網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

CHAPTER XIV

THE PROGRESS OF FOREST ADMINISTRATION, 1871-1900

I

N the preceding Part we have considered at some length the first organisation of a Forest Service in the different presidencies and provinces of India. The period in years was short; but the work achieved was of incalculable value to the subsequent progress of the Department. An exhaustive review of the steps taken was necessary to the study of its subsequent development. It should also prove useful to the younger Forestry Services of the Empire, and, in fact, to Foresters throughout the world. By 1870 the foundations of the Department may be said to have been well and truly laid by Brandis. They were incomplete in some of the more backward regions of India, but in these parts the same may be said of the administration in other branches of the Services. A notable example, for instance, was Assam, which was still administered by Bengal. At the commencement of the period here dealt with Brandis had therefore a Forest Department in being. The lines of a forest policy had been laid down and, generally speaking, were worked up to. The development of this Department and the progress made in the administration of the forests of the country as a whole during the next thirty years, that is, to the end of the nineteenth century, will now be dealt with in a general survey, the individual progress made in the several presidencies and provinces being left for a future Part.

It may be admitted at once that the development of the Department was remarkable. Set-backs there were. In some cases progress was slow. There were lamentable lapses which were reminiscent of the actions and opinions held during the earlier parts of the century. These were perhaps inevitable when it is remembered that the British Government and the British people as a whole had no knowledge of the aims of scientific forestry and that the administrators of India were trained on the Public School standard of the times in which

science and scientific knowledge were of little account and to whom therefore forestry as a scientific study was unknown. There is no intention here to belittle a classical education-in the writer's opinion some knowledge of the classics is not only useful but almost indispensable to the Forest Officer. But a boy with a purely classical training will rarely make a good Forest Officer; nor until within comparatively recent years have men so trained found it easy, in the majority of cases, to appreciate the objects and importance of a sustained forest policy or visualise its necessity in the economic needs of a country and its people. In considering the past history of the development of the Department in India the importance of this factor on its progress cannot be overlooked or its effects minimised. The other deterrent to more rapid progress is more readily recognised, the fact that as a preliminary to the real conservation and administration of the forests on the countryside the people with their Oriental conservatism and apathy had to be gradually weaned from their old methods of utilising-wastefully utilising the forests and educated to a recognition of the fact that the work being carried out was in their true interests. Having alluded to the two main factors which had a deterrent influence on the progress of the Department, the main lines of development will be now glanced at.

It will be remembered that in 1866 Brandis secured the services of two young fully trained German forest probationers, Schlich and Ribbentrop. Schlich was sent to Burma and in 1870 was transferred to Sind. Ribbentrop commenced his career in the Punjab. These two officers followed Brandis as Inspectors-General. Brandis was placed on special duty in October, 1881, and retired in April, 1883. Schlich, who officiated as Inspector-General for Brandis from October, 1881, was confirmed in the post on Brandis' retirement, finally retiring from the Service in December, 1888. Schlich, however, went home in February, 1885, to start, as Professor of Forestry, the training of future forest probationers at Cooper's Hill, to be referred to in another chapter. Ribbentrop became Inspector-General on Schlich's departure from India and retained the post until his own retirement in 1900. The following additional officers officiated as Inspectors-General of Forests from the institution of the post to the end of the period here dealt with: Captain E. C. S. Williams, R.E., from 13th April, 1865, to 7th May, 1866; Dr. H. Cleghorn, from 7th May, 1866, to 14th March, 1867; Colonel G. F. Pearson,

M.S.C., from 29th January, 1871 to 20th December, 1872; Mr. B. H. Baden-Powell, I.C.S., C.I.E., from 30th December, 1872, to 8th April, 1874; Colonel F. Bailey, R.E., LL.D., from 3rd August, 1887, to 31st October, 1887, and Mr. H. C. Hill, C.I.E., from 7th August, 1889, to 1st March, 1891, from 22nd December, 1893, to 21st March, 1894, from 19th February, 1895, to 1st April, 1896, and from 8th July, 1899, to 8th October, 1899.

The period to be here dealt with chiefly covers, therefore, the administration of the Indian Forests by Forest Officers of German nationality and training, and was to a very considerable extent influenced by German ideas in the management of forests. At the time Germany was admittedly one of the foremost nations amongst those whose forests were managed on scientific lines. A study of the German system and methods was indispensable in the training of the probationer. It is open, however, to question whether the attempt to strictly apply Germany's rather hard-and-fast methods based on axiomatic dicta and calculations had not its drawbacks in the case of the Indian forests; whether the application of French methods in addition would not have resulted, in some parts of India at least, in a more rapid progress. Whether, in fact, the views of Indian Forest Officers were not in danger of becoming stereotyped in the effort to slavishly copy and apply methods remarkably successful when applied to comparatively small individual forest areas, but perhaps somewhat stultifying to the larger viewpoint and individualism required in the management of forests covering such large areas and of so varying a character as those of India. A close study of the history of the period renders these reflections inevitable, since they furnish answers to several problems which arise in its consideration. The work which had to be carried out was a task of Hercules and it was ably performed. But if we refer to the forest literature of the period emanating from the pens of Indian officers, the great bulk of it, with a few brilliant and notable examples, refers to the continental forests of Europe. At the end of nearly half a century's work the Department knew but little of the sylviculture of even its principal trees. This fact alone may perhaps be left to illustrate the position of the Department in this connection. Special research work by officers deputed for the purpose had not been attempted. Too great stress had been laid upon the financial side of the operations of the Department as a purely commercial and

revenue-making concern to the detriment of progress in work of a professional nature which, as a matter of fact, as is now fully realized, would have resulted in a quicker enhancement of the revenue. At the commencement Brandis had to justify the inauguration of the Department by something more than covering the cost of its maintenance, and the successful organisation he introduced was fully justified; but the history of the Department through the period tends to show that this policy became fixed and remained for two long a guiding factor in the administration of the forests. In other words, for some years after the spade-work in connection with the demarcation of the forests, their opening out by roads and so forth, had been in the main accomplished in the more accessible regions, and when the extraordinary increase in the prosperity of the population and their demands upon the forest estate would have justified the introduction of a more liberal financial policy.

THE STATE PROPRIETORSHIP IN THE LAND

One of the first questions to arise after the organisation of the Forest Department, as will have been already realised, was -What was the State proprietorship in the land? This proved a very involved problem, since the State proprietorship of forest land varied in accordance with the historical and political development of each Province. With certain broad provisions laid down by the Supreme Government the settlement of this grave question had to be left to the various Local Administrations. The question was intimately connected with the framing of the various forest Acts, to be shortly discussed, and the Inspector-General was consequently consulted in this matter both by the Supreme and Local Governments. Under the general trend of British policy in governing India it had been ruled that when the population had settled in joint village communities any forest or waste land that fell within their boundaries was considered common property. This recognition formed the basis of all settlements made after the occupation of the country by the British. In many parts, although the policy was a perfectly just one, it was shortsighted, since with the growth of the village communities which were such a marked result of the orderly British rule the fores: on the lands so allotted was wastefully utilised and rapidly disappeared, leaving barren areas over which the half-starve

cattle roamed in search of a sparse pasturage, whilst the fuel supplies of the community disappeared.

In the case of un-united villages no right to the waste was ever recognised. The old Rajahs claimed all areas which were not actually brought under cultivation, but any person who required waste land for the purposes of cultivation could obtain it without difficulty on agreeing to pay the assessment in force. The rest of the waste land had always been recognised as the property of the rulers, and from them was inherited by the British Government by right of conquest. In some cases the cultivators had acquired prescriptive rights of user. It was rights of this nature which were to prove, and are still proving in many instances, such a source of trouble and difficulty to the Forest Department, and more especially to the framers of working plans for forests which have now been under systematic treatment for several decades. For these prescriptive (and usually wasteful) rights of user are often incompatible with the scientific and economic working of a forest.

In its broad aspects it will be obvious that when the united villages were numerous and therefore close together, as in the plains of the North-West Provinces for instance, and in parts of Bengal, the whole of the forest land was rightly claimed as the property of the people, with after results which will be dealt with in the development of this history. For the forest which once clothed them has disappeared, leaving howling wastes, the reafforestation of which is proving a formidable task to the Department.

Earlier parts of this history have shown that a considerable period of years elapsed before it was realised that definite action would have to be taken if the existing forests were to be preserved from the ruin and extinction to which a considerable area in the country had been subjected from the beginning of the century. As preceding chapters will have clearly indicated, it was due to the insistance of successive Secretaries of State for India on the necessity of introducing a proper conservation of the forests that this matter was given its rightful place in the administration of the country. It is a remarkable fact, and one meriting full recognition, that in this particular respect and one so vital to a great agricultural country like India the driving force should have come from the responsible authority at home. Two instances are worth quoting illustrative of the opinions of men in high office on this branch of administration. Soon after Brandis took up his work as adviser to the Supreme

« 上一頁繼續 »