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This chapter presents the evolution of the community forestry program in Nepal. Community forests as commons are parts of national forest, managed and used by local communities organized into legitimate groups. The second-generation reform issues in community forestry as identified by the government are also compatible with the Millennium Development Goals and the Tenth Five Year Plan of Nepal. Analysis of the achievements and the challenges of community forestry indicates that strategic reforms are needed in three thematic areas, namely governance, livelihood, and sustainable forest management in order to meet these goals in the future.

This chapter focuses on issues related to designing and sequencing policies and argues that South Asian countries have completed the easy part of the reform exercise and plucked the ‘low-hanging’ fruits. They now need to focus on implementing sectoral reforms and the ‘second generation’ reforms, mainly governance and institutional reforms which are designed to improve the operation of markets, enhance competition, and improve economic efficiency and competitiveness. These include reforms of institutions for good governance, reforms of institutions to create human capital—education and health, and the environment for private sector—flexible labour markets, legal reforms, and property rights. As we have already witnessed, implementation of these reforms will pose significant challenges for South Asian countries as it requires a strong political consensus. Yet, without these reforms, high growth rates of the recent past will be difficult to attain. The chapter also identifies the unfinished policy reform agenda for South Asian countries.

The focus of this interview is the Indian economy and its challenges and uncertainties. Amit Bhaduri states that although India has performed better and has maintained a steady growth rate, it has never tried growth from below. The interview looks at the agrarian sector of the economy, Bhaduri's three-step analyses of the changes in the political economy of India, and the reforms that were initiated by Manmohan Singh. It ends by discussing the initiation of the second generation reforms that would enable the Indian manufacturing industry to capitalize on global opportunities and drive the growth of the Indian economy to the next level.