Hidden from politicians
The Haryana chief minister's office turns down an appointment sought by the Down To Earth correspondent saying-What is special about Sukhomajri. So is the reaction of the local MLA Chander Mohan who does not have time to talk about Sukhomajri.
Outside Haryana, however, this village has evinced much interest. More than 1.000 social activists from 109 countries have visited Sukhomajri to see for themselves how joint forest management works. The only politician the villagers remember visiting Sukhomajri is Maneka Gandhi when she was the environment minister in the V P Singh government. In fact Indira Gandhi came to know about Sukhomajri after The Economist weekly of England published a report on the village In January 1982.
Is the state forest minister aware that the forest department's decision has caused conflict in this village? "This is a very small thing for the minister to know," replies S K Dhar, managing director, Haryana Forest Development Corporation. However, people involved with Sukhomajri are of the opinion that political patronage was deliberately avoided at the beginning. But now efforts are being made to make the political leadership aware of the Sukhomajri mode of development.
There is a silent politlicisation of Sukhomajri of late," reveals Dhar. He feels that the recent decision of the chief minister to give 25 per cent of the regenerated khair forest to the villages is a pointer towards that. "A core group of officials recently started meeting political leaders to get support for the joint forest management programme, and the reactions have been encouraging,' says a senior forest official who claims to be leading the core group." 'When politicians know of the project and its impact, they show interest. In fact the forest minister told me to start joint forest management in his constituency says Dhar.
Politicians are never interested in people bypassing them and talking of development issues" says Donna Suri, an assistant editor in the Indian Express, Chandigarh. She says that when the Sukhomajri experiment started showing results politicians tried to disrupt it. During the 1970s many government officials were transfered as local leaders objected to the sail and water conservation works by people. In 1975 when Gurnam Singh was chief conservator of forests, he was transferred because some local leaders in and around Sukhomajri did not like his method of bypassing the panchayats. In 1995, the department mass auctioned bhabber of 15 societies without the consent of the villagers in violation of the joint forest management guidelines.