view JFM as a tool to protect or rehabilitate millions of hectares of degraded forests, while village communities see it as a means to meet scarce needs and to increase income. Communities are also heterogeneous and have different requirements, often resulting in conflicts. Further, VFIs seem to function better when JFM is implemented along with wage employment in forest management, and, where there are budgetary allocations for villages. Thus, for more effective VFIs, Khare and others (2000) recommend that short term returns, access to alternative fuel sources prior to forest closure, and intra-community equity issues need to be addressed.

The vast literature on community forestry in India helped us understand how communities organize to manage forests collectively and what the relationship is between fuelwood collection and participation in forest management. We exploit this understanding in our analyses.

# **4.  Data**

We use data from the fifty-fourth round of India’s National Sample Survey (NSS), undertaken between January and June of 1998. The fifty-fourth round was the first national survey in which household and village level information was collected regarding common property rights and resources in India. The survey focused only on rural India.

Though the scope of the fifty-fourth round of NSS was national, we focus on five large states. These are Andhra Pradesh (AP), Madhya Pradesh (MP), Orissa (OR), Uttar Pradesh (UP), and West Bengal (WB). These are the states with the largest number of community forest management groups in 1998.<sup>10</sup> These are also states for which reasonable data were available in the national sample survey. JFM started officially around 1990 – thus, on average, our secondary data is likely to be picking up villages where CF has been prevalent for some five years. In states such as West Bengal, where CF originated in the 1980s, and in Orissa and Uttar Pradesh, which have large numbers of traditional forestry institutions, we can assume that community forestry has been prevalent for a much longer term.

The NSS collected village and household level information. Village level information was obtained from local officials and knowledgeable persons, including but not limited to local revenue and forest department officials. Our sample includes 524 villages from the five states. From each village, roughly 16 households were randomly identified and surveyed for socio-demographic characteristics, forest dependence and participation in forest management. Thus, our household sample size is 8,307 households.

The main variable of interest at the village level is the existence of a forest management body in the village. The village level questionnaire asks the question “Is there any local forest management body like JFM, Van Panchayet etc.?” This information collected at the village level is distinct from household participation in forest management activities. Our

> 10 According to figures presented by Khare and others (2000, figure 5.1, p. 83), in 1988, AP had a little less than 5,000 village forest institutions, MP approximately 8,500 VFIs,  Orissa more than 5,000 VFIs, UP some 4,000 VFIs, and West Bengal some 3,000 VFIs.

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