| The
proposed new law to recognise and protect the rights
of tribal peoples living in so-called ''forests'' is
an important step in the right direction.
One
of the most important and progressive new laws that
the UPA government proposes to enact is also one of
the most misrepresented and therefore misunderstood.
In much of the mainstream media today, the concerns
of environmentalists and ''nature lovers'' are shown to
be opposed to those of people who live in and around
forest areas, whether it be in terms of protecting animal
wildlife, or preserving tree cover.
Typically it is local communities who are blamed for
deforestation or the destruction of natural habitats,
despite the overwhelming evidence of the negative role
played by commercial logging and mining interests. But
this is really a major misrepresentation, since the
local communities who live in and around forests are
usually those who are most concerned with preserving
them. And where there has been more evidence of devastation,
it has more often than not been the result of a nexus
between business interests and local officialdom and
politicians.
The problem is that even those who are officially in
charge of dealing with these issues, say for example
the Forest Department, are not adequately informed of
the ground realities with respect to what is forest
and what is not. The official data on forest cover in
India is in a state of utter confusion, which actually
dates from the colonial period. At Independence, 26
million hectares of land was declared as ''forest'', but
without any proper survey. Now the forested land is
estimated to be as much as 78 million hectares, again
without proper survey, partly because in 1952, all wastelands
were also declared to be ''forests''.
Within all this supposedly ''forest'' or ''jungle'' area,
there were substantial swathes of land which were actually
being cultivated even then, and continue to be cultivated
today. This included not just areas of shifting cultivation,
but also perennially cultivated tracts. Some ''forests''
were no more than patches of trees situated within the
cultivated area of villages. There was some ongoing
survey work, but it was very unsatisfactory because
it was haphazard, had no mechanisms for cross-checking,
and was completely non-transparent.
These contradictions were made even more acute in 1980,
when the Forest Conservation Act stopped even the limited
and inadequate official surveys. The current official
description of the extent of encroachment is therefore
based on extremely problematic and unsubstantiated guesstimates.
According to the Forest Survey of India, in 2001 the
total forest cover of the country was only 67.53 million
hectares, and this even includes plantations, groves,
etc. Even if all this forest cover is inside state forests,
which it patently is not, at least 12 per cent of the
land classified as ''state forests'' has no forest at
all. In some states, the percentage is remarkably high.
In Himachal Pradesh, for example, 61 per cent of the
area that is described as ''state forest'' has no forest
cover, while in Rajasthan the percentage is 49 per cent.
This is largely because waste lands are being classified
as forests, but it also reflects the inadequate nature
of the data collection. Even official data show that
83 per cent of the forest blocks in undivided Madhya
Pradesh were never surveyed. Indeed, the confusion is
such that for India as a whole the area under ''non-forest
forest'' is seven times larger than the area under so-called
''encroachment''.
What all this means, of course, is that the traditional
land rights of many peoples who have for generations
lived and tilled the land in some of these official
''forest'' areas, are not being recognised. These are
mostly tribal groups, but also include some non-tribal
communities. The absence of proper surveys even in the
past makes it easier to declare such people to be ''encroachers''
even when they have been traditionally involved in cultivation
in these areas.
Legal judgments have not helped to reduce the confusion:
the Supreme Court stayed the regularisation of land
and stopped recognition of pre-1980 settlers who were
thereby classified as ''encroachers''. Worse, still, in
May 2002 the government misinterpreted a Supreme Court
ruling, to issue a directive to all state governments
to immediately evict ''encroachers'' from all forests.
A massive eviction drive ensued, which targeted forest
communities rather than the commercial and mafia interests
which have actually led to the destruction of forests.
This has led to huge dislocation and suffering among
already impoverished people. Lakhs of families have
been rendered homeless – as many as 40,000 families
in Assam alone - and there are many recorded cases of
excessive violence. There have been mass burnings of
forest dwellers' homes in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh,
Gujarat, and Andhra Pradesh. Elephants have been used
to demolish entire villages in Maharashtra and Assam.
As recently as April this year, the Forest Department
killed one adivasi protester and burned 180 adivasi
dwellings in Khandwa district of Madhya Pradesh. In
the Nilgiris there have been civil disobedience movements
by Dalit forest dwellers.
That is why many progressive groups and mass organisations
have been demanding an immediate stop to mass evictions
and recognition of the traditional rights of those people
dwelling in or near these supposedly ''forested'' areas.
Public pressure has forced this to be recognised at
the governmental level as well. Even the previous NDA
government, just before the April 2004 elections, issued
an order that the issue of tribal land rights should
be settled within a year. The UPA government made the
recognition of tribal land rights one of its commitments
in the Common Minimum Programme.
The resulting bill is The Scheduled Tribes and Forest
Dwellers (Recognition of Rights) Bill 2005, which is
extremely important not only for providing justice to
forest dwellers, but also for conserving the forests
themselves. There are two critically important aspects
of this bill: it recognizes communities' rights and
it also democratises the system of forest conservation.
Both are vital to the health of forests and forest communities.
Essentially, all that the proposed law requires is that
the Forest Department update its land records to recognise
what already exists on the ground. At the same time,
it also requires forest rights holders to refrain from
any activity hat adversely affects the forest and the
biodiversity in the local area, and also enjoins the
local community to stop any activity which adversely
affects wildlife, forest and biodiversity, whoever might
be responsible for that activity, rather than officialdom.
It is true that this bill is still limited since it
recognises only the rights of adivasis, or tribal communities,
rather than all forest dwellers. But it is still an
important step in the right direction for those who
have been effectively denied their basic rights. And
it is also crucial for ensuring the preservation and
conservation of the forests themselves.
However, since the bill was introduced , there has been
a systematic and aggressive campaign of disinformation
designed to dilute and even subvert the Bill and ensure
that the law that is eventually passed does not contain
important provisions. It is being argued, falsely, that
the new law will distribute land to each tribal family
and allow new generations to claim land. In reality,
all that will happen is the legal recognition of existing
claims based on actual farming since before 1980, and
that too only up to a maximum of 2.5 hectares per family.
Further, these rights can only be passed on through
inheritance, and cannot be sold.
The more pernicious falsehood that is being widely propagated
in the media relates to the concerns of environmentalists.
It is being suggested that the new law will eliminate
legal protection for forest cover in the country, but
as already noted, nothing could be further from the
truth. In fact, if local communities are allowed to
protect the forests, they are also likely to save them
not only from commercial interests but also official
depredation, of which there are more than enough instance
sin the past.
Clearly,
there is urgent need for this law to be passed and fully
implemented as soon as possible, to allow both forests
and forest peoples to survive.
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