Since it came into effect in January 2008, India has blocked at least one megaproject – Vedanta’s bauxite mine in Orissa – on the grounds that it violated the Forest Rights Act. A massive Posco project in Orissa is also being reconsidered, on the grounds that it may violate the rights of people living off the forest land earmarked to be cleared for the steel plant.
At the same time the Ministry of Tribal Affairs says it has distributed over a million forest land title to tribal and other individuals and groups up to the end of last month.
But forest rights groups aren’t necessarily cheered by these developments. One tribal rights group says the findings of these panels show the law isn’t, in fact, properly being followed or intermediate clearances wouldn’t have been given in the first place.
“These are inquiry committees that in the case of just two projects have found that in both cases the environment ministry broke the law. And there are hundreds of projects like that,” said Shankar Gopalakrishnan, of the Campaign for Survival and Dignity ,which is made up of tribal and forest resident groups from 10 states. “This is not evidence of the environment ministry following the forest law. This is in fact evidence of the opposite.”
A spokeswoman at the Ministry of Environment and Forests said on Tuesday that only environment minister Jairam Ramesh could comment. Mr. Ramesh couldn’t immediately be reached. In the case of Posco, the project was announced in 2005, well before the forest rights legislation was passed. And in the case of the Vedanta project, the key go-ahead came from the Supreme Court in 2008, not from the environment ministry.
The group is also concerned that the vast majority of titles being given out are for individual rights rather than community rights. Many of these concerns were expressed by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, in charge of implementing the law, in a letter to the states earlier this year.
“Only 1.76% of the forest rights claims filed relate to community rights,” the ministry said, urging states to generate more awareness among communities that they could claim these rights.
The Ministry of Tribal Affairs could not immediately be reached for comment.
Community rights can be asserted over land used for grazing or for water. And people in many parts of India still live by collecting what is called “minor forest produce.” With no formal recognition for their right to do this, many who live off the forest pay bribes to local forest officials to do so, Mr. Gopalakrishnan said.
“Where I’m from in Tamil Nadu, adivasis (tribals)pay 100 rupees a day to collect minor forest produce,” he said.
The law’s focus on collective rights, an issue for which one of last year’s Economic Nobel Prizes was awarded. It was meant to usher in a new and more democratic way of managing forests in India, vested in part in the people who still live in them.
But so far it’s working in the way some of its critics had feared, Mr. Gopalakrishnan admitted.
“What it has been reduced to is a land title distribution scheme and even that is not being done well,” he said. “One reason is obstructionism from the forest departments. They lose much more from these rights. They lose a great deal of their ability to extort money.”