A newly-assembled data set that combines national household survey data, census data and satellite images of land use in rural India over a 29-year period is used to obtain estimates of economic growth and population effects on forests, to identify the mechanisms by which these factors affect land use, and to address whether forest areas are efficiently managed where community land management is present.  The evidence suggests that increases in the returns to alternative uses of land induced by agricultural technical change and population growth, combined with the difficulty of monitoring forest-resource extraction, are the major contributing factors to deforestation.