The law prohibits a person from felling a sandalwood tree, even if it grows on ones own land, without prior permission from the government. As poor people cannot deal with the government, this legal provision leads to a rip-roaring business for ___________, who care neither for the ___________ , nor for the trees.

The given statement says that it is illegal to fell or cut down a sandalwood tree without taking permission from the government; then this statement goes onto say that as poor people cannot really comprehend these laws or know about them well, some people take advantage of this (this can be logically inferred from the statement)
Option (d) is correct because touts are those people who persuade others, generally in order to do some business; this fits perfectly into the sentence as the touts persuade the innocent poor people, and in this context, these touts do not care about trees or the poor (because if these poor people are caught, they will be in trouble). It is now easily evident why rest of the options are incorrect.