Participation in Forestry : The Role of Bureaucrats in Ensuring People’s Participation in the Social Forestry Policy of Bangladesh

‘People’s Participation’ in community development is a much discussed issue. The high and rapidly growing population in Bangladesh is placing great strain on all resources. Increasing people’s voice and influence in the social forestry policy in Bangladesh is believed to be an effective way of improving the condition of the forest sector by increasing access to services of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups. Bureaucracy has an important role primarily in ensuring people’s participation because it is the arm of government intervention in the rural areas. It is the responsibility of bureaucrats to aware local people about the programme especially about the importance of people’s participation and help the SF farmers in arranging the project meetings and it is also their duty to make sure that proper participation of farmers is ensured. This article tries to map the role of bureaucrats in ensuring people’s participation. It identifies whether the rule-oriented or programme-oriented bureaucrats are required to ensure people’s participation in this policy