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

According to the classification by legal status, this category include all other forests. Some of these forests are privately owned. All village forests are included in this category. In the hilly states of the North-east, forests are owned by district councils, village community and even individual households. All these come under the category of Unclassed forests. In some parts of the country, there are forests on revenue land, which normally are assigned to the forest department for management. These are called revenue forests or Soyam forests. For this item, all forests of this category will be considered if they are not owned by individuals or village community or are not entrusted to village / Van panchayat.

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.