India’s Adivasis are in the news, on account of
the growth of Maoist organisations and rapidly
escalating conflict and repression in
Chhattisgarh.

Meanwhile, the report of a joint parliamentary
committee (JPC) on a Bill for forest rights is a
subject of controversy. Not many seem to have
noticed that the two issues are intertwined.

The links have been ignored since last year, when
there was an uproar over the Scheduled Tribes
(Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill, 2005. Its
opponents dubbed it as being the "most dangerous
act of any Indian government since 1947“and”privatising a national resource“.”Tribal welfare" can be ensured in better ways,
we were told. The sound and fury masked the basic
reality of this Bill and the situation in India’s
forests.

Why are forest dwellers and tribals the poorest
and most marginalised people in this country? The
usual reply is that “development” has not reached
them. There are many areas where “development” -
roads, schools, hospitals - has not reached
ordinary people.

Yet those areas do not suffer from the kind of
bondage, destitution and inhuman exploitation
synonymous with tribal and forest areas.

Forest dwellers are not poor by accident. They
have been systematically deprived of their lands,
homes and livelihoods by official policy for more
than a century. This policy was initially
justified as necessary for Britain’s timber
needs, then for the industrial needs of the
“nation”, and finally for conservation.

Whatever the justification, the policy has
remained the same: Bring all forests under
centralised control of policing agencies,
particularly the forest department, and take over
the lands and rights of people who live there.

The Indian Forest Act, 1927, which is still
India’s main forest law, embodied this
philosophy. Any area can be declared a government
forest, after which a “settlement officer” is to
survey and “settle” the rights of people in that
area.

Anyone familiar with India’s social reality can
predict what happened. These settlement officers
either did nothing or only recorded the rights of
those who were powerful. The result is that
millions of people, mostly tribals, found
themselves declared “encroachers” in their own
homes.

This happened time and again. For instance, 82
per cent of Madhya Pradesh’s forest blocks were
never surveyed, and 40 per cent of Orissa’s
“reserved forests” were “deemed” to be so without
surveys.

The millions of people who lived in or depended
on these forests entered a twilight zone, where
their lives and homes were declared illegal. At
any time, the forest guards could evict these
people, imprison them or fine them.

The result again is unsurprising - massive
corruption, extortion and even sexual abuse of
forest dwellers by the new zamindars, namely the
forest department. The issue, in short, is not
about “handing out” forests. Nor is it about
development alone. It is about justice.

It is about the right of forest dwellers to live
as equal citizens and not as a permanent
underclass, surviving at the mercy of the forest
department. The Maoist movement is closely linked
to the injustice inherent in the present
situation.

The Bill ostensibly aims to address this
injustice. But it establishes some grand
principles and then pulls the rug out from under
its own feet.

It includes arbitrary and severe restrictions on
the rights recognised, allows bureaucrats to
retain the power to decide on rights and,
finally, a requirement that communities must
protect the forest without any authority to do
so. This is a return to the mentality that forest
dwellers are trespassers.

The JPC’s recommendations in this regard are a
breath of fresh air. The report is premised on
the need for democratic and transparent
institutions, where respect for people’s rights
and for protection of the forest become the twin
principles of a new system of forest management.

The UPA government would do well to listen to the
JPC. Rather than treat people as enemies, the
government ought to treat them as citizens.