Land and Forest Policy: Resources for Development or Our Natural Resources?

Land and forest resources have been at the centre of several policy interventions in India over a long period of time: policy declarations, acts and rules as well as incentivising and restraining tax and subsidy structures. Field reality observed by social scientists and their natural science counterparts has also been documented extensively in the last three to four decades. The questions we ask in this chapter are: Has the policy direction been impacted by the understandings from this literature? What is the empirical learning policy link? Who are the stakeholders who count?