village, in Pithoragarh, Uttarakhand, metamorphose into its present form, and in her own way, helmed change. 

Vital to this transformation has been the forests bordering the village. Basanti continues, “People who live in the mountains depend on the surrounding forests for survival. The cows' fodder and the leaf litter come from the forests; all our water sources are from the forest.” 

Basanti speaks of the forests with a fondness one would use for their children. 

But it is like a child; she and the eight women who led the van panchayat of Shankhdhura village point out. As filmmaker Neha Dixit — whose documentary underlines the van panchayats’ commitment to safeguarding the forests — shares, there is a stark difference between these and the administrative village panchayats. 

The former’s role is to strategise how community forests should be used and protected, patrolling through the forests and preventing outsiders from infringing upon them.

This system turns the locals into environmental custodians. And there’s a long and winding history to it. 

How the van panchayats took root in the Himalayan hills

The forests of Uttarakhand stand as sentinels of time; they’ve documented decades of social change. Around the 19th century, the British declared the forests of India as property of the Crown, thus overturning their status as state property and instead bucketing them into the ‘reserved forest’ category. But this caused an uproar among the locals, eventually causing the British to give in to their demands. 

In 1931, the British passed the Van Panchayat Niyamavali (Forest Council Rules) under the Scheduled District Act of 1874, which instituted the concept of community forests. 

This placed the forests under the control of the van panchayat, thus granting the locals decision-making powers. 

In 1972, the Van Panchayat rules were brought under the Indian Forest Act of 1927, which earmarked the forests as reserve, panchayat, and private. 

“The van panchayat system showed what a decentralised form of forest governance looked like,” points out ecologist Ghazala Shahabuddin in an article in India Spend. “Research has shown that decentralised resource management can be more sustainable than purely state-sponsored top-down efforts.”

Van panchayats are significant. Around 71 percent of the land in Uttarakhand is covered with forests, with a presence of around 6,069 van panchayats managing 405,426 hectares of forests (13.63 percent of the total forest area) in the state. What makes the system stand out is that the use of the forest is governed by certain rules. 

These are instated by the landholder families — the patriarchal system lends men the power of decision. But that’s where two particular van panchayats set a precedent, by stepping on patriarchy’s toes. 

The panchayats of Sarmoli Jainti and Shankhdhura villages are led by the local women, ensuring that, after years of being on the margins of the patriarchal order, they can now lead change from the front.  

Effecting a revolution across the forests of Uttarakhand 

Picture a forest in its prime. Lush with oak, pine, and rhododendron, the forests of Uttarakhand shelter both ancient traditions and fragile ecosystems. And the women of the van panchayats are committed to protecting this beautiful tapestry at any cost. But the role of these collectives goes beyond protection. 

Malika Virdi, the former sarpanch of Sarmoli Jainti village, along with the local women, led the restoration of the Mesar Kund, a pond that had become a shadow of its former self through the years. She explains that the Sarmoli-Jainti van panchayat comprises right holders that come from the two revenue villages of Sarmoli and Jainti. The van panchayat is located in the Munsiari block of Pithoragarh district, Uttarakhand.

Elaborating on the revival of the pond, Malika shares that the success lay not just in the outcome but in the mindset shift they were able to effect. “The striking fact about Munsiyari is that it has very high rainfall. It seemed that we’d never be water-deficient. Half the lake had dried up because of eutrophication (a process that leads to an overabundance of algal plants).”

She continues, “When I became sarpanch in 2003, it became clear to me that Mesar Kund was not just a place of reverence and folklore, but also a source of water for our village, along with 11 other villages in the block.” Reviving it seemed the most plausible solution. But the locals found it counterintuitive. “Paani ki kami thodi hai (There is no lack of water).” 

In order to get the incite urgency, Malika hinged her plan on the spot’s cultural significance. 

“People have a spiritual attachment to the place; they see it as the residing spot for Mesar devata (deity). We tried explaining to the locals that (borrowing from the mythical love story that surrounds the pond) it is out of love that we were doing the revival. So, it was this nice mix of storytelling plus the chance of saving the pond,” she reasons. The process was intensive; what started with digging and voluntary labour was followed by NGOs and the forest department stepping in with funds.  

The revival was successful. “Mesar Kund is now a seasonal stream,” she shares. 

This is the power of collective action. 

As Deepak Pachchai, who lives in the Sarmoli village, and is proud of his local van panchayat, shares, “Each year, apart from planting trees, protecting and rejuvenating our water sources, we employ a village forest guard for four to five months to protect the grass slopes in the van panchayat. Along with keeping out stray cattle and people who come to steal grass for their livestock, the forest guard also keeps an eye out to prevent the stealing of firewood and ringal (mountain bamboo used to make baskets).”

But, despite the success of the van panchayats, recent commercialisation and the tourism industry are posing a threat to their survival. 

Do the van panchayats have a future?

With everyone looking to incentivise the forests of Uttarakhand — according to government figures, the number of tourists visiting Uttarakhand increased from 22 million in 2014 to 39 million in 2019 — shielding the forests from the impact of modernity has become a challenge. 

As Tarun Joshi, convenor of the Van Panchayat Sangharsh Morcha, an Uttarakhand-based organisation working with forest-dwelling communities for the recognition of their forest rights and van panchayat governance, points out, “The van panchayat system, which was created in 1931 to manage and protect forests, was way more advanced for its time than the Forest Rights Act of 2006. But over the years, their working has been disrupted by rules instituted by the forest department, which is why the villagers now want community forest rights, that recognise a community's right to use, manage and conserve forest resources, under the Forest Rights Act 2006 (FRA 2006), which gives them more rights and empowers them more than the van panchayat system."

Meanwhile, Malika reasons, “We have been asking not to be included in the nagar panchayat, which is a transition from a gram panchayat (village council) to a nagar palika (municipal council) and then nigam (municipal corporation). Our concern is what will happen to the status of our van panchayat if you make us part of the nagar panchayat.” 

She goes on, “In 2024, despite our 10 years of protests, they included Sarmoli Jainti and Shankhdhura into the nagar panchayat. As a result, it’s a state of flux; we don’t know if all the nagar panchayat people have rights in all the van panchayats, or do we continue to treat our van panchayat as our own. There are no elections that are taking place, so a very beautiful and powerful institution of the commons is being dismantled, and that is our concern.”

Can tradition be followed while embracing evolution? The van panchayats of Uttarkhand hope so. 

This story is part of a content series by The Better India and Roundglass Sustain.

All pictures courtesy Roundglass Sustain

Sources

'Community Forest Management in India: The Van Panchayats of Uttranchal': by Pampa Mukherjee.

'How Van Panchayats, Meant To Protect Uttarakhand's Forests, Are Losing Their Relevance': by Flavia Lopes, Published on 13 August 2022.

'The importance of Van Panchayats- Why do we protect them': by Deepak Pachchai, Published on 30 September 2023.

Uttarakhand Tourism Policy 2030.

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