India, Aug. 20 -- Should the State's understanding of what constitutes forests be a matter of semantic jugglery? Haryana seems to think so, holding the "dictionary definition" of forests to mean areas with 40% canopy density spread over at least five hectares if isolated or at least two hectares if contiguous with government-notified forests. Its excuse is that the Supreme Court last year directed states to use the dictionary definition of forests in the broad sense for identifying forests, as established in the 1996 Godavarman judgment. While the Oxford Learner's Dictionary defines forest as a large area of land that is thickly covered with trees, Haryana seems to have adopted a very restrictive, literal understanding of the same, ignori...