Biggest landlord
In a democracy of 84,326,240 tribal people
"The crucial watershed in the history of Indian forestry,' writes historian Ramachandra Guha in his essay The Prehistory of Community Forestry (Environmental History, April 2001) "is undoubtedly the building of the railway network', 1853 onwards. An annual demand of over a million railway sleepers translated into an unregulated assault on forests; among others, the sal forests of Garhwal and Kumaon were devastated. Realising forests weren't inexhaustible, the British had to opt for sustained-yield forestry and so formed the Imperial Forest Department in 1864. But this newly-formed proprietor had an immediate problem: it had no rights over India's forests.
Solution: legislate
The Indian Forest Act, 1865 defines