On January 1, 2008, the UPA
Government finally notified one of its most contested legislations: the
Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of
Forest Rights) Act. Since 2005, this law had been fiercely debated,
often over claims that wildlife conservation would be harmed by
recognising forest-dwellers’ rights. That debate continues, with little
evidence of the catastrophe predicted by the law’s opponents. Less well
known is that the Act’s most powerful opponents were within the
government — and their motives had little to do with conservation. Now,
their true interests are being revealed.
Under India’s
forest laws, the Ministry
of Environment and Forests controls all lands classified as ‘forest’.
As such, the Ministry ‘owns’ almost one-quarter of the country's land,
including huge areas used by millions for livelihood and environmental
purposes. These areas were classified as ‘forest’ through legal
procedures, which generally ignored people’s rights. Under the Forest
(Conservation) Act, such forest land can be diverted for ‘non-forest’
use by the Ministry and the Ministry alone; and this decision requires
no public announcement, consultation or accountability. Effectively,
the Ministry's Forest Advisory Committee is India’s most powerful
resource control institution — whose decisions devastate the lives of
millions without informing, consulting or compensating them.
This system has accelerated forest destruction. Between 1980 and 2006,
over 11 lakh hectares of forest land were diverted for non-forest use,
and the rate of diversion between 2001 and 2006 was twice that of the
preceding 20 years. The reason: when ‘development’ means any gigantic
corporate or infrastructure project, the government needs to seize more
land. Forest land is desirable, either for its mineral resources, or
because obtaining it requires only forest clearance from the Ministry,
after which its inhabitants can be evicted as ‘encroachers’. Indeed,
the media debate around ‘just compensation’ rarely notes that
forest-dwellers receive no compensation at all. Take POSCO’s steel
plant in Orissa: 3,000 out of the 4,000 acres POSCO wants are ‘forest’
land, and the thousands of families cultivating it are not even listed
as affected persons in government records.
With such power comes corruption. In November 2007, the Supreme Court’s
Central Empowered Committee (CEC) found “irregularities” in 49 out of
100 forest clearances it examined. In one case, the Ministry cleared a
project before clearance was even applied for by the state. But the
Supreme Court's ongoing intervention has not addressed the issue; its
CEC makes hundreds of decisions a year without any public awareness of
its proceedings, or even of its existence.
For this hyper-centralised system, the Forest Rights Act is a spanner
in the works. The law recognises that India’s forests are not
uninhabited wildernesses, but homelands and livelihood resources. It
bars the removal of forest-dwellers until their rights are recognised,
and covers community rights to minor forest produce, water bodies,
grazing areas — and empowers them to protect and conserve forest
resources. Diverting community forests without the community’s consent
is now simply illegal.
So, faced with a choice between law and corporate profit, what has the
government done? Chosen a time-tested strategy: if you can’t get around
the law, break it. In the POSCO area, an affected gram sabha passed a
resolution in March, warning that diversion without recognition of
rights would be a criminal offence. In May, CPI leader D Raja raised
the matter in a letter to the Prime Minister. Yet, the Central
Government fought for POSCO before the Supreme Court and has urged
Orissa to “expedite” land transfer. The story repeats itself in the
Vedanta mining project, the Polavaram dam and the dams in Sikkim. To
public knowledge, the government has not once refused forest clearance
on the grounds of forest rights. Shorn of colonial legal trappings and
claims to conservation, the nexus of forest management and forest
destruction stands exposed: a profiteering monster, concerned neither
with people nor forests. It is, perhaps, one of India’s biggest mass
crimes, more heinous for the sheer brazenness with which it is being
perpetrated.
