Forest rights and wrongs

India's forests have been a site of conflict for centuries. But it is only over the last decade that their history has become the subject of serious enquiry. The first wave of work focussed on the struggle put up by resistance movements against imperial and post-independence power structures from the grassroots and secondly, on the structure and motivations of policy from above. It is only recently that a more refined and nuanced approach has begun to evolve