The process towards the implementation of ‘The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006’ is entering its crucial stage. In the present political environment, charged with an electoral context, the government is bound to notify the draft rules. The original co-sponsors – majority of tribal organisations and rights groups, and left and progressive political parties – are in agreement about mobilising support for its implementation. However, similar to the time of declaration and implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), the apathy and the opposition towards these rights and entitlements of the poor, is becoming shrill and shady. Special Economic Zones (SEZs) can be notified in no time in this country, but the millions of tribals and forest dwellers have to wait endlessly for anything that goes in their favour. There is a cost of action and there is a cost of inaction. The coalition government has to decide which is more expensive!

It is ironical that since the time of the discussion and the passing of the Forest Rights Act, conflicts in the forest areas have not subsided, and forced evictions and displacements continue to be a regular occurring. And this is unfolding at a time when after more than two decades of work within the UN system, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted in September 2007, with India speaking in favour of it. The declaration was adopted by a vote of 143 to four with 11 abstentions. The vote was called by Australia, New Zealand and the US. Only Canada joined these three states in voting against it. The declaration recognizes the rights of indigenous people to the land, territories and natural resources that are critical to their way of life. It affirms that the rights of indigenous people are not separate from, or less than, the rights of others; they are an integral and indispensable part of a human rights system, dedicated to the rights of all. The declaration presents the Indian central and state governments a historic opportunity, which they must seize by adopting it, and entering into a new relationship with the tribal people, based on a principled commitment to the protection of their human rights. Through the Forest Rights Act, the government can work in good faith to implement their domestic law, and practice this vitally important, and long overdue, human rights instrument.

There was a positive thinking behind bringing this Act: to ‘undo the historical injustice towards the forest dwelling scheduled tribes and other traditional forest dwellers’. It was passed in the winter session of 2006 in the Lok Sabha. Though the Act is a diluted version of the recommended draft proposed by the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC), it still has various positive features like individual and community rights to tenure, right to access, right to ownership over forests, right to in situ rehabilitation, including alternative land in cases of illegal eviction or displacement. However, positive thinking without ‘affirmative’ action ends in zero results. It is imperative that the actual implementation of the Act be as constructive in tone as possible, so as to facilitate future work of holding the states to a commitment to implement the Act in letter and spirit.

In the immediate context of the Act as well, there are many concerns: First, the draft rule circulated by the government should end its discrimination towards non-ST populations, who are mainly tribals (non-scheduled in many states) and pastoral communities (OBCs and Muslims) living in forest areas, who are being asked to submit 75 years of proof of residence. Second, the powers of Gram Sabhas should not be diluted in the rules, which seems inevitable at present because the Act privileges the Forest Department over them. Further, there are no mechanisms at present to protect the tribals from the Forest Department utilising the situation to create divisions among the communities. Third, the government’s ceaseless sanctions of SEZs and other industrial projects in the tribal heartland are bound to conflict with the bundle of rights conferred by the Act. This will force the tribals into confrontation with the state, the companies, or any other force that the government may deem to use. Additionally, in most of the tribal areas, free and prior consent of the people has not been sought for various projects. Compensations have not been fair; nor has rehabilitation by the state been legally assured in a comprehensive and substantive manner. Fourth, tribal leaders are constantly being beaten, detained and rearrested. Their organisations and activists are under tremendous pressure under the so-called security and anti-terror laws that will come in conflict with the implementation of the Forest Rights Act.

It appears that resembling each of the policy arenas in India today, two nations are at war in the forest areas as well, marking the space of people and profit. The fight is on between forest dwellers and private-public companies, between land acquisitions and land struggles, between displacement and development. Governments’ policies on forests and tribals are a bunch of contradictions. For example, the situation in around 95 national parks and 500 wildlife sanctuaries, covering a little more than 22 per cent of the total forest cover in the country, reveals that the forest dwellers have no rights here whatsoever, be it grazing, cultivation, non timber forest produce (NTFP) collection, or homestead. And the forest department has proposed 74 and 217 more national parks and wildlife sanctuaries respectively. The World Bank supported ‘Public Private Partnership’ in our forests is promoting industrial wood for pulp and paper industry, in the name of conservation of old growth forests and regeneration of new growth forests. The government and its wings, for example the Ministry of Environment and Forests, are also working as collaborators in promoting plantations for the pulp and paper industry. In this war of the two nations, people must win over profit. However, the power lies in the hands of our government to choose – what do they want most to be: facilitators of people’s interests or corporate ones?

Forests face new threats in the name of ‘global resources’ and ‘ecosystem services’. These cover an entire range of services offered by any natural ecosystem, including non-tangible and abstract values such as carbon-absorption potential and aesthetic values. Forests have become marketable products in entirety. Though the policy talks about community benefits and safeguarding community interests, this new environment can make way for legislative and policy changes at the national level that can irreparably damage the shared resource base of indigenous communities.

If tribals in India have suffered from historic injustices as a result of their colonisation and dispossession of their lands, territories and resources, thus preventing them from exercising, in particular, their right to development in accordance with their own needs and interests, then there should be no delay in establishing their rights, affirmed in the present Act. There is an urgent need in the country to respect and promote the inherent rights of indigenous people, especially over their lands, territories and resources, which derive from their political, economic and social structures and from their cultures, histories, philosophies and spiritual traditions. An honest implementation of the Act will contribute towards demilitarisation of lands and territories of tribal people, towards peace, development and economic and social progress, and a deeper understanding and friendly relations within the nation. Instead of finding impediments in implementing the Act or being unnecessarily fearful of it, we must welcome the fact that the tribals are organising themselves for political, economic, social and cultural enhancement. The Act is a step in the right direction to end various forms of discrimination and oppression, in whatever form or wherever they occur.

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