National Afforestation Programme

The afforestation programme of the Ministry was earlier suffering due to delay in transfer of Central grants by State Governments to implementing agencies. The programme also lacked public participation. To address these issues, Baalu introduced an innovative mechanism of implementing this programme through public participatory scheme of Joint Forest Management Committees (JFMCs) and Forest Development Agencies (FDAs). Under the scheme, a JFM Committee was constituted in each village for afforestation activities. A crusader of women empowerment, Baalu decided to provide 1/3rd reservation to women in JFM committees. Under this scheme, Central grants were released directly to FDAs and not to the State Government which greatly helped in meeting the targets set under the programme.