Are Tribals Really Benefitting from the Forest Rights Act?
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Are Tribals Really Benefitting From the Forest Rights Act? NC Saxena Over 70% of tribals reside in the central region of India, which though resource-rich, is home to the poorest. They have suffered due to the anti-tribal, market-oriented forest policies which depleted gatherable biomass, or due to displacement from their ancestral lands when these were diverted for other purposes. Tribals generally react to their pauperisation in anomie and endure their exploitation silently. In some areas, however, they have taken to armed insurgency. The middle path of agitational politics by organising bundhs, and putting pressure on the politicians, so successfully adopted by other groups in India, is unknown to them. If I were a tribal leader I would appoint Arvind Kejriwal and Raj Thackeray as my consultants who would teach us the art of confrontational politics! In this context the prime minister's emphasis on faster implementation of the Forest Rights Act, so that historic injustice to the forest dwellers in independent India by wholesale classification of land under tribal possession as state property can be corrected, must be welcomed. However, my visits to the states show that administration is under pressure from the PMO to issue a large number of titles with little emphasis on the quality or linkages with tribal livelihoods. For instance, although counting both individual and community rights, more than 1.5 million titles have been issued covering 3 million hectares, in many places the area settled with the tribals is much less than their occupation; boundaries of the settled area are not demarcated; meetings of the gram sabha are being called at the panchayat level, as in Andhra Pradesh, and not at the hamlet or revenue village level as prescribed in the Act; and rejections are being done without assigning reasons. There has been little effort to improve productivity of assigned land by linking it with soil conservation works and with NREGA funds, or to clarify which department will maintain land records, and how succession would take place in case of death of the right holder. There has been no progress to convert forest villages into revenue villages, despite direction from the Supreme Court. The picture is abysmally dismal when it comes to recognising community forest rights (CFR). Many states do not report area under CFR to the nodal Ministry of Tribal Affairs, or confuse it with development rights which are for diversion of forest lands for construction of a local school or an anganwadi centre. Only five states (Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan and West Bengal) have granted 3,539 CFR titles on 73,104 hectares. This number needs to be compared with what the ministry of environment & forests (MoEF) claims is the area of 22 million hectares under joint forest management with the local communities. So have we achieved merely 0.3% of our goal, or is MoEF exaggerating, as all government departments do? There are glitches even in the limited progress made in some states. Chhattisgarh has not given right of ownership over minor forest products (MFPs) required under 3(1)(b) & 3(1)(c) of FRA on the ground that these rights have already been granted under the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA). This contention is invalid as PESA covers only the scheduled areas, and not the entire state. Similarly Jharkhand has not recognised even a single new right in the last three years on the ground that tribals enjoy similar rights under the local Acts. These states should read section 3 (1)(j) of the Act which clearly includes within CFR all such rights that are recognised under any state law or which are accepted as rights of tribals under any traditional or customary law. Mere granting of ownership over minor forest produce (MFPs) will not improve tribal livelihoods, as overall production of MFPs (except of tendu leaves) has fallen rapidly due to forest department planting species, such as teak (in place of sal), which yield no recurrent product for gathering. Therefore silvicultural practices should be radically changed to boost the production of gatherable biomass, and not merely timber. We need crown-based forestry, and not trunk-based which benefits only markets. Moreover, the important MFPs continue to be 'nationalised', that is, these can be sold only to government agencies. Despite prohibition of charging royalty under FRA, Odisha continues to impose royalty on MFP collection. MFP policies are often dictated by the desire to maximise state revenues, and not welfare of gatherers, who are often women. If farmers are free to sell their wheat and paddy in the open market, why restrict tribals from doing so? States should attract tribals by paying them support price rather than coerce them to sell to government agencies. It must be emphasised that FRA does not ask for wholesale transfer of management to the local communities. Section 3 (1)(i) of the Act gives right to forest dwellers 'to protect, regenerate or conserve or manage any community forest resource' only when they have been traditionally protecting and conserving that resource for sustainable use. While there are excellent examples of local governance, the experience of north-east where most forests are under community control shows that sustainable management cannot always be taken for granted if government totally withdraws from the scene. Therefore, government should continue to provide technical support to the gram sabhas and monitor its sustainable use through encouraging regeneration of forests and ensuring not only higher production of MFPs but price support as provided to farmers so as to rejuvenate tribal economy. (The author, a PhD in forestry from Oxford, chaired a government committee to evaluate FRA in 2010) The Economics Times 09-Aug-2015 .