Tribal affairs ministy attempts to give forest dwellers their due welfare benefits, through a compromise
Photographs: Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava
For long they have lived the life of the forsaken in villages tucked
away in forests. So in November last year when the Union Ministry of
Tribal Affairs (MoTA) introduced guidelines to identify villages in
forests and list them in revenue records, it came as a relief to the
tens of thousands of forest dwellers across the country.
Being part of the revenue record is important for the forest dwellers
because it would enable them to receive benefits from government
welfare schemes that are routed through the revenue department. Forest
rights activists have hailed the guidelines because for the first time
the gram sabha has been empowered to file claims for conversion into
revenue villages under the Forest Rights Act of 2006.
The guidelines, however, state that these villages will be included
in the revenue records without changing the legal status of land from
forest to revenue. In that case, whether the villages would be
administered by the forest department or by the revenue department is
not clear in the guidelines.
These ambiguities and reluctance of the forests department to cede
control over forestland (see ‘Madhya Pradesh refuses to convert forest
villages’) may derail the initiative to bring villages in forests to
mainstream of development.
Trapped in forest
Government records show that 2,474 forest villages exist across the
country; they have a combined population of 250,000. These villages were
established in the pre-Independence era by the forest department as
colonies of labourers for forestry projects.
Madhya Pradesh refuses to convert forest villages
The Madhya Pradesh forest department has refused to
follow the guidelines of the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) to
include forest villages in revenue records. In a note sent to the
ministry in December 2013, the department says there is no provision in
the Forest Rights Act (FRA) for converting forestland into revenue land
or for de-notification of forestland. So forest villages cannot be
converted. It argues that conversion can only be done as per the 1990
guidelines of the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) that
require coordinated efforts from forest, revenue and police departments
to evict the “encroachers” settled on the forestland after 1980.
Despite MoTA’s clarification that FRA supersedes all
previous laws and orders, the forest department maintains that after
“encroachers” are evicted, application will be filed with the Supreme
Court to remove its “stay” imposed in 2000 on the de-notification of
forestland for converting forest villages. Permission will be sought
from MoEF for this under the Forest Conservation Act of 1980. In the
end, it questions the logic of converting forest villages into revenue
ones. “It should be pondered that if the administrative control of
villages converted from the forest to revenue is going to remain with
the forest department itself and the residents of these villages will
not be able to buy or sell land and will only acquire land rights
through transfer of deeds, will it be practically appropriate to convert
these forest villages into revenue villages?” reads the note.
When asked about their opposition to MoTA guidelines, J P
Sharma, Additional Principle Chief Conservator of Forests (land
records), Madhya Pradesh, said, “Guidelines are not above the law. How
can you convert the forest village into a revenue village without
changing legal status of the land? Who is going to administer such
villages then? The conversion cannot happen without the proper legal
procedure prescribed under the Forest Conversation Act.” |
Forest rights activists say the actual number of settlements in
forests could be much more. The forest department does not recognise the
numerous forest colonies that were set up by state governments as a
stop-gap arrangement for people displaced by large development projects.
The department is also yet to recognise all hamlets or settlements of
traditional forest dwellers and tribal communities. For instance, there
are only 20 forest villages in Odisha as per the state government
records. Tushar Dash of Vasundhara, a non-profit in Bhubaneswar, says a
study by his organisation found about 700 villages on the state’s
forestland. “These villages do not figure on government records and
receive no benefits from welfare schemes,” Dash says.
Even the forest villages recognised by the government are not
represented properly, says Shankar Gopalakrishnan of forest rights
group, Campaign for Survival and Dignity. “Forest departments maintain
the records of these forest villages that usually date back several
decades. These records do not reflect what the villages look like now or
their current land use status,” he adds.
Source: Ministry of Tribal AffairsIn
the absence of gram panchayat, people in forest villages fail to
exercise their rights on development schemes. They are at the mercy of
forest officials who are the sole authority for approving welfare and
development schemes, such as laying of roads, electricity cables and
setting up community health centres, says Anil Garg, forest law
researcher in Betul, Madhya Pradesh.
These are the reasons forest rights activists have long been
demanding recognition of villages in forests and shifting their
administration to the revenue department.
Both Central and state governments have made severals efforts in the
past to change the status of forest villages. But they were half-hearted
attempts.
One such attempt was made by the Union Ministry of Environment and
Forests (MoEF) in 1990. But more than regularising forest villages, the
guidelines were aimed at preventing further “encroachment” in forests.
Consider this. The guidelines asked the states to settle the rights of
only those who had been living in forests before 1980 when the Forest
Conservation Act came into force. This makes all those who settled in
forests after 1980 encroachers.
Though the guidelines recommended changing the legal status of the
villages from forestland to revenue land, it allowed the forest
department to retain administrative powers over these villages. The
conversion procedure prescribed by MoEF was also long and cumbersome. It
said that for the conversion of every village, states have to seek
permission under the Forest Conservation Act, which regulates forest
land use. Small wonder that only 511 forest villages in Gujarat, Madhya
Pradesh, Maharashtra and Uttarakhand were converted till 2007. The
guidelines drew flak from tribal groups.
Much hope was pinned on the Forest Rights Act (FRA) that came into
force in 2006. The Act stated that tribals who settled in forests before
2005 had rights over the forestland and mandates that all “forest
villages”, “old habitation”, “un-surveyed” villages have the right of
settlement and conversion into revenue villages. “But FRA faced stiff
opposition from forest departments. As a result, hardly any village has
been converted into revenue village so far,” says Y Giri Rao of
Vasundhara.
Besides, FRA is silent on which department will administer the forest
villages after their status is changed. While policy makers and
activists offered different interpretations, forest department
maintained that conversion could not happen without MoEF’s permission.
Madhya Pradesh, which has the highest number of forest villages—893—said
it requires permission from the Supreme Court because the court in 2000
had stayed denotifying forestland for converting forest villages into
revenue villages. The guidelines of MoTA aim to overcome these hurdles.
Hope pinned on new guidelines
The 2013 guidelines of MoTA clearly state that FRA, being a
subsequent statute, supersedes all preceding laws and court judgements
of prior dates and recognises forest rights “regardless of whether such
rights might be contrary to other laws”. Approval of MoEF is not
required for conversion of forest villages into revenue villages, it
says.
Residents of a village near Dudhwa National Park hope to receive welfare benefits after the village is listed in revenue records
The guidelines recognise district level committees, formed under FRA,
as the final authority for approving the records of forest rights. The
guidelines lay down the procedure for both the identification of forest
villages and their conversion into the revenue ones. It says every gram
panchayat has to prepare a list of forest villages in its vicinity, get
the list approved from gram sabha of each village and submit it to the
sub-divisional and the district-level FRA committees for approval.
Activists hail the guidelines for providing legal recognition to all
settlements in forests. “The good thing about the guidelines is that
they ask for fresh surveys of forest villages. This will ensure the
recognition of settlements that were not surveyed so far,” says Ashish
Kothari of Pune-based non-profit Kalpavriksh that works on communities
rights over forest resources. “It also means recorded forest villages
will be recognised as revenue villages with their current land use and
not as per the old records of the forest departments, which show much
less land in these villages,” Kothari adds.
Gopalakrishnan, however, says MoTA should have ensured that the
status of land in forest villages changes to revenue. “This would have
ensured that the forest department, which has been exploiting forest
dwellers, would not be able to block development schemes and provision
of government facilities in these villages,” he adds.
MoTA sources say the ministry plans to propose a “hybrid category” of
land records for the “revenue villages on forestland”, where the
revenue department can handle the administration. “But how this will
function is a big question. There has already been so much dispute over
huge chunks of land parcels claimed by both the forest and the revenue
departments in states. Such a mechanism might lead to another
inter-departmental conflict,” adds Gopalakrishnan.
A senior official in MoTA admits the new guidelines are a compromise.
“If we had asked for the change of the status of forestland, the
states, instigated by their forest departments, would have never agreed.
Also, there were fears that land alienation of tribals will increase
once mineral-rich forestland is converted to revenue land. Forestland
adds an extra layer of protection,” says the official.
