Opinion Bamboo grass
CCS is pushing a petition to PM,Agriculture Minister and Environment Minister that bamboo should be declared a grass,not a tree.
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Is bamboo a grass or a tree? 18th September is World Bamboo Day and Centre for Civil Society (CCS) is pushing a petition to PM,Agriculture Minister and Environment Minister that bamboo should be declared a grass,not a tree.
Everyone knows bamboo belongs to the grass family,so what is this tree business? This has to do largely (but not only) with Indian Forests Act (1927). This legislation classifies bamboo as a tree and harvested bamboo becomes timber. The upshot is heavy-handed government regulation on harvesting,transit and trade of bamboo.
Bamboo can grow in government forests,private forests or private plantations. If it grows in government forests,one can understand controls on harvesting,with two caveats. First,even in reserved and protected forests,there is no reason for taxonomy to be anti-nature. Why should bamboo become timber,as opposed to non-timber forest produce? Second,government controls and regulations aren’t necessarily best way of preserving forests. But damage caused by timber classification is even more insidious. States have their own laws,rules and regulations too. Since Centre calls bamboo a tree and harvested bamboo timber under Indian Forests Act,this is generally replicated by most States. The moment this happens,harvesting,transit and trade of bamboo grown in private forests and private plantations is subject to State control.
CCS campaign draws intellectual support from a study done by Malavika Vyawahare. This classifies ten States on the basis of how much they control bamboo,ranging from a relative low in Kerala,Gujarat and MP to a relatively high in Orissa,Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
This measure is crude,but it drives home the point. Pervasive government control not only provides avenues for bribery and rent-seeking,it also stifles private initiative. 85% of bamboo grown today is on government land and 15% on private (owned by communities,villages,individuals). On many criteria,private initiatives and privately-owned bamboo enterprises perform better.
Classification of bamboo as non-timber doesn’t entirely solve the problem,since there is heavy government regulation on non-timber forest produce too. However,that’s a broader issue. For the moment,one should be logical and recognize bamboo to be grass,so that one aspect of the problem is resolved. PM studied in St John’s Cambridge,so he will know what happened once in neighbouring Trinity. Since college laws prohibited keeping of dogs in college,but didn’t mention other animals,Byron kept a bear. And in PM’s time,the then Master possessed a dog. To ensure this dog remained,Fellows met and passed a resolution that this dog would henceforth be known as a cat.
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