Nayagarh, Orissa:
A group of villagers from Orissa have united to save their forests from the timber mafia, despite divisions on caste lines.
In Jiginipatna village, no one ignores the call of the Forest Protection Committee (FPC). The current priority is to find a way to deal with petty timber smugglers who invade their forest - they have decided to avoid direct confrontation.
"We don't want to fight, we don't have guns. We go there with only lathis but the idea is to persuade the offenders to behave and help our cause. That is not how we operate," explains an FPC member.
People here are divided when it comes to caste, creed and politics... but not when it's the forest...
Jiginipatna is one of the 810 villages in Nayagarh district that are part of the Jungle Surakshya Mahasangh (JSM) - a grassroots level people's organisation that took shape in 1992 when local activists led by school teacher Joginath Sahu launched a campaign to form village level committees, which would take over the protection and management of forests.
The campaign worked and people across hundreds of villages joined hands to form committees at the village, regional and zonal levels - and since then the Mahasangh has grown in strength. "Nobody can be a better forester than the villager, because he's a beneficiary and therefore a stakeholder. He is a protector without any uniform, salary, van or gun," says JSM founder Shramik Jogi.
People in Nayagarh have set up not only a great example but a hugely successful model of community based forest management that is self-financed and self-regulated - and in which each of the 80,000 members is a stakeholder.