Hugging The Trees

For many years the general impression was that the forest of India began to be seriously destroyed after Independence. It was felt that political pressures put on foresters to release land for agriculture and for human settlement was really the cause of the disaster. Actually,as several recent studies have shown {for example state Forestry and Social contract in British India by Ram Chandra Guha and Madhav Gadgil}, it was the British policy to commercialise forestry operations rather than leave the biomass for use by the local population,which spelt the doom of India's forest wealth.Thomas Weber has explained in a very readable way the history of logging specially in the Himalyas and the denudation it has caused in the hills.

Erosion of the soil and it's associated tragedies as a result of the vanishing tree cover is a slow process , often unseen except by ecologists. One of the most perceptive comments about this ecological disaster was made by Mira Behn, the daughter of the British Admiral Sir Edmund Slade , who became a lifelong associate of Gandhiji. In 1950 she moved to the hills in Tehri, and very soon recognised that there was something wrong in the Himalayas , " Year after the floods in the North of India seem to be getting worse , and this year they have been absolutely devastating.This means that Tere is something radically wrong in the Himalayas and that something is , without doubt, connected with the foresrts. It is not , I believe,just a matter of deforestation as some people think, but largely a matter of change of species.

She went on to explain that the Banj leaves create a rich humus on the ground and the result is a forest is which almost all the rain water gets absorbed. " It would be difficult to imagine a more ideal shock absorber for the monsoon rains than a Banj forest." On the other hand, the chir pine has the opposite effect , for it's smooth needles absorb nothing and it fact increase the run-off on the ground.