Dinner with the tiger

 

 

The woods. Stuff of legend like Robin Hood. Scene of amazing myth like the monumental Lord of the Rings. Home to some of India’s fondest heroes like Lord Ram and the Pandavas who spent great years in the jungle. And site of the country’s most serious current battle – with steely Naxals who’ve made forests their base. Clearly, there’s something about the woods that affects men. For 100 years, the status of people quaintly called ‘Forest Dwelling Scheduled Tribes’ has been triggering debate (an estimated four million people live in India’s forests). The union government has now added to it by allowing tribals and non-tribals living in forests, up to 2005, rights to land and other things. This adds 25 years, a whole generation, to the previous cut-off date of 1980.

One other important clause of the Scheduled Tribes (Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill, cleared by the Union Cabinet last week, is that each family will get 2.5 hectares. In effect, the government has incorporated three important amendments from the Bill’s earlier avatar, shifting the cut-off date, fixing the quantum of land and altering the status of non-tribal people living in forest areas. This is huge.

Eight percent of India’s population (1,102,101,890 at 3.10pm on 12 December 2006) is tribal. Not all of them live in forests. About 20% of India’s land is estimated to be forested. Of this land, studies suggest that the new Bill’s provisions mean more than 50 million hectares may need to be allotted to just tribals. And there are the non-tribals to worry about as well.

So, many people didn’t want this Bill. The Ministry of Environment and Forests objected bitterly, arguing that it would rapidly reduce India’s forest cover and harm the country’s biodiversity. The Ministry of Tribal Affairs didn’t want it saying non-tribals will dictate the life of tribals. The tiger lobby didn’t want it saying more people in the forests means less tigers. So why did the government do it? Says the background note to the Bill: “It is well known that Forest Dwelling Scheduled Tribes are residing on their ancestral lands and their habitat for generations and there exists a spatial relationship between them and the biological resources in India. Tribal people are inseparable with the ecosystem, including wildlife, and cannot survive in isolation. Their traditional rights on forest lands were, however, not adequately recognised and recorded in the consolidation of state forests during the colonial period as well as in Independent India, though the Indian Forest Act 1927 had provided for the determination of rights”. This denial of almost 100 years has now been addressed, says the government. Adds Ramdas Athavale, Lok Sabha member and President of the Republican Party of India, a Dalit outfit, “The new law would be good for Scheduled Tribes and others. Hunting will help in the development of tribals. It will not lead to destruction of forests. In fact, to strike a balance between the tribals and forests, forest land should be increased. The land which is not suitable for agriculture should be converted to forests by planting more trees”.

The green lobby has a forceful counter. Says noted environmentalist Mike Pandey, “It’s our responsibility to protect forest cover but that spirit is lacking. Make laws and amend them if needed, but before taking any decision we must keep in mind that a single wrong decision will be a step towards destroying the ecosystem. But who cares?” The crux of the debate is this. The right to allot land, to be registered jointly in the name of a male of the family and his spouse, has been vested with the Gram Sabha of the village concerned (a Gram Sabha means all adult residents of a village). To balance this, the Gram Sabha has been empowered to punish wildlife crimes and any action that leads to the destruction of forests. People opposed to the Bill say that literacy levels in villages are abysmal. So, a Gram Sabha can neither understand the rules nor can it be strong enough to act against culprits. In effect, it is ready for manipulation at the hands of traders and the mafia. The pro-tribal lobby says that tribals need land to sustain their culture, and giving them their rights is an attempt to undo the injustice. The argument here is that tribals know their surroundings well and are capable of protecting their flora and fauna. Basically, the Bill’s proposals aim to remove the tag of encroachers on tribals and legally entitle them to land. In a curious irony, all parties, including the ministries of Tribal Affairs and Environment and Forests (which objected to it) and the ministries of Panchayati Raj, and Law, will process the Bill. Predictably there’s little opposition, as yet. The Communist Party of India (Marxist), the principal ally of the United Progressive Alliance government, said the Bill, is an important step in protecting the rights of the tribals and traditional forest dwellers.

The real fight, actually, is on the ‘tribal or tiger’ debate. Three percent of forest land is required for tigers to live peacefully in India. The conflict begins when either of them move into each other’s territory. Like it happened in Rajasthan’s Sariska National Park, where tigers vanished. Valmik Thapar, one of India’s leading tiger conservationists, has voiced his frustration with the Bill often. According to Thapar, a tiger needs 50 cow-sized animals to survive and the tiger will lose out if it is forced among people.

Caught between the environmentalists and the tiger lobby is Sunita Narain, who headed the Prime Minister’s task force on tigers and whose inputs went into framing the Tribal Bill as well. She edits Down To Earth magazine and in an editorial sometime ago, she said the Tribal Bill was not about settling a debate of wildlife versus people. Narain said the Bill was about ‘whether we shall give people what is theirs to hold and manage’. “We can still build a green future, this time through the active involvement of people in growing and harvesting trees or in building livelihoods from the enormously rich minor forest produce of the land. No wooly-headed environmentalism is needed here”, she wrote. Tribals have been living in forests for generations, living modestly on honey, herbs, fruits and basic farming. They are usually at the mercy of forest guards who regularly extort bribes. Soon enough, the tribals reach a stage where they can’t pay. This is when owners of commercial plantations and land grabbers move in, usually after bribing the guards, and take over large chunks of land. The Bill is therefore, overdue. It removes the criminal tag of encroachers from tribals and also aims to protect forest resources. Should the Bill be passed, it should also lead to a proper survey of India’s forests. Astonishing as it may seem, 82% of Madhya Pradesh’s forest blocks have never been surveyed. Reports from Orissa say 40% of the state’s reserved forests were deemed so without survey. The result: the forest department records 7.66 million hectares more area than the revenue department. India has no clue if the 7 million-plus hectares, estimated to be an area twice the size of Kerala, are forests or not. We should know. Fast.