The Forest Rights Act, notified in January,
is sure to come across stiff challenges.
On January 8, a week after the Scheduled Tribes and Traditional Forest
Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 – the Forest Rights
Act (FRA) in short – was notified, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wrote
to all Chief Ministers seeking their cooperation and commitment to
ensure its effective implementation.
In the letter, he qualified the Act as a piece of “landmark legislation
in independent India that seeks to provide rights over land in their
occupation to forest-dwelling Scheduled Tribes and other traditional
forest-dwellers who have been residing there for generations but whose
rights could not be recorded.”
He further pointed out that at the operational level the Act required
State governments to constitute committees in order to process the
claims of tribal and forest-dwelling communities as well as the cases
that may arise out of them, leading to judicious distribution of land
rights. The Prime Minister urged the State governments to ensure wide
publicity to the provisions of the Act and set up, at the earliest,
monitoring committees at the State and district levels as also
committees at the lower levels so that the work could commence soon. He
added that while implementing the FRA adequate protection should be
ensured to critical wildlife habitats (CWHs), as provided for in
Section 4 of the Act.
The Prime Minister’s letter could superficially be perceived as a
customary follow-up to a piece of “landmark legislation”; as an
exhortation to Ministers to understand its significance and pursue it
earnestly. However, given the way in which it came up through the
political, administrative and legislative processes over the past three
years – such an analysis would be inadequate. This is especially so
when the Prime Minister’s letter referred to the concept of CWHs, which
generated considerable controversy as a “delaying tactic” with respect
to the implementation of the FRA.
The concept of ensuring the protection of CWHs had even been
interpreted by a section of forest officials and “conservationist
fundamentalists” as a carte blanche to evict summarily and unilaterally
the tribal population from areas they deemed critical to the sustenance
of any form of wildlife. In this context, the Prime Minister’s letter,
its tone and content, is perceived as symbolic of the very trajectory
of the law.
A widely held apprehension among sections of forest rights activists is
that the invocation of the CWH clause could well become an extension of
the objections raised by various anti-FRA groups over the past two
years, the period for which the Bill remained under consideration.
CWHs are supposed to be notified within existing national parks and
wildlife sanctuaries for the purpose of keeping them inviolate. Once
notified, these areas cannot be used for any other purpose. Such
classification, feel many forest rights activists, can lead to new
displacement of forest dwellers .
In a more immediate context, forest rights activists claim that the
vested interests arraigned against the FRA have made frantic efforts to
evict large sections of the tribal and forest-dwelling population from
their habitats. According Priya and Shankar Gopalakrishnan of the
Campaign for Survival and Dignity (CSD), a loose federation of forest
rights groups across the country, these eviction attempts have been
reported since September last year from a number of States, including
Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh.
Efforts in this direction have apparently intensified in many States
close to the notification of the FRA, with Madhya Pradesh reporting one
of the most brutal instances.
Opposition
The opposition to the FRA advanced by “conservationist
fundamentalists”, sections of the forest bureaucracy, and paper and
pulp companies contained arguments that covered vast thematic areas.
They ranged from suggestions that the enactment of the FRA would sound
the death-knell for the tiger population in the country; that it would
curtail drastically the supply of pulp for industry; and that the law
would culminate in the irrational distribution of forest land to tribal
families.
Several non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and lobbyists advanced
these objections and it was no secret that many of them had the backing
of some of the most influential political families in the country.
However, most of these objections were fought back through a collective
campaign by forest rights activists and various political parties for
nearly two years. It was this campaign that resulted in the formation
of a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC), which in many ways cleared
the way for the FRA.
The introduction to the final Act states that it is meant to undo
historical injustices meted out to forest-dwelling populations in not
recognising their rights to land and resources. It also asserts that
the rights of these communities include responsibilities for the
sustainable use of forests and conservation of biodiversity.
The FRA recognises the right to homestead, to cultivable and grazing
land and to non-timber forest produce. It accepts that there are
legitimate non-tribal forest-dwellers, and acknowledges the right to
rehabilitation in case of past forcible displacement. It prescribes
that all future notification of inviolate conservation zones and
curtailment of rights in protected areas shall require people’s consent.
Significantly, the FRA points out that the rights of forest-dwellers
include conservation of forests and biodiversity, and admits that
people’s involvement will strengthen conservation efforts.
Additionally, it prescribes that no diversion of forest land shall
happen without the consent of the gram sabhas in any region.
The FRA also contains provisions that facilitate the treatment of
forest land as a community forest resource and allow forest-dwellers to
act decisively in conserving forest resources.
There are also clauses that militate against the genuine rights of
large segments of forest-dwellers. One of them is the stipulation that
only families that have been residing in forest areas for three
generations (close to 75 years) shall qualify as “other traditional
forest dwellers” and only those “primarily residing in” forest areas
can claim rights under the Act.
In the background of all these factors, forest rights campaigners,
including organisations such as the CSD and political leaders such as
Brinda Karat, Polit Bureau member of the Communist Party of India
(Marxist), had qualified the FRA as a significant step forward but one
that fell short of advancing the cause of forest-dwellers
comprehensively (see story on the legal dimensions of the law).
According to members of the CSD, such as the Jharkhand-based Jan
Andolan activist George Monipally, forest rights campaigners have
understood this context very well and are proceeding on the premise
that they would have to take proactive steps to get the FRA
implemented. “Hence there are several areas that we need to address,
starting from issues arising out of establishing genuine
forest-dwellers as per the Act to specifying deadlines and evolving
acceptable local parameters for the work of various committees and gram
sabhas in recording and accepting claims, besides resolving disputes
that may emanate from among the forest-dwelling communities
themselves,” said George.
Other issues identified by Priya and Shankar Gopalakrishnan included
maintaining a constant vigil against the machinations of sections of
the bureaucracy and the Forest Department, its cronies in the timber
mafia, and large industrial and business groups involved in
forest-based corporate ventures, including mining.
Thakur Prasad, social activist and researcher on tribal affairs and
displacement, said the drive to acquire forcibly both fertile
agricultural land and forest land for special economic zones (SEZs) for
big private companies was an area of concern vis-a-vis the
implementation of the FRA. According to him, granting of mining leases
to private companies in forest areas have increased in recent months.
He is of the view that forest movements have to oppose proactively this
agenda of selling people’s lives and resources to capital, especially
because the FRA, conceptually, provides communities a political role in
forest governance. Prasad said the FRA was an important weapon to
challenge both the present forest authority and forces of capital,
which had moved into forests in a big way.
Writing in the February 4 issue of People’s Democracy, the CPI(M)
weekly, Brinda Karat listed the steps that had to be taken immediately
to advance the implementation of the FRA. They included the initiation
of verification procedures without the submission of claims to the
Forest Committee in appropriate forms, defining the boundaries of
forest and revenue areas, and the enumeration of evidence for community
forest rights. She suggested that these were important tasks that had
to be addressed and facilitated by not only government officials but
also social and political activists.
But, as advocates of forest rights are aware, these are not easy tasks.
And the tasks of the advocates of the FRA are bound to get more
complicated on account of the legal challenges that are coming their
way. Already two Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petitions have been
filed against the FRA in the Madras (Madurai Bench) and Andhra Pradesh
High Courts.
The Madurai petition, filed by T.N.S. Murugadoss Theerthapathi,
grandson of Diwan Bagadur Murugadoss Theerthapathi, a former zamindar
of Singampatti in Tirunelveli district, argued that the FRA was
repugnant to all other laws aimed at protecting forests and preserving
wildlife and hence ultra vires the Constitution. A Division Bench
adjourned the matter to the second week of February pending directions
from the Central government.
The petition said the Act provided for vesting in an individual or
family or community the rights of up to four hectares of land,
conversion of forest villages into revenue villages, and diversion of
forest land for civic requirements. Such provisions, it argued, would
be against the national forest policy, which envisages at least
one-third of the total land area under forest cover. The petition also
questioned the power given to gram sabhas to distribute land and argued
that this would lead to organised land grab by commercial interests.
Clearly, the problems associated with the FRA and its implementation
are far from over. As Priya and Shankar Gopalakrishnan, say, only the
spirit of the struggle of the past two years, which made the passage
and notification of the FRA a reality, can help forest-dwellers and
advocates of their rights tide over the troubles. They are aware that
no government is going to hand over forest rights to people on a
platter. And the activists are determined to push the institutions and
themselves to the limit.
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