Forests are great as a weekend getaway, but what happens when it becomes one’s life?
Dipankar "Dada" Khasnabish
Trustee & Board Member - Heartcrafted Foundation & Heeya
I came across Murari Mohan Goswami at the Azim Premji University. Murari is a seasoned development professional, who has been working in the harsh conditions of Rajasthan fields for decades. So when he shared one of his articles, I was interested and read it up.
Titled “Empowering Forest Dwelling Communities through the Forest Rights Act, in Udaipur District, Rajasthan”, and published in the Policy Watch publication of the “Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Contemporary Studies”.
This a great read, but it kept many questions unanswered. So I requested Murari to take us through his findings in an online meeting, which he did with pleasure.
Forests are always a fascination for most of us. The majority of us like it as the adobe of the wild, especially of the esoteric ones like lions, tigers, and elephants. Increasingly we are also becoming aware of the value of forests in helping maintain the ecological balance. But almost no one I know has the lived experience of the forest dweller, which is mostly restricted to the Tribal population.
We have all heard about how these people have been disempowered over the years to hand over the forests so that the mining industry or settlements can be set up. In fact, for a long time, we did not even think that the tribal population in the forests had any forest rights. All the questions and occasional protests were always brushed aside in the name of the development. We never really cared.
However as society became more progressive and inclusive, we also started asking – whose development is it? Why did we take away the land telling folks residing there for generations that they have no right to the land, and at best we can provide them with resettlement? And it is another matter that often the resettlement was a mere compliance with land allocation at an infertile location, or at worst no settlement of any consequence.
Much later in life, I woke up to what played out in Durgapur, my hometown, in the 50s. Over 10,000 acres were cleaned up for Durgapur Steel Plant (DSP) alone. And it was one of the many industries and institutions that were set up. If we add up all others like Alloy Steel Plant (ASP), Mining and Allied Machinery Corporation (MAMC), Philips Carbon, Fertilizer Corporation of India (FCI), Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute (CMERI), and many more we will surely reach a figure upwards of 20,000 acres. Where did the land come from?
Well by removing the jungle, and evicting the tribal population. We always found a group of people called Bauris employed at our homes, and much later I found that they were the dominant tribe that was displaced. And while development must have happened, they lost everything and almost got nothing in exchange. Even today, the 10th standard and above education among the Bauris is in the early double digits. Now imagine what levels of displacements were done to these communities if we add up all the plants and dams and residential colonies and all else post-independence, the so-called “commanding heights of the state policy”. It will be thousands of acres and millions being moved out. Even now when we set up, for example, a nuclear power plant that required a 5 km radius of the exclusion zone, we head for the jungles of Kaiga or Kakrapara.
Thankfully things are improving over the years. Laws like the Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act 1996, the Biological Diversity Act 2002, and the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forests Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights Act) 2006 have come in. Many in the civil society have engaged deeply with the forest dwellers so that they get their due as part of the law. Authorities have been sensitized too, and there is significant improvement in many interfaces and interventions. However, we have a long way to go.
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The article and the session by Murari gave me some perspectives, noting them down here. These are my 10:
1. Individual Forest Rights (IFR) and Community Forest Rights (IFR) and revolutionary in intent, but suffer significantly from implementation challenges. We can see that from the very high share of rejections, as well as the unavailability of segregation of the Community data across access and development. These are core issues that make tracking and interventions difficult.
2. Laws have been made, but as expected there is very little awareness among the beneficiaries. Also, the laws don’t provide for any support to be provided to them for claiming the benefits, and it is virtually impossible to do anything without the same.
3. Civil society has stepped in to fill the gap, but with the gradual reduction in funding, this support is also shrinking. Also, while the law has good intentions, the government agencies on the ground don’t have much enthusiasm. This is especially true for the forest department, who see IFR and CFR as dilution of their power.
4. The Forest Act of 2006 is a static act, which provides benefits to only the people in the forest areas before 2006. It is almost two decades since then, and settlement patterns have changed significantly, giving rise to confusion, contests, and resultant barriers.
5. The rights implementation works at the intersection of forest and panchayat laws. In case of dispute on the forest law, the central rule prevails. This is reversed when it comes to the Panchayat law. Given that there is a severe capability gap among the officials in the understanding of the laws, this is another factor that makes the process even more inefficient.
6. The assessments are expected to be through a joint visit by the Van Adhikari Samiti, the Forest Department, and the Patwari – but it rarely happens. So the potential beneficiaries have multiple interfaces, with the potential of delay, graft, or even rejection. This can be seen in the very high rejection rates of 42%, in much of which the reasons are not clear.
7. While the Individual Forest Rights (IFR) can allocate up to 4 acres, the average stands at a paltry 1.8 acres. Surely it doesn’t add up. Also, once IFR is done, the beneficiary families are discouraged from accessing any other Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFP), which is often a reason for reluctance to avail of the benefit in the first place. Incidentally, the average Community Forest Rights (CFR) is 3.74 hectares, way below the eligibility.
8. While the forest dwellers are quite keen on IFR, they see little value in CFR. This is primarily because of the additional burden of setting up a community, getting the allocation as a group, running it, and then dividing the outcomes. Many find it a high ask.
However, increasingly the women have started taking the leadership here and building a structure for both laying the claims as well as running it.
9. IFR and CFR are not permanent rights and can be taken away at any time in case there is a public need. This is a high level of vulnerability of the beneficiaries given their absence of voice, history of arbitrary actions by the officials, and unavailability of alternative livelihoods in the forest area. This issue does not have a ready solution, but very important to be worked on.
10. In normal circumstances, giving land rights to forest dwellers through IFR and CFR will be the political cause. It is more so because land for the same is relatively easy to get, given it is already codified as a law. Also, even after IFR or CFR there is no fundamental change that happens in the forest, the beneficiaries build the ecosystem around it. So where is the gap? Well, it seems that the answer lies in the wide dispersion of the forest community and the associated challenges of galvanizing them as a vote base. And add to this the traditional marginalization of the community, where very little effort has been made to make them aware of their rights, and demand the same.
I know this scratches the surface, nevertheless, it is a bunch of realities to be aware of and think about.