Check closely from where
all the support for the Tribal Bill is coming. Tribal rights activists and a
section of credible environmentalists and ecologists are backing it. Their
conviction that the tribals still form an integral part of the forest ecosystem
doesn’t consider the impact of population boom and shrinking forest resources.
One can debate the merits of their assertions but not their sincerity.
Unfortunately, the same is not true of the more influential political and
bureaucratic lobbies pushing the Bill.
In the political din, one cannot escape the obvious. The BJP feels it is
slowing gaining control over the tribal vote banks in many parts of India and
must penetrate further. The Congress is wary of losing traditional command and
is keen to woo back the once-committed voters. Other parties can’t afford to
see the issue in perspective either. If it’s between the future of our forest
resources and the immediate appeasement of the tribals, no Indian needs to guess
which way the political clock swings. Tribals vote. Period. And when a handful
of Parliamentarians dare point out that the forests may not have any electoral
value but their well-being is integral to our future water and food security,
they are ridiculed as upper caste elites who are anyway supposed to be
anti-tribal.
Then you have the bureaucracy. The Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 and the
Forest (Conservation) Act 1980 have been the eyesore of our babudom. They regret
that these laws have largely insulated our forest reserves from bureaucratic
tinkering. Earlier, MoEF officials themselves tried to float the Biodiversity
Act 2000 as an umbrella Act but failed when finally the national parks and the
sanctuaries were kept outside its purview. It would be a kind of poetic justice
that they are now fighting another ministry to save the same forests.
We must accept that there is no black and white situation at hand. Tribal or
non-tribal, forest-dwellers are now surviving at the mercy of the sarkari ground
staff. Almost everywhere, they need to routinely bribe them to ensure their
livelihood. In Ranthambhore, it’s a few hundred rupees per season per person
for collecting wood and grass. In the northern boundaries of Corbett, Gujjars
pay in milk to have their livestock grazing inside the forests. A number of
forest officials confided in me how their ground staff demanded sexual favours
from women of such communities for access to minor forest produce. Forget all
these, how can we justify forcing the tribals to pay the entire cost of
conservation? If our forest resources are saved, the benefits reach every
Indian. So it’s our national responsibility to look after those who lose their
traditional livelihood in the process.
But giving them back their rights to forests is a retrograde and dangerous
solution. Considering the Bill addresses all the concerns of conservation, who
will ensure everything goes by the letter of the law once the tribals get their
right to hold forest land? It is reported that the Tribal Affairs Ministry —
through state-level monitoring committees sought in the Bill — wants control
of the tribal areas which more or less overlap the forest map of India. While
the Wildlife Act and the Conservation Act will be applicable to the tribals, any
forest official on hot pursuit can face humiliation as there are provisions in
the Tribal Act for a penalty of up to Rs 5,000 and 30-day imprisonment for
government officials found guilty of violating tribal rights. Duality of control
will anyway lead to conflict between the Ministry of Tribal Affairs and the
Ministry of Environment and Forests.
There is also the danger of ‘‘Mandalisation’’ of the situation. The
draft Bill has the potential to create flash points all over India. Except for
some rare pockets, tribals are part of mixed populations that share similar
lifestyles of marginal land farming, flash and burn, pastoral sustenance etc.
Non-beneficiaries in the same population will fight the tribals tooth and nail.
And already we have certain activists advocating similar rights for the
Scheduled Caste population. Imagine the chaos waiting to unfold.
Today, only the tribals are far too many to survive in our remaining forests.
Critics offer scary arithmetic: 80 million tribals roughly make for 20 million
nuclear families and the provision for 2.5 hectare per family amounts to 50
million hectare forest land. This is about 74 per cent of the existing million
hectare forest cover. Given the growth rate, they argue, it will take just
another generation to reach saturation point. Certain grey areas in the draft
Bill over ancestral rights apart, senior officials in the Tribal Affairs
Ministry claim that no outsider will be brought in and settled in the forests
and only existing forest-dwellers will be given rights to the forest land. Even
so, it’s enormous economic value we are talking about. In a number of ongoing
cases, the SC is in the process of fixing the present net value of forest land
which will be somewhere between Rs 5 lakh to Rs 7 lakh per hectare. We must
understand the value of our mega-diversity.
With no land use policy in place since Independence, it’s not surprising
that our natural resources management has been largely messed up. Forests are no
exception. We may blame our ministries but there was not much political will at
work either. Just because we have not been able to find a dignified space for
the tribals in the larger paradigm of conservation, we can’t suddenly leave
crores of them to subsist on vanishing jungles, which, if nurtured and utilised
scientifically, could yield enough economic benefits to sustain them for
generations to come.
We have enough models working well in different pockets of India. There is no
dearth of ground expertise and experience either. What we need is better
policies and management that not only protect our forests from all interference
but also tap its economic potential, which, in turn, adequately addresses the
livelihood concerns of the tribals. Discouraging direct subsistence on forest
resources is not denying the tribals their rights. The forests belong to them.
But their future will be secure only if they have an option to live on the
interest and leave the capital untouched. Provided, of course, our policy-makers
take the trouble of thinking beyond populist, ad-hoc Bills.
