India - Common Property Resources and Village Facilities, January - June 1998, NSS 54th Round

Protected forests too are constituted under the Forest Act. The locals are permitted to gather all produce except those which are specifically prohibited. Other privileges of the locals are also permitted. The privileges commonly enjoyed by the local population includes collection of leaves, firewood, fodder and other minor forest produce, grazing of cattle etc.

Items 8.1 to 8.3 & 8.9 provide for recording the area of forest land within the boundary of the village and right of local use of forest land and forest produce. By legal status, forests in India are classified in the following three categories: Reserved forests, Protected forests and Unclassed forests. In this item, information on area and right of use will be collected for each of these categories.

For each category of forests, area of land falling within the boundary of the sample village will be recorded in hectares in two places of decimal. Care should be taken to ensure that entries made are actually given in two places of decimal. For example, if the area reported is 50 hectares, the entry should be "50.00" and not just "50". If there is no forest of a particular category, record "0.00" in the corresponding cell. No cell of this column may be left blank. The total of entries (area) in Items 8.1 to 8.3 will be recorded in Item 8.9.