Mendha-Lekha, a remote village in the Maoist-affected Gadchiroli district of eastern Maharashtra, has become the first in the country where Tribals have been given the right to sell bamboo harvested from the surrounding forests.
The Maharashtra government and the Union Environment Ministry recently gave the transit passes to the villagers thus enabling them to sell the bamboo from the region in the markets. The transit passes are required to take the bamboo from the village to the market, but the state forest department had refused the facility to the villagers for over one-and-a-half years.It is to be noted that the British enacted the Indian Forest Act in 1927, which categorised bamboo as a tree, thereby preventing local forest dwellers from harvesting them without requisite permission from the forest department. The regime had been followed in independent India. Now bamboo will not be treated as a tree under Indian Forest Act anymore and will be considered a minor forest produce like tendu leaf.
