SOUMITRA GHOSH is with the National Forum of Forest Peoples and Forest Workers. This post came as a response to Rohini Hensman’s recent post Getting Indian Democracy Right

Is India a democracy? This question has to be seen in context of the complex and plural character of the present Indian state and several other state like formations(for instance the Maoist People’s Sarkar in the liberated zones, the parallel administration run by the Nagas, areas and times where and when the extreme hegemony of one or the other mainstream political party or the feudal landlords substitutes the process of law—and others). There is also the fallacy whether India is a nation-state in the way other nation-states(for instance, China, USA, England) are, and whether the concept of a monolithic Western-type at all democracy applies in the Indian context (and if so, how far?). However, the question Rohini tries to raise deals more perhaps with our ethical constructs of democratic values than the character of the Indian state. If it is the former we enter the realm of ethical a-priories, which I too share: democracy is something that as a political process tolerates pluralism and leaves some space for minority dissents against dominant majorities. To take the democracy debate further and to include the Indian state in it will mean a different discourse, in which I am not going for the time being.

The issue is that the Indian state has imposed an absolutely uncalled for war upon a large section of this country’s citizens, on the pretext that the Maoists are attacking the state. The military and political imperatives of this war include a negation of the plural in the war zones and beyond(as it happens in many other wars). Because the war zones are Indian forests, all other forms of political mobilisations in forests and which have got nothing to do with this war are under attack, if they refuse to take sides. Though the attack comes mostly from the state, the Maoists also contribute; their ‘revolutionary violence’ often comes as an imposition. Also, the Maoist party, like all other ‘vanguard’ parties do not politically believe in pluralism: either you are for the revolution or against it. The truth is what the Party says.

Partly as a result of the war-like situation and partly because the media is more fond of violence than anything else, the state-Maoist conflict occupies the centerstage of our attention, the so-called civil society and the urban middle class knows hardly anything about the numerous other struggles in Indian forests, infinitely more complex and politically and culturally more diverse.

These struggles, contrary to the archaic ‘left’ perceptions, have their own histories and politics. The concept of the belligerent ‘adivasi’ is rooted in this histories and politics. No space here for a detailed discussion on the issue—I’ll just mention a few of them to show that the state-Maoist binary doesn’t explain the struggles at all.

The forest struggles and the movement organisations involved in those struggles can be broadly classified into two groups: struggles against development projects and evictions caused by those, and struggles against the forest department. These are just extremely broad categories: there is a perfect range of other issues that overlap and sometimes dominate(like ethnicity, caste, wage, support price for NTFPs etc).

Of the two, anti-development struggles are better known; and I am not going into them(though the two processes often have close organisational and political links). A long and historic lineage of people’s struggles against state control of forests(manifest through the continued existence of the neo-feudal fiefdom of the forest department) that resulted in a historic Forest Rights Act continues into the present, and let us take a very brief look into how today’s non-Maoist movements in Indian forests are politically situated.

I quote brokenly from a forthcoming paper(sorry for the long quote, but to understand the dynamics of the struggles in Indian forests, the context discussion can not be avoided)

“…the more the forests and forest communities were vandalised, the political response to it became stronger. New and immensely popular forest movements emerged as a direct response as much to increasing state invention in forests as continued denial of rights.
….
From the late 1980s onwards, non-party political mobilisations started to emerge as the most popular form of people’s protests against development-induced as well as ‘conservation’ evictions. These included well-known and long-drawn movements like the Narmada Bachao Andolan in Central India, the Koel-Karo movement in Jharkhand, and the Tehri movement in Garhwal. …Today, the strong anti-mining and anti-industry tribal and peasant movements in Kashipur, Niyamgiri, Kalinganagar and Posco of Orissa all have a ‘forest’ component, though the centrality of forest issues in terms of movement priority varies. In Niyamgiri for instance, the destruction of the forest landscape as a result of the proposed bauxite mining will devastate the Dongria Kondh, a typical forest community. In the anti-Posco movement against the South Korean steel giant Posco company’s proposed steel project, the forest issue is being used more strategically.

…In the Shiwalik forests adjoining the Rajaji National Park, forest villagers engaged in bhabar grass collection and ban(a kind of rope)-making organised themselves into GKMSS(Ghad Kshetra Majdoor Sangharsh Samitee), demanding unrestricted and free access to the grass and better prices for ban, as the park authority banned the practice of Bhabar collection…

….the forest-dependent people in vast tracts of Orissa . reclaimed the ‘government’ forests, and initiated a people’s variety of community forest management. The practice is now fairly old, and some forests have 50-year old (some yet more) village forest protection committees. A similar movement happened in Maharashtra’s Menda Lekha, which has since then earned the distinction of being the first ‘officially’ declared community forest under the 2006 Forest Rights Act.

…the people’s movements in Indian forests had plural yet overlapping contexts. The movements, however, remained localized and regional: in spite of the political overtones and the essentially political nature of in many cases large mobilisations, they could not pose a organisationally consistent—and political—challenge to the forest department’s continued hegemony over forests.

… Throughout the 1990s and the following decade, the various non-party movements in Indian forests tried to come together on political, organisational and strategic issues, demanding restoration of people’s rights over forests. There were two distinct ‘national’ strands that ran more or less simultaneously, though sometimes with common actors. The first one was Bharat Jan Andolan, which re-interpreted the much earlier Gandhian vision of Gram Swaraj, and talked about self-sufficient village communities in full control of not only ‘jangal’ (forests), but also ‘jal’(water) and ‘jameen’(land). The movement led to the formation of the ‘National Front for Tribal Self Rule’, and an intense campaign in the tribal areas of the country that ultimately resulted in the historic PESA (Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas) act in 1996.

…. the concept of the ‘forest worker’ locked in a class struggle against a combination of a coercive state and various feudal and capitalist forces has come up as a political alternative to the concept of the ‘adivasi’ or the ‘indigenous’.

…The ‘forest worker’ concept emerged mainly from the GKMSS-led movement. The movement which predominantly comprised dalit forest villagers and ‘ban’ workers had from the very beginning been organised as a left-leaning workers movement, though it was fighting for a classical ‘forest right’ that evolved as a tenurial right as well as a custom. The process that led to the ‘formal’ formation of the National Forum of Forest People and Forest Worker(NFFPFW) in 2002 later however accommodated the ‘adivasi’ concept, without forsaking the concept of class struggle. .

NFFPFW, though organisationally as lose a process as the Bharat Jan Andolan, tried to lend to the Indian forest movements an articulated political context and ‘objective’. Pointing out to the inherent political commonness among the ongoing movements against the oppression of the Indian state, feudal forces and the capital, it called for a broad based democratic alliance of the all working people in the country, including dalits and ‘adivasis’.

This overt emphasis on class struggle and alliance-building however alienated many organisations working in forests. NFFPFW’s alleged ‘inaction’ in resisting the ongoing evictions as well as the notion that it was not an ‘adivasi’ process led to the emergence of CSD or the Campaign for Survival of Dignity…

The aggressive and strategic lobbying by CSD, and a prolonged nationwide movement in which NFFPFW and several other movement formations like the Lok Sangharsh Morcha and NAA(National Adivasi Alliance) also participated, led to the greatest mobilisation on forest rights that the country had ever seen. It resulted in the passage of the Scheduled Tribe and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers(Recognition of Forest Rights Act), better known as the FRA or the Forest Rights Act.

….Both CSD and NFFPFW accused the Government of sabotaging the Act, and called upon the people to prepare for a long struggle for the implementation of it, because the movements had no faith in the Government’s munificence and political will.

… the FRA.. admit(s)…that adivasis and other forest dwellers of India have been historically deprived of their just rights, it provides for official recognition of those rights. These include rights over homestead and cultivable lands, ownership over all NTFP, fishing rights and community rights like grazing. Besides, the act… empowers village institutions like the Gram Sabha to govern their own community forests as well as all other forests. The community institutions can stop any project in forests if it harms their cultural or natural heritage, the act says, and they can also take steps to protect and conserve forests, wildlife and biodiversity.

Subsequent events during the two years(the FRA came into force in 1st January 2008) since the FRA was notified, however, bore out the apprehensions of the movements. The Governmental implementation of the Act turned into a hasty, politically motivated, and undemocratic exercise where people had no role. The forest department opposed it tooth and nail everywhere, and wherever possible..

…the movements in Indian forests now have two definite trends….one represented by the ..CPI(Maoist) party …the other is a lose, often ill-organised, and largely localised ensemble of diverse people’s movements. CSD, NFFPFW and other groups like the Lok Sangharsh Morcha represent this trend. Despite their inherently astructured and localized nature, there is a growing tendency among the movements to take a more politically articulate position on issues like how to engage with an anti-people and increasingly military state, …

Despite their criticism of the FRA, the non-party social movements now focus more on its implementation than anything else; significant mobilisations are happening all over the country as people try to assert their control over forests. New militant struggles are emerging in Assam, Jharkhand, Orissa, Northern Bengal, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, and also to some extent in Tamilnadu and …all of which view the implementation of the FRA more as a long-drawn people’s struggle for the control of forests rather than a bureaucratic process, and the centuries-old hegemony of the forest bureaucracy is under real attack. Both CSD and NFFPFW emphasize the necessity of using the FRA and its provisions for community governance of forests in present and future struggles; the FRA can be a key weapon in the battle against the aggression of capital in forest areas, they point out. The movements are also campaigning against climate change mitigation schemes like the REDD(Reduction of Emission through Deforestation and Degradation of forests) and REDD plus, which they see as a capitalist scheme to privatise people’s forests.

It seems that the forest movements in India are going through a process of political and organisational consolidation, despite challenges from a non-responsive and repressive state and serious organisational shortcomings. The struggle for control of forests is also being increasingly seen as a struggle for a better and more equitable social order, though differences and ambiguities on political perceptions and key organisational strategy issues on intra-movement and inter-movement levels persist”.

Because the above observations are excerpts, sometimes they may seem a little arbitrary. I’ll try to clarify later if needed…this post is already too long!