Events & Issues

New Delhi, 21 August 2019

Forest Rights Act

ARE TRIBALS GETTING JUSTICE?

By Dhurjati Mukherjee

A recent consultation, organized in Delhi by Bhoomi Adhikar Andolan to examine forest and land rights, declared that millions of adivasis and other forest dwelling communities continue to  face the danger of eviction due to February 13 order of the Supreme Court. Though the apex court stayed the ruling till July 10 and is hearing the matter, the lurking fear still remains as forest officials have been harassing and threatening the tribals. These vulnerable and poor communities have been living for decades in the forest but the States, in their endeavour to commercialise forests, have displaced them, affecting not only their livelihoods but also the biodiversity situation.

Meanwhile, in a relief to lakhs of tribals, several States admitted before the apex court their fault in passing adverse orders, rejecting 11.8 lakh claims over forest land by Scheduled Tribes and traditional forest dwellers. The court, in expressing shock that due procedure was not followed, then directed the States (in an order this month) to file a comprehensive report on how the claims were decided. It may be mentioned here that Maharashtra had rejected claims of 13,712 STs and 8797 forest dwellers, who were 45 per cent of the rejection orders that have not even been communicated to the claimants.

In the consultation and also in many other such conferences, it has been repeatedly emphasised  that evictions cannot be justified without providing proper rehabilitation. There stands no legal ground for evicting tribals from their habitat without their free and informed consent. In the present India’s Forest (Amendment) Bill, 2019 the forest bureaucracy has been given powers to manage “village forests” through Joint Forest Management Committee (JFMC). Though the concept of village forest exists in the original IFA, the original Forest Rights Act (FRA) overrides all existing laws in recognising and vesting rights over forest land and resources with forest dwelling communities, in consultation with their Gram Sabha, thus making JFMC defunct or redundant.

Further, it empowered forest bureaucracy to record forest rights and gives it extraordinary power to take away (“commute”) individual and community rights for declaring “reserve forest” by paying compensation. Clause 26 provides that in case of fire in a reserved forest or theft of forest produce or grazing by cattle, all rights of pasture or to forest-produce would be suspended.

It is surprising that Clause 66 treats a forest offender like terrorist, shifting the burden of proving innocence to the accused -- existing criminal jurisprudence for the rest puts the onus of proving guilt on prosecution. It also seeks to criminalise an entire community for mistakes of an individual by defining a ‘person’ to include “a forest dwelling community” or any organisation registered under the prevalent laws in a State but gives no explanation for this change.

Further, it even denies the State government the power as forestry was shifted to the concurrent list in 1976 to withdraw registered cases. The power would vest with only the Central government. The draft explains that States withdraw cases for political mileages, which must be “curbed with a heavy hand because the result are disastrous” and that such “porosity is the cause of destruction of forest area”.

Forest bureaucracy may generally be regarded as the real villain and reason for the age-old forest land problems. Their power has been made draconian. The question arises what kind of benefit will tribals get now? Environmentalists feel that the draft Bill exemplifies the historical tussle of how forests should be governed and by whom. The FRA had brought in the legal space for recognising rights that had been historically alienated.

The Act was also an attempt to regain space for community-based conservation but the present draft is an attempt for the forest department to regain control. “While this may be justified in cases of misuse, its normalization will undo the gains made by the FRA to democratise forest governance”, observed a well-known environmentalist.

The increasing trend towards centralisation of power has been manifest in the Bill as there has been a tendency to vest more authority with the Central authorities. The IFA proposed a system of ‘village forests’ that bypass the role of gram sabhas, thereby violating the principles of decentralised governance.  Moreover, the endeavour to privatise forests as well as to introduce ‘production forests’ would obviously infringe upon the FRA and undermine democratic governance of forests by drastically altering the stakes of actors.

It is indeed distressing to note that the Central authorities are pushing for an authoritarian forest regime that would effectively endanger and curtail civil liberties of the forest dwellers, who are among the most socially and economically marginalised groups. “Why is the government amending laws against the interest of traditional forest dwellers disregarding the FRA, while also being indifferent to or failing to protect their rights?” It is indeed unfortunate that in a country where poverty is concentrated in adivasi pockets in lagging regions and where inequality has been exacerbating over time, matters regarding forest governance and forest rights are perceived as non-issues.

The situation as it exists today is not favourable for tribals and other poor communities. One may mention here that years of high growth has hardly had any impact on the conditions of these communities. In this connection, one is inclined to ask that in the Budget, the Finance Minister puts forth its achievements and what she proposes to do as also the allocation for each programme/sector. Why aren’t any statistics provided for the total amount spent on tribals, BPL groups, economically weaker sections, who constitute over 50 per cent of the population? As per estimates, not even 10 per cent is spent for these sections, including expenditure on health, education, shelter, sanitation, etc. Thus, it can easily be concluded that high growth has no meaning for them. 

The trend that is being followed, specially since the start of this millennium, has not favoured the tribals and backward communities. Earlier also land was somewhat forcibly taken away from them for projects that benefitted the rich and the middle income sections. The compensation given was meagre and being uneducated these communities did not have the ability to set up an alternative livelihood. Moreover, most people in this category were addicted to alcohol and no tangible benefit went to the family from the money received. There was no plan and programme to give them skilled training so that the young members could take up alternative means of livelihood.

The alienation of tribals from mainstream people continued over decades and still the tribal population lives in a somewhat precarious position. Moreover, saving these dwellers would mean saving our forests, which undoubtedly is vital for the country at a time when climate change has been affecting a large section of the population. It is doubtful whether the realisation of protecting our forests and turning them as reserves of our ecosystem is understood by the bureaucrats and politicians in the country, who are in charge of framing policies, which sadly end up often being anti-people.      

Finally, it is imperative to broad base a movement for recognition of rights and usage of the forest by the dwellers to ensure justice for them. This would also help ecosystem services from forests, both financially tangible and otherwise, to provide sustainability to the national economy and resilience to climate change. Simultaneously, address biodiversity and poverty effectively and challenge the underlying causes of deforestation directly, resolving governance, poverty and land tenure issues.---INFA

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