The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 Analysis

The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, is a key piece of forest legislation passed in India on December 18, 2006. It has also been called the "Forest Rights Act", the "Tribal Rights Act", the "Tribal Bill", and the "Tribal Land Act." The law concerns

Policy Demand:

This bill was created due to demand from the forest dwellers. The main reason they created such a demand because the rights to land and other resources were denied to them over decades because of the forest laws like the Indian Forest Act, 1927; Forest Conservation Act 1980 and the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 in India.

Challenges Faced:

The act had faced stiff opposition from two quarters. First, a few environmentalists advocated management of forest, wildlife and other bio-diversity with complete exclusion of tribal people, local communities or forest dwellers contrary to the Rio Declaration, decisions of the Conference of Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity and recommendations of the United Nations Forum on Forest. The poaching of the tigers in the Sariska sanctuary provided much needed excuse.

Second, the Ministry of Environment and Forest had opposed the Bill on the ground that implementation of the bill will result in the depletion of the country's forest cover by 16 per cent. This is despite the fact that over 60% of the country's forest cover is found in 187 tribal districts where less than 8% of national population lives. This reflects the culture of the tribal peoples to conserve forest. On the other hand, the Ministry of Environment and Forest has diverted 73% (9.81 lakh hectares of forestland) of the total encroached areas for non-forest activities such as industrial.

Opportunities Gained:

This act had the opportunity to give:

1) Community Rights or rights over common property resources of the communities in addition to their individual rights

2) Rights of settlement and conversion of all forest villages, old habitation, unsurveyed villages and other villages in forests into revenue villages

3) Right to protect, regenerate or conserve or manage any community forest resource, which the communities have been traditionally protecting and conserving for sustainable use.

4) Right to intellectual property and traditional knowledge related to biodiversity and cultural diversity

5) Rights of displaced communities

6) Rights over developmental activities

Agenda Setting:

The issue on which they decided to decide was to undo the historical injustices suffered by tribal communities due to the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 (the ‘WPA’) and the Forest Conservation Act 1980 (the ‘FCA’), which identified environmental protection and recognition of the rights of tribal communities as mutually irreconcilable objectives.

Objective of the Act:

This Act is expected to:

- To empower and strengthen the local self governance

- To address the livelihood security of the people, leading to poverty alleviation and pro poor growth

- To address the issues of Conservation and management of the Natural Resources and conservation governance of India.

Policy Issue:

It is a distributive policy as it aims to distribute the forestland and its resources among the forest dwellers.

Policy Model:

This act follows a rational policy model. This can be seen from the fact that it tried to consider the maximal societal gain. They decided to give the rights of forest dwellers (beneficiary) back to them, which is the crucial and fundamental decision. The cost is negligible as compared to benefits since the main cost assumed in this case is deforestation but the statistics show that 60% of India’s forests cover lies in the tribal districts.

Policy Theory:

It is a group theory model. Since, the people (Forest dwellers) whose rights over forestland and other resources were denied came together to get their rights back by making demands on government and other groups like environmentalists, Ministry of Environment and Forest, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, etc.

Policy Statements:

To solve issues which came up on their agenda they decided to take following measures:

1) Area of Forest Land to be distributed

2) Cut-off Date for Recognition of the Right

3) Right of ownership and access to collect, use and dispose of minor forest produce (which includes all non-timber forest produce of plant origin), which has been traditionally collected within or outside village boundaries, even in protected areas

4) The right to protect, regenerate or conserve or manage any community forest resource which communities have been traditionally protecting and conserving for sustainable use

5) The right to access bio-diversity and the community right to intellectual property and traditional knowledge related to forest biodiversity and cultural diversity

6) The right to in situ rehabilitation including alternative land in cases where the Scheduled Tribes (STs) or other traditional forest dwellers have been illegally evicted or displaced from forestland without receiving their legal entitlement to rehabilitation

7) Gram Sabha with the sole authority and responsibility for settling forest rights

8) To setup various committees by the state government to approve or reject the rights proposed by Gram Sabha

9) Establishment of critical wildlife habitats

Policy Output:

The demand letters of the persons demanding the right on forest land are verified by the Forests Right Committee of the respective districts. In addition, collectors were instructed to give top priority to the distribution of Forest Rights letter on the time-based programme.

The Central Government in the Ministry of Environment and Forests will consult expert committees to declare Critical Wildlife Habitats (these are the habitats where human activity will not be allowed.)

Policy Analysis:

The Bill has received some adverse comments. For instance, it defined traditional forest dwellers as those who “primarily reside IN the forest”. The fact of the matter is that most “forest dwellers” do not strictly dwell inside the forests, living on forestland – they live on the fringes of forests, but are heavily dependent on the forestland and resources for their livelihood. The Act therefore excludes them – and an estimated 90 per cent of forest dwellers are likely to be kept from availing benefits of the Act.

In addition, instead of gram sabhas being in charge of settling land rights, with the forest department being nowhere in the picture, the Act now mandates that Panchayati Raj officials (sarpanchas etc.) would be part of the process along with officials of the forest department. This is a significant dilution of community control originally envisaged.

Although, forest dwellers will be provided land rights, they might still not be able to exercise their right over their land – since this right will be subject to the provisions of the Indian Forest Act.

It has been claimed that distribution of land is a matter, which is within the exclusive legislative competence of state governments and therefore, the Parliament cannot distribute land by enacting this legislation.

Policy Advocacy:

It is recommended to ensure genuine tribal assertion and tribal participation in decision making, for Act to be effective.

Conclusion:

Although, this act is very crucial for forest dwellers, it has several loopholes, which will only have negative impact on the environment along with denial of rights to forest dwellers in long term.