Environmental Sociology

ISSN: (Print) 2325-1042 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rens20

A paradox of the ‘community’: contemporary

processes of participatory forest conservation in
the Sundarban Biosphere Reserve (SBR) region of
West Bengal

Amrita Sen & Sarmistha Pattanaik

To cite this article: Amrita Sen & Sarmistha Pattanaik (2019) A paradox of the ‘community’:
contemporary processes of participatory forest conservation in the Sundarban Biosphere
Reserve (SBR) region of West Bengal, Environmental Sociology, 5:1, 33-46, DOI:
10.1080/23251042.2018.1519883

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2018.1519883

Published online: 17 Sep 2018.

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ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY
2019, VOL. 5, NO. 1, 33–46
https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2018.1519883

ARTICLE

A paradox of the ‘community’: contemporary processes of participatory forest

conservation in the Sundarban Biosphere Reserve (SBR) region of West
Bengal
Amrita Sena and Sarmistha Pattanaikb
a
Centre for Urban Ecological Sustainability, Azim Premji University, Bangalore, India; bDepartment of Humanities and Social Sciences,
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This article provides a comprehensive critique of the culturalist idealizations of community, Received 22 March 2018
associated with an essentially tenuous version of environmentalism. To this end, it analyses an Accepted 3 September 2018
‘eco-governmentality’, observed in the implementation of joint forest management (JFM) policy KEYWORDS
in India and, in doing so, engages with a rethinking on the historical definitions of community. An Conservation; communities;
explanation of community, popularized by the works of pioneering sociologists like Ferdinand eco-governmentality; forests;
Tonnies and Louis Wirth, had largely built on some immutable dimensions. Most of such fishers; JFM; livelihoods; SBR
dimensions offered are organized on the notion that communities are intractable as well as
organic, inhabit a distinct geographical location and have a socio-cultural system relatively
undisturbed by external forces. The present study, based on empirical observations from the eco-
governmentality of JFM in India, brings in insights to critique the aforementioned line of thought.
It offers two levels of insights: (1) a collective can represent itself as a community through shared
experiences of marginalization as well as subject-formation, (2) the solidarity of a collective as a
community is often invoked as a ‘moral rhetoric’, to ‘exploit the political obligations that the
government have for looking after the poor and the underprivileged section of the population’.1

1. Introduction of a growing attempt by the Indian state towards

restructuration of the forest conservation policies,
An exhaustive range of scholarship on the political
during the post-liberalization period. Although a flux
ecology of protected area (PA) conservation have
of concerted concerns across a network of actors were
demonstrated a varied collection of cases, where live-
instrumental in bringing about such policies of
lihoods of forest-dependent communities were
restructuration, their implementation remained bleak
adversely affected by exclusionary forest policies.
in most parts of India (Chhotray 2004; Saravanan
Correspondingly, communities were viewed as a ‘har-
2009; Kumar and Kerr 2012; Sen and Pattanaik forth-
monious whole’, possessing a long-standing associa-
coming). In this paper, we explore insights from joint
tion with the forests through their resilience and
forest management (JFM), a policy introduced in the
indigenous environmental knowledge (Berkes, Folke,
1990 by the Indian state, to restructure forest conser-
and Gadgil 1995; Gadgil and Rao 1995; Alier 2002;
vation methods in lines with community participation.
Shahabuddin, Kumar and Srivastava 2005; Hoffman
JFM implies a method of participatory forest manage-
2014). Localization of decision making was therefore
ment, executed jointly by the forest-dependent com-
considered as the key factor in achieving social justice
munities and the functionaries of the forest
and environmental sustainability in forest conserva-
department, to regenerate degraded forests and
tion (Purcell and Brown 2005, 280). A body of empiri-
empower the local communities (Prasad 1999; Lele
cal evidence has strongly suggested that indigenous
2000; Jodha 2000; Nayak and Berkes 2008; Sen and
ecological knowledge can be successful in restoring
Pattanaik 2017b). It was initiated following the suc-
ecological sustainability and have been so in many
cess of the ‘Arabari experiment’, conducted in the
parts of the world, gleaning scholarly attention over
West Midnapore district of West Bengal in the
the years (Uniyal and Shiva 2005; Kothari 2007). Over
1970s,2 as well as other participatory methods of
the last decades, environmental movements by sev-
forest management executed in Gujarat and Haryana
eral grassroots communities demanded restructura-
(Jodha 2000, 4396). Prompted by the success of such
tion of the top-down conservation policies and
collaborative methods of forest management, the
devising participatory methods of forest manage-
Government of India (GoI) under the National Forest
ment. In this paper, we study the practical dynamics
Policy of 1988 issued a notification in June 1990,

CONTACT Amrita Sen amrita@apu.edu.in

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
34 A. SEN AND S. PATTANAIK
directing the forest departments of the individual
states to implement JFM with active participation of
the forest-dependent communities.
Over the years, JFM assumed ‘hybrid forms’, in which
state actors, civil groups, international donor agencies,
conservation organizations and market intervene along
with the community (Igoe and Brockington 2007, 433).
The aim of this paper is to construct the image of the
community within this hybrid forms of participatory man-
agement, formally termed as the JFM. Based on our
observations on JFM in the Sundarban Biosphere
Reserve (SBR), we argue that the definition of community
remains a paradox if it is regarded as seemingly immuta-
ble and uniformly symbiotic with the forest. The scholarly
depiction of exclusionary conservation, where an essen-
tially primordial and harmonious community was viewed
as opposed to the state as the enforcing institution,
restricts a realistic deliberation (Sundar 2000; Purcell and
Brown 2005). Within a burgeoning range of reflections on
JFM, which critiques such harmonious image of the com-
munity (Agrawal and Gibson 1999; Jeffery and Sundar
eds. 1999; Sundar 2000; Singh 2016; Sen and Pattanaik
2017b), our study adds value by situating the community
within the ‘eco-governmentality’ of JFM. The theoretical
trend of eco-governmentality implies the construction of
an environment through the production of expert knowl-
edge and power mechanisms. Drawing on Foucault’s
(1991) seminal reflections on governmentality, Goldman
(2001, 501), describes eco-governmentality as ‘the pro-
ductive relations of the government, with their emphasis
on “knowing” and “clarifying” one’s relationship to the
nature and environment as mediated through new insti-
tutions’. An analytical framework on eco-governmentality
helps understand how the state reconfigures its authority
in conservation through JFM and, in the process, man-
oeuvers community participation. It also shows how the
community, while being integrated in this eco-
governmentality of JFM, become subsumed within the
process of bureaucratic governance and subject forma-
tion. An image of the community then appears far
removed from a linear representation of exclusion from
state conservation policies, towards one of ‘environmen-
tal subjects’, transformed from passive residents to the
keepers of wildlife and forests (Agrawal 2005; Fletcher
2010).
JFM in SBR provides a concrete empirical example
of the ways in which power hierarchies are implicit
within the communities. This is evident from the
marked inequities in assets, since the joint action of
the state and the local elite residents in JFM incarce-
rates the marginals in a perpetual resource scarcity.
Elites work in liaison with the forest department and,
in the process, only confine themselves to the region-
ally specific interests of imposing ban on activities like
fishing and fuel-wood collection. The entitlements of
the marginals to the benefits of JFM like housing,
agricultural instruments, livestock and irrigation
equipment are at the disposal of the economically
and politically powerful members of the JFM commit-
tees (JFMCs). An eco-governmentality of JFM in the
SBR brings two levels of insights in this paper: (1) a
collective can represent itself as a community through
shared experiences of marginalization as well as sub-
ject-formation, (2) the solidarity of a collective as a
community is often invoked as a ‘moral rhetoric’, to
‘exploit the political obligations that the government
have for looking after the poor and the underprivi-
leged section of the population’ (Chatterjee 1998,
281). We explore how participatory projects, decen-
tralization and transfer of rights and powers are nego-
tiated by the communities for consolidating and
replicating bureaucratic power and reconstructing
the state in rural areas (Sivaramakrishnan 2000, 432).
Much of such negotiations are, however, ‘efforts to
lend visibility to the governmental departments’
(Mukhopadhyay 2016, 89), for affording a scope of
livelihood. By exploring the eco-governmentality of
JFM, we demonstrate hybrid networks of power
within a community, which institutionalize participa-
tory conservation methods. Such power networks are
not central to the sovereign, but they can be exer-
cised at all levels through technologies and practices,
fields of knowledge and fields of visibility (Foucault
1991). In this context, the present study discusses the
enormous variations in the scale of community defini-
tions, defying environmentalist discourses designed
on communitarian theories.
2. ‘Community’ in sociology and
environmental sociology
A fundamental engagement of the scholarship on
sociology was with the formulation of the concept
of community. The mechanisms of this kind of formu-
lation were contingent upon the evolutionary shifts
visible in the West during the 18th century, from a
traditional to that of progressivist and modernized
social organization (Agrawal and Gibson 1999, 630).
Most of the literature of this era and even beyond
endorsed the idea that communities have an implicit
connection to the traditional modes of social organi-
zation, which is opposed to Western individualism,
urbanization and the market economy (Upadhya
2002). Communitarian ways of life have been identi-
fied as ones that are implicated in closely knit kinship
networks, with social relationships rooted in particular
values and distinct cultural and religious traditions.
Likewise, others have pointed out that rather than
shared values or common understanding, commu-
nities are more engaged in the same argument,
whereby any opposing ideas are rejected (Sabean
1988, 28 in Sundar 2000, 258).
One of the most pervasive sociological contribu-
tions on the concept of the community (Gemeinschaft)

and society (Gesellschaft) was provided by German
sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies. While enumerating
the differences between the two, Tonnies was inten-
sely concerned to demonstrate that Gemeinschaft or
the communities are associated with common ways of
life, common beliefs, concentrated territorial ties and
frequent interactions, small number of people and
emotional bonds (Brint 2001, 3). Gesellschaft or the
society, on the other hand, represents the rationalistic
and individualistic values of a reasonably capitalist
form of trade and production (Ingles 2009, 821).
Influenced by Henry Maine’s concepts of status (com-
munity) and contract (society), Tonnies’ conceptuali-
zation of community was based out of Wesenwillen or
the life forces associated with instincts, emotions and
habits. Wirth (1929, 416), drawing on Tonnies, states
that ‘a community grows out of the organic relation-
ship of man to his environment and those natural
involuntary bonds that inevitably grow up between
human beings and between groups’. Communities
have been frequently defined in an ideal typical
sense, as sharing no individual interests but basic
conditions of life as well as a strongly knit group
occupying a particular geographical area (MacIver
and Page 1949). Four types of traits were commonly
identified: feeling of bondedness, extent of residential
roots, use of local facilities and degree of social inter-
action with neighbours (Riger, LeBailey and Gordon
1981; in MacMillan and Chavis 1986, 7). Such types of
communities are characterized by a degree of internal
cohesion, and any kinds of outside influence were
considered inimical to the integration of the commu-
nities (Bernard 1973).
The rigidity of the concept of community hovered
within the discourses on human-nature relationship
as antecedents of an environmental history, marked
by large-scale impoverishment of local livelihoods.
Political ecologists, who studied power asymmetries
between the communities and the state, explained at
large how the methods of conservation and the liveli-
hood interests of the communities are opposed to
each other (Gadgil and Guha 1995; Saberwal 2000;
Brockington and Igoe 2006). Purcell and Brown
(2005) use the term ‘local trap’ to explain the unilinear
advocacy of local ecological knowledge as essentially
sustainable and exhibit empirical insights to demon-
strate both positive and negative impacts of localized
decision making. As Agrawal (1999, 19) states, such an
advocacy also allows formulation of an alternative to
the methods of the state, by citing a set of attributes
that appeal positively: homogeneity, internal equality,
stability and multiplexity of interaction among the
members. A reasonable caution against such a repe-
titive advocacy of the immutable binary can be best
described in the words of Cronon (1993, 4), although
in a different context: ‘we must guard against focus-
ing too narrowly on purely disciplinary perspectives
ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY 35
that may distract us from larger and more important
agendas’.
The plausible relevance of the conventional socio-
logical approaches within the contemporary imagery
of the community has been debated considerably in
the context of JFM (Sundar 2000; Menon et al. 2007;
Nayak and Berkes 2008; Dressler et al. 2010; Singh
2016; Sen and Pattanaik 2017b). Such critiques
broadly explain how, within the attempts of partici-
patory management of forests, the community ends
up being incarcerated within the contradictions of
‘harmony’. It also shows that communities in a parti-
cular village are not essentially territorially bound and
harmonious but are amalgamated into a collective
through specific historical processes. Dressler et al.
(2010, 2) explain that the role of the community in
participatory approaches to conservation requires a
‘multi-level critical analysis’, taking in account the
competing political interests and diverse manage-
ment priorities. Singh (2016) focused on explaining
the political nexus at different regional levels, which
influenced the inception and the institutional design
of decentralized and participatory forest governance.
This body of research showed how local partisan
interests provide the conditioning factors in mediat-
ing the access to rights and resources and the process
simultaneously makes visible how communities utilize
collective agencies to stake multiple claims.
3. Eco-governmentality and its imports: a
conceptual framework
Foucault’s analysis of ‘governmentality’ has been
reviewed critically in the recent scholarship to establish
its linkages with environmental governance (Goldman
2001; Agrawal 2005; Rutherford 2007; Fletcher 2010;
Bose et al 2012). According to Foucault (1991, 102), gov-
ernmentality is the ‘ensemble formed by the institutions,
procedures, analysis and reflections, the calculations and
tactics, that allow the exercise of a very specific albeit
complex form of power, which has as its target popula-
tion, as its principle form of knowledge political economy
and as its essential technical means apparatuses of secur-
ity’. In other words, governmentality is a combination of
subjectification mechanisms, technologies and tactics of
power and rationalities of the state (Bose et al. 2012, 665).
Eco-governmentality involves techniques by which,
rather than the state itself, ‘a new array of hybridized
state actors’ govern the environment (Goldman 2001,
510). It implies the ways in which the apparatuses of
the government extend to the environmental phenom-
enon (Bridge and Perreault 2009, 489). The techniques of
eco-governmentality are implicated in new dimensions
of reinforcing a political economy of forest conservation,
by dispersing regulatory regimes to transnational net-
works and facilitating self-disciplinary practices among
the subjects of governance (Goldman (2001, 501). Eco-
36 A. SEN AND S. PATTANAIK
governmentality is repressive and exploitative; it domi-
nates people and nature in the interests of the political
and transnational elites, science and capital (Luke 1995; in
Stripple and Bulkeley 2014). However, apart from enfor-
cing a dispersed stewardship, eco-governmentality sub-
jectifies individuals, a process accomplished by ‘shaping
their self-determination’ (Bose, Arts, and Dijk 2012, 665).
Agrawal (2005, 166) uses the term ‘environmentality’ to
understand the technologies of self and power employed
in making ‘environmental subjects’. A form of neoliberal
conservation can also be evinced through the process of
eco-governmentality, whereby apart from being impli-
cated in a capitalist economic process, conservation is
also seen as a process of subjectification, or governing
human actions (Igoe and Brockington 2007; Fletcher
2010).
The recent policies of restructuration of forest gov-
ernance, aimed at participation from diverse stake-
holders, have seen global regulatory interventions
on environmental conservation and natural resource
use. The global regulatory networks of conservation
are aimed at capacitating an environmentally sustain-
able society and in the process, utilizing a ‘supervisory
gaze’ through the multiple alliances of transnational
capital (Luke 1995, 77). Influence and regulation of
international donor agencies on JFM, for instance,
surface from their western ideology and unilateral
financial assistance to the individual states, with very
little impact on poverty reduction and community
participation (Saxena 1997). However, the forms of
regulation perpetuated by eco-governmentality
through the global technologies of distanced vigi-
lance are not always disciplinary, which compel indi-
viduals to inculcate norms of conservation (Fletcher
2010, 175). They can be neoliberal, whereby rather
than inculcating norms, environmental subjects are
constituted by providing incentives, to motivate
them behaving in conservation friendly ways
(Fletcher (2010, 176). This is an essential attribute of
neoliberalism, which departs from an exclusively dis-
ciplinary form of governmentality (Leffers and
Ballamigie 2012). Through either neoliberal or disci-
plinary forms of eco-governmentality, communities
and their own ecological practices come to gain pro-
minence around the world, but within a discursive
context dominated by Western values, ideas and
thoughts (Ulloa 2013).
We find a network of power relationships which
subjectifies each other within the realms of eco-
governmentality. Trends towards globalization and
their transnational regulatory policies have augmen-
ted the accountability and capacities of the commu-
nities, by empowering non-state local institutions
through neoliberal eco-governmentality. Randeria’s
(2003) uses the term ‘cunning states’ to explain how
the state continues to play a pivotal role in shaping
such environmental governmentalities at the national
and local level. Liaisons with the international envir-
onmental organizations augment financial capacities
of the nation states as well as elicit support for their
own control of natural resources (Peluso 1993, 193).
Although communities now have accountability
towards biodiversity conservation and ability to allo-
cate benefits within themselves, most of them are
highly constrained in their ability to act (Agrawal
and Ostrom 2001). Eco-governmentality is a form of
ecological stewardship where both natural resources
and individuals are subjected to technologies as well
as tactics of governmental power. It is largely mani-
fested by the international bodies as well as the local
arms of the state like the political party leaders and
the village elites.
4. Location and methods of the study
Sundarban is a riverine mangrove delta, situated at
the mouth of the river Ganga. The islands are inter-
woven by a warren of river channels, before they
drain into the Bay of Bengal. Sundarban is territorially
shared between India and Bangladesh. Parts of the
archipelago are inhabited, and the other parts, nearer
to the sea, are forested. SBR, as Sundarban is officially
known as in India, has assumed a global prominence
worldwide due to its wide and exotic range of biodi-
versity, wildlife and marine resources. The most ‘cele-
brated’ species is the famous predator of the forest,
the Royal Bengal Tiger (Panthera tigris). Sundarban is
the largest remaining tract of the Royal Bengal Tiger,
which necessarily occupies an integral core of the
terrestrial food-chain and is known globally for its
valour in man-eating trait. Sundarban is a fragile and
vulnerable ecosystem, prone to intense and incessant
real life threats. In the recent years, the threat has
increased due to the devastating effects of climate
change. Rise in the sea level accompanied by stronger
tidal waves have inundated and eroded away chunks
of landmass, along with depletion of mangroves. The
saline water is increasingly gulping the inhabited land
and forcing people to resign to their future of sub-
mergence (Sen and Pattanaik 2017a; Ghosh and
Ghosh 2018).
Our study builds upon an ethnographic fieldwork
conducted in a forest fringe village named Patharpara,
situated in the island of Satjelia in the Gosaba block of
South 24 Parganas district, West Bengal.3 SBR being
partly inhabited and partly forested, the inhabited
area or the transition zone falls outside the forest
area and is divided into 19 blocks, located within the
North and South 24 Parganas districts of West Bengal.
Satjelia is one of the remotest inhabited islands within
the SBR and shares a close proximity with the
Sundarban Tiger Reserve (STR).4 Satjelia is divided
into two administrative divisions, under two separate
gram (village) panchayats (GPs): Satjelia GP and

Lahiripur GP. Patharpara is one of the 33 hamlet
villages in the island of Satjelia, located within the
Lahiripur GP, and is made up of 256 households
with 840 people. The choice of the field site and the
idea of conducting the research in Gosaba were
prompted through a pilot survey to the island of
Satjelia. Patharpara village was chosen due to its
proximity with the forests of Sundarban and the
numerous number of people sustaining their liveli-
hoods through forest-based occupations like forest
fishing5 and wild honey collection. Forest fishers and
honey collectors are commonly known as the forest
workers. The forest workers are usually landless or
have marginal landholdings. They mostly reside at
the riverside of the villages, in mud houses with a
thatched roof. For fishing in the river creeks inter-
spersed within the forest areas, the forest fishers
require renewing a permit from the forest department
each year. The permit is known as the Boat Licence
Certificate (BLCs). Due to immense poverty, most of
the forest fishers fish without a permit, escaping the
eyes of the forest guards, since the costs associated
with the BLCs are exorbitant.6 Honey collectors, locally
known as mawaleys, are permitted to enter the forests
once a year, when the honey bearing trees mature
and the ripe harvest is worthy of sale. The entire
collection of honey is sequestered from the honey
collectors, by the forest department, for the genera-
tion of revenue. Both forest fishing and honey collec-
tion involve considerable life threats, since the best
resource repositories are located at the dense forests,
the ideal tiger habitats (Jalais 2010).
The rest of the population practices agriculture or
work as petty traders, prawn fishery owners and land
labourers. Agriculturalists are wealthier than the
others since they possess significant amount of land-
holding. Few of them also practise service jobs like
school teaching. They reside in brick built houses in
the better interiors of the villages, away from the river
and the threats of flood. None of the occupational
categories in these forest fringes are discrete, since
people apart from the regular forest workers also
sustain themselves periodically through forest-based
livelihoods. The population in the Patharpara village,
divided into the Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled
Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs), con-
sists of an influx of migrants. While the STs like the
Mundas and the Bhils migrated as indentured
labourers from the adjoining states of Bihar,
Jharkhand and Odisha, the SCs and the OBCs
migrated from Bangladesh and the East Midnapore
district of West Bengal, respectively, following the
independence of India from British colonialism in
1947. OBCs are usually wealthier than the SCs and
the STs, since they are landed agriculturalists having
no associations with the forests (Jalais 2010; Sen and
Pattanaik 2017a; Ghosh and Ghosh 2018).
ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY 37
For the purpose of this study, 75 semi-structured
household interviews were conducted with the forest
workers inhabiting the village, to know about their
associations with the JFM. Households of forest work-
ers were taken as the unit of analysis for the semi-
structured interview through a snowball sampling,
where the most vulnerable having the least economic
assets were selected. The other methods of data col-
lection were focused group discussions and informal
discussions, used to interact with the key participants
within the JFMCs: village-level committee members
and the lower-level functionaries of the forest depart-
ment. JFM-related policy and project documents have
also been analysed for the purpose. It was largely
observed that the members of the executive commit-
tee of the JFMC are agriculturalists, with little or no
associations with forest-based livelihoods. Although
we have interviewed women to know about their
extent of participation in JFM, reflections on the gen-
der dimensions of JFM are peripheral due to the
limited scope of this study.
5. The implementation of JFM in SBR
In accordance with the National Forest Policy of 1988,
the governor of West Bengal implemented JFM in
South 24 Parganas in the year 1990, for the purpose
of conserving the degraded forests in the district.
Under the notification, every hamlet village in the
vicinity of the forest is to be administered by a com-
mittee which is currently known as the JFMCs.7 As
mandated by the notification, each JFMC should ide-
ally have a joint membership of both the husband
and the wife from individual beneficiary households
registered under the committee. Furthermore, each
JFMC should be administered by an executive com-
mittee for appropriately carrying out the activities
assigned to the committee. Constitution of the
JFMCs along with the executive committee is to be
approved by the Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) of the
state forest department, on the recommendation of
the Bon-o-Bhumi Sanskar Sthayee Samitee8 of the con-
cerned panchayat samitee (block-level panchayat).
Each executive committee should be structurally con-
stituted by: (1) the head of the panchayat samitee or
any member of the Bon-o-Bhumi Sanskar Sthayee
Samitee, (2) head of the GP or any member nomi-
nated by the head, (3) elected representatives of ben-
eficiaries (usually three to six, of which one should be
a woman and a tribal), (4) forest beat officer or any of
his nominee and (5) one head forest guard or forest
guard to be nominated by the range officer (GoWB
2008, 391–392). The member secretary should be the
concerned beat officer or his nominee in the rank of
head forest guard. These members should elect a
president in each meeting (GoWB 2008, 391-382).
The village-level beneficiary representatives of the
38 A. SEN AND S. PATTANAIK
committee, usually six, should be elected each year in
the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the individual
committees. This is to be done through a democratic
election procedure, where the member villagers of
the respective JFMC would vote and the concerned
range officer would be the observer. The notification
further clarifies that no beneficiary representative can
remain in the committee for more than three years
consecutively.
The functions of the executive committee as pre-
scribed in the 1990 notification are: (1) to ensure the
protection of forests and wildlife, (2) to prevent tres-
pass, encroachment, grazing, fire, poaching, theft or
damage (3) to assist the forest department officials in
apprehensions of such persons committing any of the
violations of the above (4) to ensure smooth and
timely execution of forestry and involve every mem-
ber of the committee in the matter of protection of
the forest (5) to ensure that usufruct rights allowed by
the government is not in any way misused by any of
the members (6) to ensure forests or plantation sites
are kept free from encroachment and (7) to prevent
any activity in contravention of the provisions of
Indian Forest Act of 1927 and Wildlife Protection Act
1972, as amended from time to time. The usufruct
benefits assured complimentarily to the villagers on
successful regeneration attempts include fallen twigs,
grass, fruits, flowers mushrooms, seeds, intercrops
raised by the JFMC (but not those within the PAs),
medicinal plants and 25% of net sale proceeds of
firewood and poles. The entire Sal seeds collection is
to be deposited with the office of the West Bengal
Tribal Development Cooperative Corporation Ltd
(WBTDCC). The members of each JFMC are also
entitled to 25% of the entry fee receipts (INR 10/day
per person) from the visitors, when they tour the
forests.
JFM has been taken up in Sundarban Reserved Forest9
since 1991 in the form of Forest Protection Committees
(FPCs) and in the STR since 1996 as EDCs. However, the
real efforts to implement this policy in practice started in
2001 after the killing of a tiger by an indignant mob
during a tiger straying incidence in the village of
Pakhiralaya and Kishorimohonpur in Gosaba block (Vyas
2012, 129). It has been a general assertion that after the
implementation of JFM in Sundarban, human-wildlife
conflicts have been reduced considerably in the villages
(Vyas 2012, 129). This is because JFM marked a way out
from the atrocities shown by the villagers towards inci-
dences of tiger straying. According to the STR estimates,
the no. of revenue villages covered under all the JFMCs
are 32 and the no. of family members registered are 8558.
The no. of SC families are 7689 (89.84%), while the no. of
ST families are 362 (4.23%) within all the 32 JFMCs. The
total forest area covered under the supervision of the
JFMCs in STR10 (STR) is 25,194 ha. Dayapur, Pakhiralaya,
Jamespur, Lahiripur-Chargheri, Sonagaon, Aanpur-
Rajatjubilee, Lahiripur-Santigachi and Emilibari are the
eight JFMCs constituted in the island of Satjelia. In this
article, we have engaged with the Aanpur-Rajatjubilee
JFMC under village Patharpara, administered by STR.
6. The eco-governmentality of JFM
Interactions with the beneficiary families of the forest
workers under the Aanpur-Rajatjubilee JFMC revealed
a lopsided version of the benefits accrued to them; we
largely came across local narratives mentioning lack
of benefit sharing, frauds and surpassing the actual
beneficiary group. In the village of Patharpara, the
forest workers have marginal or no landholdings –
they depend on the forest resources for their subsis-
tence, in varying degrees (Sen and Pattanaik 2017a,
865). In most cases, they have no representation
within the executive committee of the JFMC.
Membership within the executive committee is impli-
cated in a dynamics of power play and party-based
political relations, as well as by the ability of a person
to align with the lower-level functionaries of the for-
est department. The marginal and landless forest
workers, who should apparently be the beneficiaries
of JFM, remain left out of this seemingly participatory
management of forest.
According to the forest workers, through the
JFMCs, the forest department strategically tried to
employ new means of income generating activities
in the village. This includes providing domestic live-
stock to the households like roosters, bucks, granting
irrigation pump sets, duckery, piggery, providing van
rickshaws to generate local employment, agro crop-
ping, rice trading and making brick roads for the
beneficiary families. But the benefits almost never
accrued to the forest workers, but only to handful
elites from the village. For instance, in Aanpur-
Rajatjubilee JFMC, a member of the executive com-
mittee established a reasonably big poultry farm,
sequestering the share of usufruct entitled to the
forest workers. It is surprising that none of the forest
working households in Patharpara have entitlements
to the harvests from the farm. During the initial days
of our fieldwork, we interacted with two individuals,
who are a part of the executive committee of Aanpur
Rajatjubilee JFMC. As evident from the physical inter-
iors of their household, both of them appeared
wealthy compared to the forest workers in
Patharpara. Their houses can be well identified as
having a tin roof, brick laden walls, iron bars on
windows and well-painted interiors, as compared to
the thatched roofs and mud-built huts of the forest
workers. They also had fervent associations with the
All India Trinamool Congress (TMC),11 the present rul-
ing political party in the village. The first person was a
former functionary of the Lahiripur GP from the year
1993–1998. He owns an irrigation pump-set for his

personal use. The second person previously worked as
a forest guide under STR. He owns the only rice
husking machine, granted to the village by the forest
department. Drawing on Nelson and Agrawal (2008),
such instances reveal how unaccountable governance
structures have facilitated JFM benefits in the hands
of the economically and politically powerful local
elites.
The skewed distribution of JFM benefits leads us to
an understanding of eco-governmentality-construction
of an environmental stewardship through transnational
networks and constitution of local environmental sub-
jects. According to a forest worker in Patharpara:
‘In the name of JFM with active sponsorship from the
World Bank, forest department of the STR have cre-
ated a foothold in the village, or to be more precise,
“agents” or “representatives” within the local villages.
The village level members of the executive commit-
tee spy over the forest fishers in their occupation and
report to the authorities to punish the offenders who
enter the core areas of the forest for fishing. The JFMC
members are in reality the beneficiaries of the usu-
fruct in Sundarban’.
The liaisons of the forest department with the inter-
national donor organizations like the Worldwide Fund
for Nature (WWF) and financial assistance from World
Bank have economically capacitated the JFM pro-
gramme over the years. The eminence of the ‘tiger’,
coupled with a range of exotic mangrove and aquatic
resources, has acquired Sundarban a status of the
‘reserved forest’ in 1878, along with other landmark
provisions of conservation which followed in the
aftermath: ‘Tiger Reserve’, ‘Wildlife Sanctuary’,
‘National Park’, ‘Critical Tiger Habitat’ and ‘Biosphere
Reserve’ (Sen and Pattanaik forthcoming). The annual
revenue earned by STR in the financial year
2013–2014 was INR 4,770,930 (US$74,082). The annual
revenue earned from ecotourism was INR
14,075,570.00 (US$218,564) and from honey was INR
1,571,250 (US$ 24,357) during the same period (Sen
and Pattanaik, forthcoming). The amount of honey
collected from the forests of Sundarban during
the year 2016–2017 was 19050 kg, accomplished by
604 forest workers. Interviews with the STR authorities
revealed the involvement of WWF and Wildlife
Institute of India (WII) in initiating camera trapping
to gauge the number and nature of movement of the
tigers inside the forests. The demographic report pro-
vided by WWF during the year 2015–2016 and
2016–2017 indicates the presence of 81 and 87 adult
tigers, across the four forest range offices under the
administration of STR. The aforementioned conserva-
tion agencies have a significant contribution towards
monitoring of the wildlife through techniques such as
radio telemetry. For instance, the last radio collaring
to a tigress was done by WII on 25 January 2017,
when it was rescued from a village named
ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY 39
Kishorimohonpur in the Gosaba block, after it strayed
into the village. Ever since, it has been tracked by a
designated research personnel from WII. The collaring
was done in the presence of a wildlife expert from WII,
named Dr Y.V. Jhala.
With the advent of JFM, the executive committee
members undergo periodic trainings by such wildlife
conservation institutes, in collaboration with the for-
est department, to integrate their participation in
forest management methods. Suranjan, the present
joint convener of Aanpur Rajatjubilee JFMC, men-
tioned that since the commencement of his tenure,
the forest department along with WWF have on occa-
sions jointly organized several training camps and
awareness programmes at the forest range offices,
to dissuade forest workers from entering the forests
to earn livelihood. Suranjan remembers that few days
back, he and the other committee members along
with few forest workers from Patharpara village were
taken for such a training programme. In the camp, the
forest workers were advised to practise alternative
livelihoods like aquaculture, livestock raising, and so
on, instead of indulging in forest work and were
provided with formal training over the next couple
of days. To incentivize them towards forest protection
activities, they were given roosters, goats and fish
seeds as complementary usufructs. Suranjan also
mentioned that he personally tried to incentivize the
participants by passing on priority, their application
for the housing allowances distributed under Gitanjali
Housing Scheme,12 with a budget of INR 1,94,000
each.
The entrenched role of the conservation and
finance organizations in the practice of JFM in
Sundarban and the ways in which the rural elites of
the JFMCs are integrated in the process brings us
closer to the manifestation of eco-governmentality in
the process. Aforementioned efforts by WWF and WII
towards a conservationist ‘training’ of the locals repli-
cate a neoliberal discourse of governing the self as
well as the environment, converting communities into
‘visible, communicative and accountable population’
(Goldman 2001, 506). JFMC leaders like Suranjan are
allocated discretionary powers towards local steward-
ship of the forest resources, so as to organize formal
arrangements for transforming member-villagers into
custodians of the forest. The newer attributions of the
values of forest to locally accountable actors like
Suranjan transform them into ‘environmental sub-
jects’ or ‘people who care about the environment’,
by reconstructing their beliefs and roles (Agrawal
2005, 162). Suranjan’s proactive role in forwarding
housing applications for those who participated in
the conservation camp shows an environmental gov-
ernmentality ‘through the creation of incentive struc-
tures intended to influence individuals’ use of natural
resources’ – in other words, a neoliberal eco-
40 A. SEN AND S. PATTANAIK
governmentality (Fletcher 2010, 173). The operation
of eco-governmentality in the JFM also alters reason-
ably, the given structures of community formation in
the villages. The elected representatives of the bene-
ficiaries like Suranjan, who form the present executive
committees of the JFMCs, mostly belong to the cadres
of the ruling political party. Most of them have no
associations with forest-based livelihoods.
Memberships in the committees are formed through
contacts with the TMC leaders in the village, whose
clientelistic networks are reinforced through active
associations with the forest department. Committee
members establish their positions by supplication and
patronization with these leaders. Thus, they reinforce
the conservationist version of the forest department
and act as local reprimands in case a forest worker
breaches the ‘forest rules’. In the process, they are
benefitted from the process of regular enticements
from the forest department.
For instance, the forest workers in Patharpara state
that the mangrove plantations generated artificially at
the riverside of the village by the forest department
are under strict surveillance of the convener of
Aanpur-Rajatjubilee JFMC. However, these plantations
made under the JFM programme are mainly gener-
ated to meet the local demand of small wood and
fuel-wood. The annual report of STR (2013–2014) in
itself states that ‘to meet the local demand of small
wood and fuel-wood, mangrove plants are artificially
regenerated on the mud-flats adjoining the fringe
villages of the tiger reserve’ (p, 17). However, villagers
unanimously proclaim that once the forest grows at
the riverside, it ceases to cater to local subsistence
demands and from then on, no one from the village is
allowed to enter the premise. Offenders are verbally
abused by the JFMC committee members. Forest
workers also stated that the mangrove saplings
planted artificially at the village-side often die early.
Such incidences are symbolic of corruption as well as
tampering of funds granted by the forest department
to the JFMC, since more rounds of plantation pro-
grammes per year would incur more inflow of
money to the committee.
In Patharpara village, we had a conversation with
Ranajit, a CPI-M13 leader who was previously the joint-
convener of the Aanpur Rajatjubilee JFMC.14 Among
others, he was in charge of the formation of self-help
groups in his village, monitoring payments to the
group members to avail loans in times of need. Self-
help groups are an attempt to hold back people from
forest work. According to him, one of his most sig-
nificant contributions towards the committee, during
his tenure, was the construction of two tube wells in
Patharpara in the year 2005, which was earlier a rea-
sonably water-scarce village. He says that these two
tube wells helped the entire village survive the acute
water contamination issues in the aftermath of a
cyclone in 2009. He praises the contribution of the
forest department for extending financial help to con-
vert an ‘unsuccessful area’ like Patharpara, to be
fraught with water. Apart from that, a public water
tap was constructed during his tenure, transporting
water all the way from Jahar Colony15 to Patharpara.
The Aanpur-Kalashkhali irrigation canal was inaugu-
rated by him to help the agriculturalists. Construction
of 5-ft-wide concretized roads in the market area were
also initiated during his tenure in the JFMC. However,
Ranajit says that the last committee formed by the
TMC party since 2013 is nearly dysfunctional, since no
substantial development work has been done in the
last few years and no committee meetings have been
held publicly. In the functioning of a JFMC, the forest
officials like the head forest guard have far more
powers than what the GP functionaries have, as says
Ranajit. He believes that lack of cordial relationship
between the present JFMC and the range officer of
the forest department has hampered the proper func-
tioning of the Aanpur-Rajatjubilee JFMC. We also had
conversations with Suranjan, the present joint-
convener of Aanpur-Rajatjubilee JFMC and an active
member of TMC. He says contrarily that the commit-
tee has a cordial relationship with the forest depart-
ment, evident from the generous bestowal of funds
granted by the department towards developmental
activities in Patharpara. He accuses the previous JFMC
headed by the CPI-M leaders like Ranajit as corrupt
and alleged them of illicit activities like stealing bricks,
granted by the forest department for village road
construction.
It has been established in earlier research that local
political leaders replicate and reinforce governmental
powers in participatory and rights-based forest poli-
cies, because they derive power and influence
through liaisons with the state machinery (Kashwan
2017, 141; Sen and Pattanaik forthcoming). Apart from
party-based factionalisms between the members of
the JFMC, who belong to conflicting political camps,
we can also observe the ways in which the committee
leaders, irrespective of political affiliations, espouse
links with the forest department as indispensable
towards the functioning of JFM. Incentivizing the
committee members so as to internalizing the envir-
onmental objectivities and rationalities are imperative
in understanding how ‘environmental subjects’, like
Ranajit and Suranjan, are constituted (Bridge and
Perreault 2009, 490). This reminds us of Agrawal’s
‘intimate governance’, which as a contrast to ‘centra-
lized governance’, functions by ‘dispersing rule, scat-
tering involvement in government and careful
supervision of environmental practices among com-
munities’ (Agrawal 2005, 178). JFM empowers the
committee members to conserve their environment
by monitoring their own behaviour and the behaviour
of others (Agrawal 2005 in Rutherford 2007, 299).

Instances from the JFMC and the close monitoring it
renders upon the forest workers in their access to the
fuel-wood plantations remind us of what Foucault
(1991, 92) refers to as ‘surveillance and control’, a
kind of governance mechanism which employs a
range of entrenched intervening agencies. Erasure of
the local rights to the fuel-wood through formal vig-
ilance shows how the committee members are inte-
grated in diverse environmental subjectivities,
sustained by the state. To this end, environmental
organizations like WWF and WII ‘provide tips on how
to be a better environmental citizen’ (Rutherford
2007, 299); much of the emphasis of the training
and awareness programmes in Patharpara were thus
on abstracting people from the forest, to conserve the
green spaces as pristine. This forms an integral part of
the centrality of eco-governmentality mechanisms,
where the modalities of power are exercised not
directly through the state bodies but through the
disaggregated stewards, subjectified by the state.
7. Paradox of the community in the
eco-governmentality of JFM
Following an analysis of eco-governmentality of JFM
in the SBR, we discuss in this section how an image of
the community is manifested within the eco-
governmentality. Much of a growing body of contem-
porary empirical literature contemplates towards a
political and neo-liberal formulation of the commu-
nity. This formulation deviates considerably from the
usual preoccupations with primordiality, social status
and non-material culture, associated with the amor-
ous construction of communitarian thinking (Li 1996;
Agrawal 1999; Chatterjee 2004; Mukhopadhyay 2016).
They unanimously argue that communities as loaded
with particular cultural ideologies and distinctive ways
of living are a part of the convenient production
sponsored by the western communitarian thoughts
on Indian society (Upadhya 2002). Their scope of
applicability is thus strictly limited within contempor-
ary empirical knowledge, without any recourse
towards exploring the eloquent political processes
which shape the domains of living.
After the victory of TMC in most of the panchayats
of Gosaba, Lahiripur GP, which administers Aanpur-
Rajtjubilee JFMC, also changed its constituency into
14 TMC members, 1 RSP member and 1 CPI-M mem-
ber. Consequently, TMC emerged as the dominant
political power within the constituency of the JFMC.
The previous committee members of Aanpur-
Rajatjubilee JFMC allege that the present committee
under the leadership of TMC has been formed with an
uninformed consent. The previous committee had 11
members, including the panchayat representatives.
The members state that there was no democratic
election process while selecting the beneficiary-
ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY 41
representatives from the two villages. According to
Himangshu, who was the joint-convener of the com-
mittee from 2008–2013, the takeover process and
transfer of the duties from one committee to another
in 2013 were not done amicably, but by the interven-
tion of the forest department and the panchayat.
None of the former committee members were invited
on the day the new committee was formed in 2013.
No public announcement was made in the village
regarding the election process. Himangshu also
added that the amount of infrastructural work that
he had undertaken during his tenure was noteworthy.
He mentions the canals dug at Hazrakhali, Kartikkhali,
Mitekhali, jetties in Luxbagan, Rajatjubilee and planta-
tion works in the breached areas of the riverside.
There were 12 self-help groups under the JFMC dur-
ing his tenure. The ‘flood centre’ which lies close to
Patharpara village (as shown in the picture above) was
also set up during his tenure, with an expenditure of
INR 12,00,000. He says that in terms of funding and
other opportunities, a JFMC can draw a large number
of tenders for infrastructural works in the village,
compared to what a panchayat can execute in
a year. Majority of the roads and jetty construction
in the village has been done under the JFMCs.
He further states that the present committee mem-
bers are inherently corrupt. Among others, he cites
the example of the illegal extension of the Tipligheri
market in Lahiripur, which was set up cutting a forest
of over 100 Byne trees at the riverside. According to
Himangshu, the market extension has involved acqui-
sition of land from the tribal community (STs), since
their hamlet in Tilpigheri borders the market area. The
former committee members also alleged that solar
lights, which are installed along the riverside of
Patharpara to reduce tiger straying, continue to be
dysfunctional for days but are not replaced.
Himangshu says that the batteries of the dysfunc-
tional solar lights are appropriated by the joint con-
vener and is kept at his home for his personal use. The
plantation work which commenced in 2016 in the
village of Patharpara had a budget of 26 lakhs.16
However, the saplings didn’t grow into trees since
most of them didn’t endure. Three consecutive
rounds of plantation were done in the village under
the pretext that the previous plantations were unsuc-
cessful. According to Himangshu, these are only
opportunities for making more money. Despite the
takeover in 2013, the members say still maintain cor-
dial relations with the local functionaries of the forest
department. The department also reaches out to
them in terms of specific requirements.
We also met Suranjan, the present joint-convener
of the JFMC. He stated that the present elected repre-
sentatives of the committee are five in number: three
SCs and two STs. Both the STs are women and the SCs
are men. These five members are from the village of
42 A. SEN AND S. PATTANAIK
Patharpara and Aanpur collectively. Like the previous
committee members, their occupation is also agricul-
ture and labour work, with no reasonable association
with forest based livelihoods. However, their prede-
cessors were regular forest workers. Apart from the
five elected representatives, there is the MLA repre-
sentative from the block, the pradhan of Lahiripur GP
and the head of the Gosaba block-level panchayat.
The Duttar beat officer is the convener of the team.
This makes the committee of nine members presently.
Suranjan stated that he owns around 1 acre of agri-
cultural land. In addition to being an agriculturalist, he
is a regular performer of music, narration and theatre
groups (referred to as kirtan gaan) during different
festivals. He is also a sculptor. Contrary to what
Himangshu alleged, Suranjan commented that he
has almost completed a brick road measuring 930 ft
in Patharpara, which starts from the jetty and con-
tinues till the other end of the embankment. He
agrees that irrigational canals have not been set up
till now primarily because such canals are presently
appropriated by many households as personal ponds.
This is because the canals pass through some indivi-
dual homestead areas. He is sceptical that claiming
the canals for irrigational purpose can detonate con-
flicts in the village. Additionally, he has also proposed
to install three solar lights under the jurisdictional
area of his JFMC, within which one should be at the
river jetty. He said that his committee has started to
plant a mangrove nursery at the riverside of the vil-
lage in collaboration with the Department of
Irrigation and Waterways. He refuted Himangshu’s
comments and said that roosters and ducks are pro-
vided regularly to the self-help groups within the
JFMC. However, he refrains from distributing bucks
since they eat up the mangrove saplings at the river-
side. Regarding allegations of undemocratic election
process while selecting representatives of benefici-
aries, Suranjan stressed that the previous committee
members were completely absent during the day of
election when the new committee was formed. This is
the reason why the present committee was unable to
discuss with them.
He said that he has tried to raise awareness in the
village against activities like felling of Byne trees from
the riverside for local fuel-wood needs and has also
registered cases at the local police station against
seven people from his village who have indulged in
such activities. He says that after the formation of
JFMCs in the village, felling of trees from the forest
has been completely stopped due to the close sur-
veillance rendered by the committee. Compared to
the past, the forest department has to strain much
less now to keep an eye on the incidences of felling.
Suranjan says that he also keeps a close vigilance on
the forest workers who try to cut through the nylon
net fencing at the forest side or uplift the fencing to
enter the creeks secretly for fishing. Cutting through
the nets helps in reaching the fishing areas in less
time. In such cases, Suranjan never encourages the
forest department to release the forest workers off the
charges, since he is aware of the fact that by causing
damage to the fencing, the villagers are endangering
their own protection against tiger straying. Suranjan
says that he always advices landless forest workers to
migrate to the cities and labour, for earning liveli-
hood. He thinks that forest work constitutes a perpe-
tual threat to the lives of the forest workers as well as
to the forest itself.
Quite interestingly, the forest workers in the village
of Patharpara refer to such techniques of monitoring
that is practiced upon them by the committee, as
being ahead of the forest department officials. As
pointed out by Brara (2006, 129), the observations
from Aanpur-Rajtajubilee JFMC reflects on the ‘locally
perceived inadequacies in the actually existing
arrangements of democratic decentralization’. By
creating JFMCs in the village, the forest department
has strategically incentivized the politically and eco-
nomically powerful elites in the village to monitor the
activities from individual villages which they regard as
‘defiant’. This monitoring was previously not possible
by the department officials alone. According to
Kashwan and Lobo (2014, 352), interventions by the
local elites in Community Based Natural Resource
Management (CBNRM) practices around the issues of
regeneration impede on the traditional rights of the
marginalized within the local communities. The ban
on felling Byne trees planted at the riverside, used for
local livelihood purposes, provides an example.
The ways in which the joint-convener exercises
administrative leverage over the beneficiaries can
also be demonstrated by the skewed representation
of women within the JFMC. Within the five elected
members of the executive committee, the two
women who belong to the STs say that they are
never consulted by the joint-convener and the two
other SC members for collective decision making dur-
ing the committee meetings. The two women stated
that they had attended only one of the five meetings
which were held during the last year. The inaugura-
tion of the riverside road happened without the con-
sent and participation of these two women.
According to Sulata, one of the two women, the
joint convener and the other men in the committee
think that since the women are mostly busy in house-
hold chores and are uninformed about the adminis-
tration of the village, involving them in the committee
is ineffectual. The committees themselves are thus
constituted by token representations from marginal
groups, while the elite conveners try to reinforce their
own political positions within their respective villages.
Drawing on the observations from the JFMC, it has
been evident that there is no simple binary of state-

community relationships, defined through contesta-
tions and rivalries. Rather, the different apparatuses
that the state employs as an internal mechanism of
surveillance disaggregate such immutable prototypes.
It was evident from the discussions with committee
leaders like Suranjan that they not only exercise alle-
giances with politically powerful cadres of the party
but they are economically wealthier by virtue of their
political clienteles. Suranjan’s only son studies in a
reputed college in Kolkata, while his daughter has
completed graduation from the same city. Suranjan’s
brothers and sisters are permanent service job holders
in the city and employed in banks, municipal corpora-
tion, and so on. Few of the forest workers from the
same village can think of such established jobs in the
city.
As pointed out before, the population in this
village is constituted by migrants, who rather
than sharing common territories had historically
shared more or less similar experiences of margin-
alization by the exclusionary conservation policies.
However, the shared experiences of exclusion and
the material poverty that it entails did not linearly
imply an image of a cohesive community with
mutual aims and identical lived experiences.
People tend to outwit each other to meet indivi-
dual ends and engage in regular feuds. The village
elites, who are subjectified by the process of eco-
governmentality, tend to reinforce and maintain
top-down policies through new forms of restruc-
turation and regulation of forest resources (Bose,
Arts, and Dijk 2012). The agencies of the indivi-
duals to align with the power-groups are contin-
gent upon their socio-economic positions. Landless
forest workers are barely represented within the
politically eminent section of population in the
village, due to their negligible authority and mea-
gre material assets (Sen and Pattanaik forthcom-
ing). As pointed out by Johnson (2001: 525),
poverty always acts as a detriment on the ability
to engage in the formal political process.
Communities cease to exist in harmony; however,
reasonable glorification on traditional ways of liv-
ing is rendered essential for negotiations and poli-
tical actions.
8. Conclusions
The paper looked at the representation of the com-
munity within the eco-governmentality of JFM in
the SBR. It shows how the scholarly penchants
towards an amorous version of the community,
which is uniformly marginalized by the exclusionary
conservation policies, veil the multiscalar factors
shaping a realistic deliberation. Within a grossly
asymmetrical and factional collective in the village,
it is imperative to understand how specific groups
ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY 43
have the leverage to utilize their locus as ‘rele-
gated’, to claim benefits from participatory policies
(Johnson 2001). Although the village encountered
shared experiences of exclusion from the top-down
conservation policies, only a handful of the collec-
tive could utilize agencies towards exploiting the
participatory obligations of the recent forest man-
agement. Eco-governmentality thus allows us to
reflect on a collective which can utilize techniques
of intermediation within a collective, to render its
position as a part of the excluded community.
According to Agrawal (1999), imagining commu-
nities as opposed to the state and the market in
the context of conservation is simultaneously an
attempt to insulate them from the influences of
power and exchange. The paper also shows how
an eco-governmentality of JFM is reinforced by a
transnational network of associations, which direct
momentous economic benefits to augment commu-
nity-based programmes (Agrawal and Gibson 1999,
631). The rationale sustaining such advocacy of
community participation in conservation methods
is to subjectify a section of the population as mean-
ingful resource users and unswerving local stew-
ards. The provisions which the state guarantees in
the name of devising participatory methods of for-
est management are therefore blurred by its omni-
present role in the everyday life of the local
communities.
Our interrogation of the community as a ‘moral
rhetoric’ (Chatterjee 1998, 281) is justified by its
entrenched role within the transnational network of
power, which ‘shape truth about nature and seek to
regulate and ameliorate its (ab) use’ (Rutherford 2007,
295). Chatterjee (2004, 75) defines community as
‘classes of actual population that comes to act together
politically’. He says (Chatterjee (2004, 75) says, ‘to effec-
tively make its claim in political society, a population
group produced by governmentality must be invested
with the moral content of community’. This version of
the community does not attempt to disjoin itself from
the institutions of the modern state and cannot be
integrated within the moral attributes of harmony, as
the classical sociological literature shows. Rather, it
negotiates with the governance mechanism to ‘break
down the supposedly retrograde and parochial institu-
tions of traditional community life’ (Chatterjee 1998,
279). The practice of eco-governmentality, by incarcer-
ating nature and environmental movements into tech-
niques of neoliberal regulation, also renders place for
the articulation of community, which can stake its
claim through the exercise of power. This paper
shows that participatory policies of forest governance
like JFM can render scope for a re-examination of the
paradox of community, since such policies embody
multiple ways in which a community can be dislodged
of its historical attributes of homogeneity.
44 A. SEN AND S. PATTANAIK
Notes
1. Words from Chatterjee (1998: 281)
2. The JFM initiative at the Arabari Forest Range in the
East Midnapore Forest Division, also known as the
‘Arabari experiment’, commenced during 1972, by
the efforts of Dr Ajit Kumar Banerjee, the Divisional
Forest Officer (DFO) of the region. He realized that
the degrading Sal forests of Arabari cannot be regen-
erated without the cooperation of the local people,
who depended upon the forests for their livelihood.
Around 1272 ha of forest was brought under the
joint regeneration programme, by creating Forest
Protection Committees (FPCs) in the villages around
the forest. The initiative proved to a success, since by
1988, around 700 ha of Sal forests was regenerated.
3. In this paper, we refer to the SBR or Indian
Sundarban only, unless mentioned otherwise.
4. STR lies within the 4263 km² of forested area of the
SBR. It was notified in 1973 under Project Tiger
scheme of the government of India. It covers an
area of 2584.89km², out of which 1699.62km² is con-
sidered as the core area or the Critical Tiger Habitat
(CTH).
5. Forest fishing in Sundarban is accomplished in the
creeks and the rivulets interspersed within the forest
area. The people who fish in the forests are known as
forest fishers. They do not practise marine fishing.
They fish crabs, prawn seeds and other fish species,
using human-rowed wooden boats and hand-made
fishing nets.
6. The BLCs are now mainly owned by rich agricultural-
ists and middlemen, whose ancestors were fishers.
The middlemen buy fish from the fishermen when
they return from fishing. These middlemen, known as
aratdaars or khotidaars, lend money to the fishermen
and provide them with boats and nets on the condi-
tion that the fish caught has to be sold to them at
concessional rates. The poor fishermen, who are in
present need of the BLCs, thus have to rent them
from the aratdaars (Sen and Pattanaik 2017a, 867;
also see Jalais 2010).
7. According to the government resolution no. 2063-
For/6M-28/02 dated 25/10/2014, the committees
under have been renamed as JFMCs from Eco
Development Committees (EDCs), to ensure unifor-
mity in the access to the usufruct benefits.
8. The Bon-O-Bhumi Sanskar Sthayee Samitee is the
local name for a committee constituted under each
block-level panachayat of West Bengal, which,
among other tasks, is responsible for the protection
of forest resources and promotion of JFM.
9. The forest area of SBR, which lies outside the STR, is a
reserved forest.
10. The forests of SBR is divided into the STR with an
area of 2584.89 km² and the South 24 Parganas forest
division with an area of the remaining 1678.11 km².
11. TMC is the current ruling party in the state. They
came to power since 2011, defeating the left-front
government (Communist Party of India-Marxist/CPI-
M) and winning 190 out of 294 seats in West Bengal
Legislative Assembly.
12. Gitanjali Housing Scheme is implemented in the rural
areas and non-municipal urban areas by the
Government of West Bengal, Housing Affairs in coor-
dination with seven other government departments.
Under the programme, INR 1,94,000 is allocated to
the beneficiaries of the forest fringe areas of
Sundarban by the forest department and for the
beneficiaries residing in other non-forest coastal
areas by the Sundarbans Affairs Department, for
building sustainable rural houses.
13. Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) forms the
largest part of the left wing parties in India, followed
by Communist Party of India (CPI), Revolutionary
Socialist Party (RSP) and All India Forward Bloc.
They came to power in 1977 and had a historic rule
for 34 years in West Bengal till 2011.
14. The committee which represents the village of
Patharpara.
15. A village adjacent to Patharpara.
16. For planting 400 saplings, INR 1,38,422 is allocated by
the panchayat.
Acknowledgements
A section of this manuscript was presented at the Second
Biennial Conference of the Political Ecology Network
(POLLEN), entitled ‘Political Ecology, the Green Economy
and Alternative Sustainabilities’, held at Oslo, Norway, from
20th to 22 June 2018. Comments from the audiences of the
respective panel were immensely helpful in revising this
manuscript. The authors would also like to thank the two
anonymous reviewers for providing detailed comments on
an earlier version of this manuscript.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the
authors.
Notes on contributors
Amrita Sen is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Urban
Ecological Sustainability, Azim Premji University, Bangalore.
Prior to joining APU, she was a doctoral research scholar in
sociology at the Department of Humanities and Social
Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. Her areas
of research are political ecology, urban environmentalism,
conservation politics and community based natural resource
management.
Sarmistha Pattanaik is an Associate Professor in sociology at
the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian
Institute of Technology Bombay. From 2006-2008, she was a
fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in
Environment and Development (CISED), Institute for Social
and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore. Her research areas
are sociology of development and environment, political
ecology, tribal issues interlinking development, ecology
and environmentalism and land acquisition related to
governance.
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