Brief:Social forestry project links rural employment with growing saplings. Under the scheme, dovetailed with the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (nregs), villagers are encouraged to plant fruit bearing trees like jamun, mango, litchi, guava and gooseberry or those with medicinal value like neem

Details :In some districts of Bihar, lopping tree branches or even plucking its leaves can have violent consequences. Binod Sao of Paigambarpur village in Muzzafarpur district realized this rather late when he plucked a few leaves off the neem tree belonging to his neighbour, Pradeep Singh, on September 23. Singh was so angry that he slapped Sao several times.

Singh became overprotective towards his sapling because there is money to be made by growing trees. Villagers, including landless farmers, in Tirhut range (comprising six districts) can earn Rs 10,000 a year by nurturing tree saplings under a new social forestry programme launched in February by the forest department.

Payment linked to survival rate

Under the scheme, dovetailed with the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (nregs), villagers are encouraged to plant fruit bearing trees like jamun, mango, litchi, guava and gooseberry or those with medicinal value like neem.


Some trees like mahogany and teak are grown for their expensive wood.

Each family is asked to plant at least 200 saplings and nurture them over the next three years. If 90 per cent or more saplings survive, the family gets Rs 10,200 a year, equivalent to a year’s wage under nregs.

The remuneration will be nearly half if 75 per cent of the saplings survive. If the survival rate is below 50 per cent, the family will not get any money.

If needed, the government will dig new wells to water the saplings, said S M Raju, commissioner of Tirhut forest range who conceived the scheme. He said regular audits are carried out; if a family is unable to maintain the saplings, they are transferred to the next family. Payments are made through cheques every fortnight. The scheme has caught on in the six districts of Tirhut range—Vaishali, Sitamarhi, Muzaffarpur, Hajipur and East and West Champaran. Between February and August this year, 12 million saplings were planted. People will earn wages under nregs while the saplings grow; after four years they can earn by selling fruits from the mature trees.

Villagers have even formed vigilance committees to protect the saplings. “Imagine when these trees start bearing fruit. We will earn thousands of rupees every season,” said Lakhan Sao of villagePaigambarpur, as he admired the healthy row of saplings he has planted. He said the saplings have to be protected initially from grazing cattle; once they grow to a height of five feet, they need not be guarded all the time. Sao said he is calling his son back from Punjab to look after the saplings.


Plantation drive record

Raju said he had a tough time convincing his superiors about the feasibility of the scheme. He claimed it would achieve the twin objective of giving employment to local people and mitigating climate change impact. “I am thinking global and acting local,” he said. If things work according to his plan then families living in rural Bihar can plant 42.31 crore saplings (at the rate of 50,000 saplings per panchayat) in one year.

Raju also claims to have created a world record. On August 30, helaunched a drive to plant the maximum number of saplings in a single day—as many as 9.6 million saplings were planted. This was higher than the previous record of 577,000 saplings planted in Pakistan on July 15 this year.

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Down To Earth
Alok Kumar Gupta