Fight against the Maoists: Are we doing it right?

2013

The May 25 Maoist attack on the Congress convoy in Chhattisgarh’s Sukma district, that killed 28 and injured another 30, brought the focus back on the raging insurgency in the tribal heartland of India. It jolted the political establishments, both at the centre and state, to renew their resolve to fight it with greater intensity. But this was not happening for the first time. It has become a routine after every major Maoist strike, and yet, there is not even a hint of a rethink on the strategies. Nobody seems to ask some of the obvious questions: Are we doing it right? Can we do it differently or attempt different things for better result? After all, the Maoists are mounting much more devastating attacks and inflicting a higher number of casualties now. And in spite of the isolated instances of success, like in Saranda or Jangalmahal for example, there is little to think that we are succeeding in our objective of either winning away the tribal from the Maoists or denting the capacity of the Maoists to strike big in any significant way.

The festering insurgency is extracting a very high cost. The union home ministry data shows, the Maoists have killed 5,772 civilians and 2,065 security personnel between 2001 and 2012; destroyed hundreds of schools, aanganwadi centres and mobile towers.  Add to that the killings of civilians in questionable encounters (in Bijapur’s Sarakiguda in June 2012 and Edasmeta on May 17 this year), and destruction of properties (in revenge attack on three villages in Dantewada following the 2010 massacre of 76 CRPF personnel, and during the security forces’ first foray into the Abujhmad area in March 2012). Also, add thousands of crore of rupees being pumped in, in the name of development of the tribal belt by the centre (for example, this year Chhattisgarh has been given Rs 2,400 crore for MGNREGS work alone, and Rs 1,600 crore for PMGSY in last two years, according to rural development minister Jairam Ramesh) and the states (annual allocation for a Bastar district is to the tune of Rs 735 crore).

Not to forget the plight of hundreds of thousands of people, a large number of whom are tribals, trapped in the conflict zone (spanning nearly 200 districts), their future prospects and potential to rise above their miserable living conditions held hostage to the conflict between the Maoists and the state.

In such a situation, it is time to ask some tough questions and explore the possibility of doing it differently. But before that a quick glance at what is happening now.

Current approach: What happened immediately after the May 25 will illustrate how the response has become mechanical.

Two days after the incident, the centre rushed two battalions of central paramilitary forces to Chhattisgarh, to reinforce the 28 already deployed there and declared that joint operations would be launched in Chhattisgarh. It also advised the insurgency-hit states to develop their own Greyhound forces, on the line of Andhra Pradesh. In Raipur, chief minister Raman Singh promised to intensify the fight and ruled out any possibility of peace talks.

There were all-party meets too, at the centre and in the state. There was even a chief ministers’ conference on internal security in New Delhi where the issue was discussed at some length. Addressing the chief ministers on June 5, the Prime minister repeated his government’s counter-insurgency strategy: “I must point out here that the challenge of Naxalism has received our serious attention for quite some time now. We have adopted a two-pronged strategy to deal with the challenge: conducting proactive and sustained operations against Maoist extremists; and, addressing development and governance issues in Left Wing Extremism affected areas.”

Talking about the future course, he said: “I must also emphasize here that the two-pronged strategy that we have followed so far needs to be strengthened and pursued with rigour.”

The Prime minister repeated himself at the all-party meet that followed (June 10). The all-party meet endorsed his formulation in its resolution and said: “We also urge the State Governments to draw upon their own resources as well as the resources provided by the Central Government to re-establish the rule of law and accelerate development activities in the affected States.”

Clearly, the approach is: More of the same – hot-pursuit of the Maoists and aggressive development – very much in the same old-fashioned way even though it hasn’t proved very effective.

Developmental approach: First, the development part. Three examples will demonstrate what is wrong with our current approach and how it can be redesigned for better results: Saranda in Jharkhand, Mendha-Lekha in Maharashtra and Abujhmad in Chhattisgarh – all Maoist-hit areas.

After the security forces secured the Saranda forests in late-2011, rural development minister Jairam Ramesh stepped in and launched a Saranda Development Plan (SDP) with much fanfare. The plan was to rapidly develop the area with a view to bring it back to the mainstream. He released about Rs 250 crore meant for various welfare programmes of his ministry, like MGNREGS, PMGSY, Indira Awas Yojana, electrification (solar lanterns) etc, at one go, for 56 villages of Manoharpur block in West Singhbhum district. My former colleague Sarthak Ray of Governance Now lived in the area for six months in 2012 to track the progress of SDP. His verdict: “It has failed because the locals are questioning the very purpose of the development. They are asking why there is so much concentration on building roads. They think the roads are being built to allow private mining companies to operate in the area.”

They are not wrong. In spite of protest from Ramesh, the centre and the Jharkhand government have recently allowed the Jindal and Rungta groups to mine iron ore there. Earlier, only SAIL was working in the area and had been given additional block for mining after the Saranda forest was cleared off the Maoists.

Under SDP, there was a plan to build 10 integrated development centres (IDCs) to provide various government services. Until June 2013, only one IDC building had come up (in Digha), without any sign of services being provided at any time soon. Similarly, only the first installment for the Indira Awas Yojana houses has been given so far, not the rest.

Contrast this with the example of Mendha-Lekha, a tribal village in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra. This village of about 400 people was the first one in the country to get ownership over bamboo (by way of transit pass that allowed them to trade) in April 2011 under the Forest Rights Act. Until then, bamboo was the property of the forest department even though PESA had granted ownership rights over the minor forest produce (MFP) to the gram sabha of the scheduled (v) area way back in mid 1990s.

In 2012, the villagers harvested and auctioned their bamboo for the first time, earning Rs 1 crore in the process. After paying generously for the labour, the village saved Rs 50 lakh and put it in a fixed deposit account. It is now planning to use a part of this saving for better management of their 1800-hectare community forest (Rs 25 lakh) and on health and education (Rs 12.5 lakh each). This year, they are going for e-tendering in October and expect to earn more than Rs 1 crore.

In 2011, the planning commission had estimated that ownership of MFP (bamboo, tendu, apta etc) alone would bring Rs 50,000 crore of direct income for the tribals. In spite of the Mendha-Lekha example, how many tribal villages in the country have actually got the ownership rights to trade in MFPs? Maharashtra is the only one to have allowed about a dozen villages to trade in bamboo and another one-and-half dozen in tendu. No such report has come from the rest of 8 states having scheduled V areas. The SDP has no component dealing with FRA or ownership of MFPs.

The implementation of the Forest Rights Act is poor too. All claims should have been settled by December 2010, as per the central government’s directive. Here are a few examples about the status of its implementation. Jharkhand has received only 42,003 claims and granted 15,296 rights (the state has provided no details of the individual and community right claims or settlement). Maharashtra has given 101,356 individual rights (out of 340, 927 claims) and 1,869 community rights (out of 5,048 claims). Odisha has given 314,420 individual (out of 518,075 claims) and 1,046 community rights (out of 4,605 claims). (All figures valid as on May 31, 2013 and sourced from the union tribal welfare ministry website.)

Chhattisgarh declared a 100% claim settlement in early 2010. Later in the year, a joint committee was set up by the tribal welfare and environment and forests ministries (headed by retired bureaucrat NC Saxena). The committed submitted a report saying that there was large scale “wrongful rejections” and “blatant irregularities”.  It also said that in large parts of the Maoist-hit Bastar region the process of settlement had not even begun. The tribal welfare ministry data shows, as on May 2013, Chhattisgarh has granted 214,668 individual (of 487,332 claims) and 775 (of 4,736 claims) forest rights.

A noticeable feature of the FRA implementation is a re3latively smaller number community right claims and settlements. My own visits to the tribal areas of Ganjam district (Maoist-hit) in Odisha in October 2012 showed why. One the one hand the villagers didn’t know about this right and on the other, the administration had not even initiated a drive to collect and grant such claims. Same was the case in Rayagada district (where Vedanta is trying to mine the Niyamgiri hills for bauxite) two years earlier.

Imagine, how dramatically the lives of tribals will transform if they get their forest rights and ownership over MFPs.

Now, Abujhmad. This region, spreading over Bijapur and Narayanpur district of Chhattisgarh and Gadchiroli of Maharashtra (nearly 4,000 sq km in area), has long been held to be the Maoists’ main base, where its military headquarters is located and from where they run their “Jantana sarkar”. But when the security forces entered the Chhattisgarh part of the region in March 2012 for the first time, they were shocked at what they found. Tusha Mittal of Tehelka magazine, who entered the region two months later, described her experience in these words:

“It is a measure of both the complexity and the pathos of the Maoist-tribal crisis in India – and the inadequate narrative that has built up around it – that when Operation Hakka actually got off the ground, and the troops entered the great unknown, what they found in Abujhmad was not the military HQ of a deadly and well-organised insurgency but scraggly villages and forlorn clusters of leaf and bamboo huts. Their biggest recovery seems to have been an inkjet printer….” (Tehelka, May 2012)

It is a sad comment indeed on the state of governance that Abujhmad has had no land or revenue survey, no policing and little presence of government for more than six decades after independence. In fact, it was opened to the outsiders only in mid-2009, having been shut for nearly 30 years and required a special permission of the collector to enter the area.

A planning commission report of 2000 identified 5 major problems of tribal belt –(a) land alienation, (b) indebtedness, (c) relation with forests, government monopoly over MFPs, and non-implementation of the Forest Rights Act, 2006, (d)  ineffective implementation of Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act of 1996 (PESA, 1996) for Schedule V areas and (e) involuntary displacement due to development projects and lack of proper rehabilitation. These issues continue to be grossly neglected even today.

None of these issues have been addressed meaningfully.

Security approach: As far as the security aspect goes, the May 25 incident is evidence enough of an ad hoc approach, complacency and a clear disconnect among various forces battling the Maoists. It was a huge security failure – the basic drill of avoiding movement in a large convoy in a conflict zone, with so many high-value individuals, taking the same route twice; sanitization the route by checking for mines and making physical deployment of force, police escorts etc were all violated – as well as an intelligence failure (a significant Maoists movement, consisting of about 200, went unnoticed and unchallenged). There are police stations about 10 km apart on either side of the ambush site, along with a company of CRPF each (at Tongpal and Darbha) and yet, the security forces reached the site only the next day. Though the exact number of personal security guards travelling with the convoy is not known, their number is reported to be close to 30 (Mahendra Karma, one of the Congress leaders killed in the incident, had Z-category security). These security men were no match even in terms of arms and ammunitions. Though the ambush continued for two hours, no help came their way.

The CRPF has now submitted its own inquiry report to the union home ministry (National Investigation Agency is conducting a full-fledged inquiry, whose report is awaited), giving itself a clean chit even while admitting that a good 12 km between Tongpal and Darbha (a 23 km stretch) had not been sanitized at all. The ambush site falls in this stretch. The report says only 5 km each from Tongpal and Darbha was sanitized by the road opening parties. It passed the blame on to the state police saying that it does only what it is asked to by the police. (Indian Express, June 28, 2013) Surely, the CRPF is not supposed to act dumb.

In the given scenario, pumping more paramilitary forces in, who are ill-trained (CRPF started training in jungle warfare only after losing 76 personnel in 2010 Maoist ambush) and ill-equipped, both physically and mentally, is no answer. There may be comfort in number, but that hardly pays. This is reflected in the way the forces are getting killed by the Maoists and also, in the way the security forces are killing innocent villagers (CRPF killed villagers for two successive years in Bijapur, in 2012, 2013, during the ‘beej’ festival) and burning their huts (in Dantewada and Abujhmad) in the name of anti-Maoist operations.

More than 100,000 central forces are now deployed in anti-Maoist operations (CRPF alone has sent 85 battalions, that is 85,000 personnel) in the central India, supported by UAVs, helicopters and the states’ security paraphernalia. But they have no intelligence wing worth talking about or a good coordination with the local police force. Often the security forces got into trouble by launching operations with vague intelligence inputs. The condition of policing is appalling. Soon after May 25 incident, Chhattisgarh chief minister told an English news channel that the difference between two police stations in Bastar was 100 km. Needless to say, inducting more force and adopting a hot-pursuit policy is plain foolishness in such circumstances. The ground needs to be prepared first, with better policing and credible intelligence. Also needed is training for the paramilitary forces in the nature of their engagement with the civilians. They need to know that they are essentially “protectors” of people, not an assaulting army.

Ajai Sahni, executive director of Institute of Conflict Management, has this to say about the over-all security approach: “Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been repeating, incessantly and vacuously, since the early months of his first tenure commencing May 2004, that the Maoists constitute the greatest internal security challenge to the country. And yet, nearly a decade later, there is no evidence of any coherence of assessment, let alone strategy, within the national and state security establishments; no recognition of the most fundamental reality that, unless the intelligence and policing apparatus throughout the country is enormously strengthened, professionalised, modernized, and made autonomous of the corrupt and perverse control of political parties and personalities, no crime – leave alone a significant and widespread insurgency – can be brought under control. As has been emphasised again and again, unless the crisis of capacities and capabilities is addressed, Darbha will only be a momentary link in a long and interminable chain of insurgent excesses. (South Asia Intelligence Review, May 27)

There is little to argue against this. But shockingly, very little attention has been paid towards these matters. After the 2012 Sarakiguda fake encounter, the union home ministry attempted to rewrite the standard operating procedure (SoP) for the security forces but it had no component on educating and sensitizing the security forces towards their primary duty as protectors of the people.

Reclaiming livelihood rights over MFPs

2013
And how it is transforming tribals’ lives

The tribal belt of central India is one of the poorest, most hunger-prone and underdeveloped regions. The UNDP-Oxford University Report of 2011 put it in the global context thus: “The multidimensional poverty index (MPI) analysis reveals the persistence of very acute poverty in some of these states. There are more MPI poor people in eight Indian states alone (421 million in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal) than in the 26 poorest African countries combined (410 million). The adivasis in the above mentioned states have the highest Multidimensional Poverty Index or MPI (0.482), almost the same as Mozambique, and a headcount (the percentage of people who are MPI poor) of 81%…”.

Yet, their livelihood issue remains largely unaddressed and ignored, especially their access to the forests on which they largely depend. A 2011 Planning Commission working group paper for the 12th five year plan pointed out that about 275 million forest dwellers were dependent on minor forest produce (MFP). It said MFP contributed about 20% to 40% of their annual income, and critical subsistence during the lean seasons, particularly to the primitive tribal groups. The Government of India tried to address this issue by giving the tribals ownership right over the MFPs through the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act of 1996 (or PESA) and reinforced it through the Forest Rights Act of 2006 (meant to undo the ‘historic injustices’ as its statement of object and reasons stated). But various reports have shown how implementation of both remains grossly unsatisfactory (1). There is no official or unofficial estimate to show how many Gram Sabhas have actually got the right to harvest and sell the MFPs over which they have the ownership rights.

All we known are isolated instances like Mendha-Lekha village in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli, which was the first one in the country to actually get the right to harvest and trade an MFP – bamboo – in April 2011. And what happened next is hard to believe. A year later in 2012, this village of 100 households harvested and auctioned bamboo for Rs 1 crore! After paying generously for the labour, the village saved Rs 50 lakh and put it in a fixed deposit account. It is now planning to use a part of this saving for better management of their 1800-hectare community forest (Rs 25 lakh) and on health and education (Rs 12.5 lakh each). Imagine what a dramatic change this will bring about in their lives. This year, the villagers are going for e-tendering in October and expect to earn even more money.

In a similar development, 18 gram panchayats spreading over Gadchiroli and Amravati districts of Maharashtra have harvested and sold tendu for Rs 1.3 crore this year (to the state’s Tribal Development Corporation). In Odisha’s Narigaon in Korapur district, the villagers harvested tendu worth Rs 12 lakh but found no buyer as the traders ganged up against them. They are now seeking the state government’s help. In Jamguda in Kalahandi district of Osisha, who got their transit pass to trade bamboo this March (again thanks to personal intervention of Jairam Ramesh), the villagers have harvested and sold bamboo worth Rs 1 lakh.

Similar developments are taking place in isolated pockets of the country about which much needs to be learnt and documented. For instance, the Madhya Pradesh government announced minimum support price (MSP) for lack and chironji in July 2011 – at Rs 120 per kg for lac cultivated on kusum trees, Rs 100 per kg for lac cultivated on palash trees and Rs 80 for one kg of achar-guthli which bears chironji – but how this has impacted the tribals is not very widely known.

The ownership over MFPs, if actually passed on to the tribals, has the potential to make a paradigm shift in the tribals’ fortunes. In 2011, the Planning Commission estimated that this ownership alone would mean a direct income of Rs 50,000 crore for the tribals every year! Its report on MFPs of the same year said: “NTFPs have a tremendous potential to create large scale employment opportunity thereby helping in reducing poverty and increasing empowerment of particularly tribal and poor people of the poorest and backward districts of the country.”

Towards this goal, the Union Cabinet decided on August 2 to start a central scheme to provide MSP for 12 MFPs, in nine states having Scheduled Areas. These 12 MFPs are: tendu, bamboo, karanj, mahuwa seed, sal leaf, sal seed, lac, chironjee, wild honey, myrobalan, tamarind, and gums (gum karaya).

—————————————————————————————————-

(1)Mani Shankar Aiyar-led Expert Committee report of April 2013 and Ajay Dandekar and Chitrangada Choudhury report of  2010 about implementation of PESA and Citizens’ Report 2013 of Kalpavriksh, Vasundhara about implementation of FRA.

Niyamgiri: An assertion of tribal rights

Aug 2013

Something quite extraordinary is happening in Odisha’s Niyamgiri forests these days with far reaching legal and political implications. For the first time, aided by a judicial order, the tribal communities are finding their voices and asserting their rights to say ‘no’ to forcible dispossession of the forests and hills on which their very existence depends. Though laws like PESA and FRA provide adequate protection and seek to undo the “historic injustices” against the tribals, in reality the mineral-rich states in collusion with private companies continue to subvert these, driving the tribals to destitution and, in some cases, to insurgency.

The Niyamgiri saga has been one of treachery and exploitation. Official records, reports and Felix Padel-Samrendra Das’ book “Out of this Earth” throw light on how in the early years money, muscle and official machinery combined to grab land and shortchange the tribals. From fake declarations to misleading claims and denial of rights to the tribals, the administration and Vedanta worked their way through the years until the Supreme Court came in the way. The judicial order has set a powerful precedent by reinforcing the rights of the Gram Sabhas in the Scheduled Areas “to safeguard and preserve the traditions and customs of the STs and other forest dwellers, their cultural identity, community resources etc.” Though the order highlights the religious aspect of their rights more, other rights under the FRA is abysmal too: Only 176 individual rights (of 216 claims) and three community rights (of 6 claims) have been granted in Rayagada and Kalahandi districts that the Niyamgiri hills straddle. These are not even a fraction of what the large population of forest dwellers is entitled to.

This court-aided referendum will have a telling impact not only on the multinational giant Vedanta’s operations in Odisha but also, on similar projects in and outside the state. Several bauxite mining projects, for example, are going on in the adjoining Kashipur block. Irrigation projects, steel and thermal power plants etc have mushroomed in Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand where the tribals have been denied their rights and say.

It also has the potential to bring about a real and genuine decentralization in the decision making process with the Gram Sabhas playing the deciding role. To that extent, a growth model based solely on handing over natural resources cheaply to the private entities is bound to see a paradigm shift in approach.

DK: Back of the Beyond

Governance Now, Jan 23, 2010

Maoists have chosen their base wisely. Dandakaranya is a blackhole that the civilisation has passed by

Dandakaranya (or DK as bureaucrats and Maoists prefer to call it) lives up to the reputation it acquired in the days of the Ramayana—remote and forsaken. Then it was home to demons who spread terror all around, forcing the meditating rishis to seek Lord Rama’s help during his exile (which he did only to come to grief; demon king Ravana kidnapped his consort Sita). Now it is the Maoist heartland. If you are chasing the leftwing extremists, you end up in DK.

It is tough to go there. One major railways line passes through Raipur but the Bastar region (which forms the largest chunk of DK) is virtually untouched by the Railways. A minor line runs from Visakhapatnam to Bailadila mines in Dantewada. National highways have a better presence than the railways, but only just. The state has no transport service. So, the only way to reach Jagdalpur, divisional headquarters of Bastar, is to take a back-breaking journey of seven hours in a private bus. Even the 'luxury' buses don’t have push-back seats and ACs. The only consolation is that if one takes an overnight bus, there are sleepers, just like in the trains, above the rickety seats. Some have only sleepers and no chairs. Mosquitoes hum in your ears, as if singing lullabies to put you into sleep.

It is even tougher to move around in Bastar. The civilization exists only in dusty little district towns or faraway block and tehsil headquarters. Very few private buses connect them. There are private vehicles that can be hired but the choices are limited. You can move out of Jagdalpur in day time, but not far enough not to return before sundown. In Dantewada, two hours drive from Jagdalpur, it is worse. NH 16 that roughly bisects Bastar horizontally and connects Jagdalpur to Bijapur, is motorable for less than half-way through to Geedam in Dantewada. The Border Road Organisation is building the rest of the road for close to a decade but hasn’t progressed much because of constant attacks from the Maoists. Now under the CRPF presence the highway is dug up. Everyone advises you not to travel further.

Don’t ignore the advice. I did, travelling nearly 35 km of dug up road to reach Abujhmar-- Maoists’ main base in Bastar and spread over Narainpur and Bijapur districts -- only to abandon it because it became too painful for the back. A TI (SHOs are called Town Inspectors in this part of the country) warmed up to show the Salwa Judum camps that dot the road and road building work under security cover, only after surrounding himself with four commandos even in the broad daylight.

Venturing into the interior areas of Dantewada is equally daunting as one finds a few existing roads dug up at every few yards. Some of these have been levelled by the police but not tarred and are thus a virtual death trap as landmines can still be planted without anyone spotting them. There is no traffic, except for an occasional motorcycle rider or a few tribals walking to their destination, home or a weekly haat. There are hardly any villages in the sense you know it. A cluster of four or five huts, separated by miles of jungles, is all you get in the name of a village. (The area SP says it works to the advantage of Maoist militia who can easily melt into the forests and make it difficult for cops to keep a tab on their movement.)

The SP promises to provide a local guide to visit some of the bigger villages around which have pucca buildings (that house schools, hostels and aanganwadis), some of which have been destroyed by the ultras, both to prevent local youths studying beyond the primary level and security forces to set up camps. It turns out that the civilian is a commando carrying a revolver. The local TI says it is just to risky to travel unarmed into the interiors as it is swarmed with the Maoist sympathisers and the dalams.

It also turns out that the driver of the Bolero hired to move around was once a member of a dalam in Bijapur district. He narrates how once he attended a meeting addressed by Ganapathi, general secretary of CPI (Maoist), at the dead of night near his village a couple of years ago and insists that he speaks better English than I do. He also narrates how secret jungle meetings are a great party with dance performances and plenty of chicken and mutton curries.

It is too risky to travel with government officials, especially cops, in Bastar. Cops are risky in Malkangiri, the Orissa district that borders Dantewada and is part of DK, too but not the civil officials. In fact, one is safe with them as they have been co-existing peacefully with the Maoists for close to four decades. (District Collector Dr Nitin Jawale says Malkangiri has been the “resting place” of Maoists who moved around freely, even walking into police stations and sharing meals with the cops. It is only in the last decade that cases of looting armoury and violence were reported.)

No place is safe in Malkangiri, not even the district town. The Maoists had plastered notices threatening to blow up the biggest tribal fair of Orissa held here every year right at the fair ground little over a year ago. The fair ground is bang in the middle of the own and adjoins the Collectorate. The roads are fewer and worse than those in Bastar. The only partially motorable road into the interior areas leads to Chitrakonda (where 36 Greyhound commandos had been mowed down by the Maoists in mid-2008) on the Andhra border. Renting out a vehicle to go to Chitrakonda is a herculean task (no state transport here either). It takes nearly two hours to find one who agrees, but with the condition that we must return Malkangiri before sunset and that he be paid Rs. 1,000, though it is just 60 km away.

Bhubaneswar, the Orissa capital, is 650 km away. The nearest rail-head is at Jaypur in Koraput district (part of the starvation death land), which takes three hours of taxi drive. From there, if you miss the train, it takes 17 hours by bus through the heart of Orissa to reach the capital city. Only those on the Moon can rival the road that takes you from Malkangiri to Bhubaneswar.

Forest Rights and Wrongs

A ghost Oped that wasn't published...Aug 2013
(now that public hearing for Mahan Coal Ltd is scheduled for next Monday...)


History will never forgive us if we let rights of the tribals continue to be rigged in favour of a chosen few

The enactment of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act of 2006 – or simply, the Forest Rights Act (FRA) – has been hailed as a milestone in the history of empowerment of tribals and other forest-dwelling communities in the country. This legislation was needed to correct the historical injustice done to those who have been living in the forests for generations but whose rights could not be recorded earlier, and to provide for a framework for granting the rights so vested. However, it is lamentable that the landmark legislation has failed to benefit a majority of those communities it intends to serve even after a lapse of more than six years. This goes against our professed adherence to the rule of law.

In fact, the Forest Rights Act is being observed more in its breach. That is one of the reasons why the union government constituted a high-level committee (HLC) on August 14, 2013, with a mandate to prepare a position paper on the socio-economic conditions and suggest remedial measures for the development of these communities in furtherance to our commitment to inclusive growth. I have often brought violations of FRA to the notice of various state governments from time to time. The latest one to come to my notice is regarding the rights of the tribals of Mahan villages in Singrauli district of Madhya Pradesh, where 967.65 hectare of forest land is proposed to be given for miningcoal. In 2006, the Ministry of Coal had allocated Mahan coal-block for captive use of Mahan Coal Limited, a joint venture of Essar and Hindalco, to meet the requirement of their proposed power plants – 1200 MW plant by Essar and 650 MW plant by Hindalco.

The process of settling the rights under FRA remains inadequate and incomplete in the area. Not a single “community forest right” has been granted in the entire Singrauli district where there are a large number of proposed forest land diversions for non-forest use. The forests of Mahan are one of the oldest and largest Sal forests of Asia. TheMahan coal-block houses a sizeable tribal population, which includes Kahairwar, Panike, Kol, Baiga, Gond and Agaria who are all dependent on the Mahan forests for their livelihood.
According to 2001 census, there are 14,190 people from 14 villages who are dependent on these forests. The villages include Jamghadi, Budher, Sugga, Lamidha, Devri, Bandha, Tenduah, Pidharwa, Karmatola, Ammelia, Suhira, Bandhaura and Semuah. The tribals number 5,650, which makes it a substantial portion of the population. In fact, Sugga has 95 percent, Pidharwa 64 percent, Budher 63 percent and Jamghari 57 percent of tribal population.

These villages scout and collect seasonal minor forest produce (MFP) such as mahua, tendu, karanj, chaar, firewood for cooking and many others for their survival. These MFPs are essentially sold through local contractors and are a very significant source of their livelihood.

The Mahan coal-block has been given environment clearance (Dec 23, 2008) and Stage-I (or “in-principle”) forest clearance (Oct 30, 2012), but not the Stage –II (or final) forest clearance, after which the mining activities can begin. The “in-principle” forest clearance comes with 36 conditions, one of which is a mandatory implementation of FRA. As per the MoEF’s “binding guideline” of August 3, 2009, the “application for diversion under the Forest Conservation Act would be considered only after all due process contained in the Scheduled Tribe and Other Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, have been fully and satisfactorily completed”. In spite of this, the state government and the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) have turned a deaf ear to the pleas of the tribal and non-tribal communities living in the region and are using coercion and fraud to achieve their end. There seems a strong nexus between the company and state authorities which is leading to a large scale violation of forest rights.

The aggrieved villagers met me recently and apprised me of the ground realities. I was told that on August 15, 2012, the villagers of Ammelia and Suhira came together at their respective Gram Sabhas to pass a resolution on their “community forest rights”, which was scuttled by the “goons” of Mahan Coal Limited along with the state administration representatives. The villagers submitted a written complaint to the Collector on August 16, 2012, asking for a “free and fair” Gram Sabha and strict action against the culprits. None has been done.

On the contrary, the administration held a special Gram Sabha on FRA on March 6, 2013 in Ammelia village, which was attended by 184 people. I am told that on the same evening the area Tehsildar, along with policemen, went around the village forcing people to sign a resolution. After repeated efforts, when the community members finally manage to get the Gram Sabha resolution through RTI, they were shocked to learn that the resolution not only favoured the company and its mining plans, it carried the signature of 1,1074 people, including some who did not even attend the said Gram Sabha.

In such circumstances, granting Stage-II (or final) forest clearance to the Mahan coal-block will be a complete breach of the legal requirements of FRA and the requirement of the consent of the Gram Sabha before commencing mining activity. My esteemed cabinet colleague Shri Jairam Ramesh had, based on the inputs from Forest Advisory Committee, declined forest clearance to the Mahan coal-block in 2011 when he was in charge of MoEF. He had even offered alternative coal linkages for the two power plants. However, subsequently Essar and Hindalco have managed to wrest Stage-I forest clearance for the Mahan block.

I have brought these facts to the notice of the Chief Minister and Governor of the state and hope corrective measures will be taken before the forest is finally handed over for mining. For the benefit of the state government, and MoEF, I would like to remind that the very Statement of Objects and Reasons of FRA states that the purpose of the legislation is to grant “a secure and inalienable right to those communities whose right to life depends on the right to forests” by giving them a “permanent stake” in the forests.

Let us recall the wise words spoken by our Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh at the conference of Chief Ministers and State Ministers for tribal/social welfare and forest, in New Delhi on November 4, 2009: “The development of our tribal areas and improvement in the economic and social condition of our tribal populations is fundamentally linked to our concept of inclusive growth. We cannot have equitable growth without guaranteeing the legitimate rights of these eventually marginalized and isolated sections of our society. In a broader sense, we need to empower our tribal communities with the means to determine their own destinies, their livelihood, their security and above all their dignity and self-respect as equal citizens of our country, as equal participants in the processes of social and economic development.”

FRA is an effective instrument to achieve that Idea of New India. We can undermine it only at our own peril.