ON SOCIAL FORESTRY 61 implemented programmes is farm forestry on private arable lands. Gujarat is the most notable example of this approach. Especially, in Bhavnagar district, many farmers have converted irrigated arable lands into eucalyptus plantations. In Maharashtra, 50 per cent of the plan is to be executed on public lands and 50 per cent on private lands. A subsidy of Rs 4000 per farmer owning an acre is being provided by the government to these farmers. Farmers in Haryana and Tamil Nadu also are taking to tree farming on commercial lines on their agricultural lands. A plantation of eucalyptus fetches presently a gross annual income of over Rs 10,000 an acre to farmers. Kalidas Patel, a Gujarat farmer, has stopped growing long staple cotton on his land and has switched over to growing eucalyptus, thereby earning nearly Rs 15,000 an acre a year. The most valuable commercial crop in Gujarat, namely groundnuts, brings only an income of Rs 1,000 an acre a year.1 Farmers growing both rice and wheat on the land in Punjab earn only about Rs 7,000 an acre a year. It is the operation of the profit motive in the context of heavy government subsidy that is encouraging this current shift towards eucalyptus plantations. Aided by the World Bank and other foreign agencies, the social forestry programme is getting oriented towards the development of tlic commercial species. Thus the actual consequences of the implemented social forestry programmes appear to diverge from the stated objectives of the programme, as seen in Gujarat, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. Although a full-fledged review is yet to take place of this programme, reports available until now indicate that the consequences are likely to be serious for the rural population and tlie country as a whole and that the forces generating the actually implemented programme need to be exposed and struggled against. The approach to social forestry has been confined to planting a single tree species over large areas. It is believed that while tlicse 'monocultures5 may give high yields and good economic returns in the short term, their long-term impact on soil and water conservation and on the environment could be deleterious. The choice of tree species —-such as fast growing eucalyptus which is the primary species being encouraged in the social forestry programme— appears especially inappropriate for the aforementioned reasons of long-teim deleterious impact. Water table gets lowered in the vicinity of such eucalyptus plantations, adversely affecting agriculture. It is also said that, in the long term, these eucalyptus plantations can adversely affect the concentrations of other nutrients, e g, micronutrients like zinc and boron. Recently, some writers (the most prominent among them being Prem Shankar Jha) have pointed out that the water requirements or various other nutrient requirements for cotton, and many other crops, are no less than the requirement of these fast growing trees. So, there is nothing wrong with the present programme, and should be implemented with gusto. This argument is baseless and utterly erroneous for the following reasons: