The Extent and Nature of Individual Tribal Land Alienation in Fifth Schedule States in India
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The Extent and Nature of Individual Tribal Land Alienation in Fifth Schedule States in India A study undertaken by Centre for Equity Studies, New Delhi, India. March 2016 Supported by Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR) New Delhi, India File No: RPSPRO/40/2013-14/RPS Lead Authors: Mohd. Ali Faraz, Rajanya Bose, Sajjad Hassan and Sandeep Ghusale Contributing Author: Radhika Jha Lead Researchers (Centre for Equity Studies): Mohd. Ali Faraz, Rajanya Bose and Sandeep Ghusale Contributing Researchers (Centre for Equity Studies): Radhika Jha, Shikha Sethia and Vipul Kumar Partner Organisations: Chhattisgarh: Jan Chetna Manch Gujarat: Dalit Adivasi Ekta Morcha Jharkhand: Vikas Sahyog Kendra Madhya Pradesh: Sahyog Maharashtra: Adivasi Ekta Parishad Odisha: Ekta NGO Rajasthan: Aastha Foundation Tripura: Indrajit Debnath Acknowledgements We would like to thank Mr. Harsh Mander for his support, guidance and encouragement through the duration of the study. His knowledge of laws and policy related to land as well as the vulnerabilities of tribal communities was instrumental in shaping this report. We are very grateful to Dr. Praveen Jha, Dr. N.C. Saxena and Annie Namala for helping conceptualise and develop the methodology for the study. A special vote of thanks is also due to Dr. Umi Daniel, for his valuable insights on our preliminary findings at a review workshop. Our research would not been possible without the cooperation of the collectors in each district and officials working with the state governments in various capacities, who facilitated our access to government data. We are especially grateful to Rajesh Tripathi and Savita Rath, for their advice and friendship and for serving as a source of inspiration. Warm thanks to team-members at CES: Kinjal Sampat and Rhea John gave crucial feedback and editorial support to early versions of chapters; Amod Shah, Saba Sharma, Shikha Sethia and Vipul Kumar advised us during the early stages of the study; special thanks are due to Eslamun Jahana, Sunny Tomar, Sridevi Rao for patiently processing vast amounts of data; all interns who have worked in processing and analysing the data; Anamika Lahiri and Gitanjali Prasad helped with copy-editing chapters and Milanth Gautham worked on style, presentation and formatting of the report. We are indebted to Revathy Vishwanath at ICSSR, without whom, this study would not have been possible. Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1 39 Chhattisgarh Chapter 2 67 Rajasthan Chapter 3 94 Maharashtra Chapter 4 123 Odisha Chapter 5 147 Madhya Pradesh Chapter 6 174 Andhra Pradesh Chapter 7 205 Jharkhand Chapter 8 235 Gujarat Chapter 9 255 Tripura Policy Implications 265 Annexures 269 1 Introduction This is a report on the situation of tribal land alienation in India. Recent literature and public policy debates have focused attention on development- induced land alienation – large tracts of adivasi land acquired by state or negotiated by private parties, for setting up development projects, with no or very modest returns for adivasi, individually and collectively, and mostly, adverse after-effects. What has been missed in this, admittedly important debate, is the significant alienation that adivasis suffer across the country due to factors not necessarily directly related to large development projects and acquisitions of land related to those. Adivasi land is alienated also in small trickles, one family at a time, through the actions and inactions of state agents, lawyers, real estate brokers and land-hungry rich, acting in collusion, through individual purchases and acquisitions, mostly illegal and unrecorded, to deprive the often poverty-stricken adivasis of what is her source, not just of sustenance but also identity and cultural moorings. Indeed, even the stories behind the relatively minuscule number of ‘legal’transactions between adivasis and non-adivasis, are in fact, studies in fraud and deceit, with adivasis being roundly shortchanged at every step. ‘Non-development’induced adivasi land alienation has been a common, often un-recorded and under-reported phenomenon, for generations.The cumulative scale of these, is equal if not wider, than that of development-induced ones. This report, based on detailed field work in Fifth Schedule statesof the country – perhaps the first such, given the scale - is about the causes, the routes and processes of the phenomenon of “non development-induced” adivasi land alienation, providing an up-to- date picture of the goings on. The intentions of the study are strongly, policy-relevance. The issue of adivasi land alienation has engaged policy community for long, resulting in adoption of instruments - including some in colonial times – against the crisis, mostly state laws either proscribing transfers or providing checks against rampant take over of adivasi land by outsiders/non-adivasis. But poor results led, later, to individual states adopting measures to restore alienated land – thus seeking to undo failures of enforcement of the laws enacted earlier. Clearly, poor traction on those too – the outcome presumably, of the weaknesses of the laws, their poor enforcement by a complicit state system, and a parallel set of contradictory laws - has influenced more recent legislations, stronger sounding state laws, and specifically PESA 1996, seeking to 2 empower local adivasi communities themselves, to act to prevent alienation and better manage local resources, including land. The findings of this study suggest that the failures of the past are being repeated yet again, with these new-generation laws, in how we seek to operationalise them, relying, for most part, on an unrepresentative revenue and tribal development bureaucracy, that have little accountability to tribal interests, in fact, being rather hostile. The findings seem also to suggest that laws, however well meaning and sophisticated – especially given the adverse context - can at best be a necessary condition for preventing land alienation, never sufficient. And that, perhaps laws need to be seen together with education, organization and mobilization by and of adivasis, around land and other rights, as a package of interventions to direct at protecting adivasi rights on land. This missing link – of adivasi agency and empowerment - needs to be squared in public policy debate, for the range of laws and state codes to have any chance of delivering on their promise. This is our core finding. The rest of this introductory chapter is structured as follows: section 2 provides a quick snapshot of tribes in India, followed by that on tribal land and the extent of tribal land alienation. Sec. 3 presents the state of the art on tribal land alienation, trying to unpack its causes and processes, based on a rapid review of literature. Sec. 4 poses the research question, outlines the scope of the study, and summarises the set up of the research, last about methodology and field work conducted, including tools used. Sec. 5 catalogues the findings of the research by state, summarizing those that appear in individual state chapters to follow. In section 6, we recap key findings, and conclude with proposing recommendations for reforms (in sec 7), separately for state and civil society entities. This introductory chapter is followed by eight stand-alone state chapters, reporting detailed findings of the research, for each Fifth Schedule state (except Himachal Pradesh), followed by that from Tripura, the lone schedule 6 state included in the research, all on extent and processes of land alienation in each, as well as working of laws and any popular movements to respond to the crisis, drawing on historical analysis. This is the core of the report. 1.2 Tribes, tribal land, and tribal land alienation According to the 2011 census, India’s Scheduled Tribe population stands at 10.4 crore persons, making up 8.6% of the total population (relative to 8.2% in 2001). The states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh account for more than two-thirds of India’s tribal population. As Fig. 1 shows, adivasis 3 are mostly concentrated in rural areas. The Constitution recognises 461 ethnic groups as STs, but according to one estimate the figure could be as high as 635, which would imply that these figures are significantly understated. (Stilden, 2006).Adivasis differ considerably from one another in language, culture, myths and beliefsystem. India has the second largest tribal/indigenous peoples’ population anywhere in the world, next only to the continent of Africa. Figure 1 - Percentage of Scheduled Tribes to Total Population Source: Census 2011 Tribal land alienation In common with tribal regions the world over, the breakdown of the relative isolation oftribal areas in the name of development and progress has been accompanied by a continuous process by which adivasis have been systematically displaced from their traditional habitats and livelihoods, with little or no rehabilitation. One study estimated that the number of displaced adivasis till 1990, was in the region of 85 lakhs, of whom 65% are yet to be rehabilitated.(Government of India, 2008b, ch 7)Others put the figure of adivasis displaced at close to 2 crores.(Mander, 2002).As a result of this pattern of development, large sections of adivasi populations have been pauperized, either by being pushed back into the most barren and marginal fields or reduced from owner-gatherers to wage-earners or encroachers. Landlessness and insecure forms of tenancy are most common among adivasis. Official figures indicate that in 2004-05, the majority of SThouseholds (70%) were either landless or had less than 1 acre of land.1 Moreover, the share of ST households with small and marginal land holdings has been steadily increasing over time (see Table 1). Studies have also shown that land under ownership of 1NSSO, Report No. 516, Employment and Unemployment Situation among Social Groups in India 4 adivasis is often informally occupied by non-adivasis and on average, of lower quality, compared to land held by other backward classes.