A lot of trees are planted on paper and forests are created on government files. Between 1980-81 and 1988-89, the government claimed that some 24 billion trees had been planted under afforestation programmes on private and public lands at an expense of over Rs 3,000 crore. In other words, taking an average density of 2,000 trees per hectare, a forest of about 12 million hectares - the size of Assam and Kerala combined was created. There are about 560,000 villages in India. This claim would also mean that some 40,000 new trees were planted in every village of the country in the eight-year period. As it is rare to find a village with even 500 new trees, there are obvious questions about the veracity of this claim. While low survival of trees planted could account for some of the discrepancy, an important part of the discrepancy is due to corruption. The amount of money sanctioned for afforestation programmes is obviously not being used for actually planting trees.

In Uttar Pradesh, exaggerating figures of tree planting was not just 10 or 20 per cent but to an extent of 1,000 per cent, according to N C Saxena, a senior administrator, who was speaking at a seminar on Economics of the Sustainable Use of Forest Resources organised by the Centre for Science and Environment in 1990. "For each tree actually planted, at least 10 trees are shown as having been planted. If the forest department raises two million seedlings, the actual figure shown will be something like 20 million seedlings," said Saxena, who conducted a field survey in Uttar Pradesh.