60 SOCIAL SCIENTIST needs of fuel, fodder, fertiliser, food, fibre and timber. Social forestry as proposed is aimed at generating firewood resources to offset serious domestic energy shortages likely to occur in the coming years. Besides serving fuelwood needs, regeneration of trees with fodder value is to be an essential input for improving draught animal power and reducing ecological pressure arising from overgrazing. Social forestry is also to provide materials for rural housing needs. By planting trees in areas denuded of green cover, social forestry aims at preventing soil erosion, silting of tanks and reservoirs, flooding, recharging of springs and ground water table resources, and finally blocking desertification in extreme cases. The programme, it is hoped, would improve economic opportunities and the quality of life of millions of Indians for whom agriculture is the only means of livelihood. Community participation is recognised to be the cornerstone of the programme. It is also expected that in this process the rural environment would improve, and that immigration to urban areas would cease as rural employment would grow substantially. Accordingly, the scope of social forestry has been defined to include rural or extension forestry encompassing forestry on community and Panchayat lands, degraded lands, road and railway sides, canal banks, etc and farm forestry on common village lands or marginal agricultural lands for meeting the needs of rural people. Farm forestry is "the practice of forestry in all its aspects on farms or village lands, generally integrated with other farm operations". In contrast to rural forestry where the ownership of land is communal and needs community participation, the ownership of land or the control of produce in farm forestry is to be in the private hands. Five kinds of plantations are envisaged under the programme, viz, (1) fuel-wood and small timber plantations; (2) irrigated plantations along canal sides; (3) fuelwood plantations in the foreshores of reservoirs and the higher reaches of tankbeds; (4) village plantations on village/ government wastelands and degraded reserve forests; (5) free distribution of seedlings to farmers for taking up planting of trees along the field bunds, around homesteads, and in marginal agricultural areas. Among all these, the plantations included in categories (4) and (5) are the most significant ones, because, in these a direct involvement of the rural people in the afforestation activities is a necessary concomitant of the programme and the possibilities of their receiving direct economic benefits appear particularly promising. As conceived, they contain considerable potential for social-economic development. In the countryside, these plantations could provide a tool for productively using uncultivated wastelands, marginal agricultural lands and unforested areas (estimated to be seven million hectares in India), resulting in increased economic opportunities and material wellbeing. But the component being encouraged in a big way in the actually