In India, the Forest Survey of India (2019) estimated, roughly 26 per cent of the total 650,000 villages can be classified as forest fringe villages, where forests fulfill significant socio-cultural and livelihood needs. As of 2019, these villages were home to around 22 per cent of the country’s total population.
But these communities are often ignored during policymaking. During the onset of the pandemic, for instance, when states had to shut down economic activities, the precarious condition of India’s agrarian people was covered extensively in studies and assessments. But the forest-dependent communities (FDC) got very little space in this debate.