Bamboo bonanza: how a village in India used its forest to go from poverty to prosperity
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Restoring age-old land rights has enabled 300 villagers to build a profitable business and halt the exodus to the city. It’s late morning and the sound of axes clacking against wood echoes through Pachgaon’s bamboo forest in the central Indian state of Maharashtra. A huge depot, larger than a cricket stadium, is full of bamboo branches, stacked neatly by size in different sections. Nearby is a small, windowless office painted in the colours of the forest – a record-keeper of Pachgaon’s turnaround from abject poverty to relative wealth in just over a decade.
![[Enormous stacks of bamboo staves in a clearing ]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/37de49aa5359d3f19c275eaaeebe7bbbf1b4c5af/0_0_4032_3024/master/4032.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Pachgaon’s rags-to-riches story follows the implementation of two longstanding Indian laws that restored to the local adivasi (tribal) community its traditional ownership rights over the forest, which they lost to rulers and colonisers several generations ago.
![[A middle-aged Indian man points to words written in an Indian script on a blackboard]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/344dbec8634c69db4f2c67f3201403c2fe2ddc8b/0_0_4032_3024/master/4032.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Under the laws – the Forest Rights Act 2006, and the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act 1996 – tribal village councils, or panchayats, can apply for “community forest rights papers”, or title deeds to designated forest resources, and constitute their own gram sabhas (village assemblies) to take decisions on governance and the marketing of the fruit, seeds, herbs and trees that they harvest and cut in the forest.
![[Three women in colourful saris carrying axes and bags walk along a sandy lane past a hut]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/988a4b57f83e18d07bdd7b8006e667d69bf96c11/0_0_3520_1980/master/3520.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
When the laws came into force, they were hailed as progressive legislation that would correct the historical injustices that tribal communities had suffered for years. But poor awareness on the part of forest dwellers, and reluctance on the part of the state to hand over complete control, meant they were rarely enacted.
![[A young Indian man and a woman standing among thickets of bamboo]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/115d0dd5ba34f255c708b85cfc1644283c39c868/0_168_4032_2419/master/4032.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
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