Once again we have a new minister and once again we have pious statements. For the first time, however a minister has admitted that 350 million people in India are dependent upon the forest for their livelihood. While all this is fine and a lot of the right words have been uttered about people's participation including praise for the Joint Forest Management ( jfm ) projects carried out in 22 states, they are still only words. What we are seeing once again is a lot of rhetoric. This happens whenever a new minister takes over. He talks about the need to revamp the forest policy but fails to tackle the real issues.

By now it has become very clear through the success of jfm