India's deforestation: Patterns and processes

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Abstract
Precolonial India was largely a nation of people who relied on their immediate surroundings for a diversity of biological resources and who had evolved a variety of cultural practices of prudent resource use. This system was radically transformed under British rule when cultivated as well as noncultivated lands were dedicated to the production of a small number of resources to be exported out of the locality. All tracts of erstwhile community‐controlled lands were taken over as state property; some of these were set apart as reserved forest for commercial timber production; others were permitted to be used by local communities for meeting their biomass needs. The latter were no longer under community control and as no‐man ‘s‐lands began to suffer over‐exploitation. This process of nonsustainable forest use has been intensified after independence with forests increasingly dedicated to highly subsidized supply of raw materials to the forest‐based industry.

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