The Hindu : New Delhi News : Afghanistan to follow India in managing natural resources

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Monday, May 05, 2008
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Afghanistan to follow India in managing natural resources

Sunny Sebastian

NIWAI (Rajasthan): A war ravaged Afghanistan is now on effort to learn from India the techniques of managing its natural resources with people’s participation. Afghan delegations are now making a beeline to India on exposure visits to witness forestry development, especially India’s now famous JVFM (Joint Village Forestry Protection and Management), to revive the economy and environment of that country both of which had been hit severely during the previous Taliban regime.

“India is considered good model for Afghanistan in natural resources management through community empowerment,” said Itil Asmon, an economist from Kabul, who accompanied a nine-member team of agriculture and forest officials of Afghan Government to Rajasthan this fortnight. The visit was facilitated by the US Department of Agriculture.

“Rajasthan, a State which has many similarities with Afghanistan, can be a role model for us. In Afghanistan we have to learn from scratch and try to replicate the successful experiments Rajasthan has carried out in watershed management, social forestry and income generation from community and forest lands,” Dr. Asmon said.

The group, led by Paul Smith, an expert who worked in the past with the NGO Mercy Corps on catchment management, this weekend visited an anicut and a medicinal plantation in Shafipura village of Niwai tehsil in Tonk district, some 80 kms from Jaipur on the National Highway No.12.

The anicut and the plantation are the outcome of an Indo-German Bilateral Project. The Jaipur-based Kumarappa Institute of Gram Swaraj (KIGS), which mobilized public awareness for the project, arranged the Afghan team’s visit to the area.

Shafipura, with 51 families, is a Gujjar village where the visitors were pleasantly surprised to know that India too had Gujjars! “In Khandahar region we have the Gujjar population,” announced Haji Abdul Khalil, who functioned as the translator for the group, which spoke Pashto and Persion. The group, curious to whether the Gujjars were Muslims, was told that India has Muslim Gujjars only in Kashmir.

“One reason for the success of the project is also the fact that all the families in the village belongs to one community. It made things easy for us while building up the atmosphere,” Awadh Prasad, director of KIGS.

Mr. Smith felt the medicinal plantation, spread over an area of 4.75 hectare, was an example Afghanistan could replicate in their semi arid lands. Kanaram Gujjar, president of the management committee, told the visitors that the plantation areas, which was once a degraded community grazing land, now held the potential of generating an income of Rs.1 lakh a year for the villagers.

“This is the kind of project I would have liked to see implemented with the funds provided by the development agencies back in Afghanistan,” Mr. Smith.

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