Madhu Sarin: Indigenous Community Rights in India–A Critical Moment in History
During July and August this year, India witnessed a historical, first of its kind event in the country. One after the other, the gram sabhas (assemblies of adult residents) of 12 villages, predominantly of India’s vulnerable Dongaria Kondh indigenous community, unanimously rejected proposed bauxite mining in their sacred Niyamgiri mountain. They said the mountain was the abode of their sacred deity where the spirits of their ancestors reside which also provides them all their food, fruit, medicine, fibre, timber, fresh air and water.
The verdicts of the twelve village assemblies, mandated by an order of the Supreme Court of India, were closely followed nationally and internationally–by other forest dwelling communities as well as corporate interests, indigenous rights activists, and the state and national governments. This was the first case of direct democracy in the country when an indigenous forest dwelling community was able to exercise its power under India’s recently enacted Forest rights Act of 2006 to protect its ancestral habitat from destructive activities. And the answer was a resounding no.
With extensive coverage of the decision of each gram sabha in the print and electronic media, the news has spread like wild fire to other forest dwelling communities in different parts of India resisting dispossession, displacement and annihilation of their cultures and identities. For the first time, there is hope among communities of being able to decide how their customary community resources should be used and managed with a perceptual shift in the balance of decision making power in favour of local communities.
As in most developing countries, India’s forest dwelling communities have been paying a disproportionate price for the country’s increasing GDP growth, due to the non-recognition of their customary tenures and community land and resource rights. Declaration of their lands as state forests without the recognition of their rights has made them encroachers on their own lands while the forest laws empower the state to hand these lands over for development projects. Development has thus reached forest communities in the form of dispossession and displacement to make way for dams, mining, industrial projects as well as plantations and the declaration of national parks and wildlife sanctuaries.
Although indigenous communities constitute only 8% of the population, they comprise at least 55% of the total displaced. In the absence of recognised rights, only 2.1 million of the displaced indigenous people were rehabilitated, and as many as 6.4 million left to fend for themselves. Displacement has now acquired even more ominous portents with major investments made or planned in the mining and power sectors (coal-based as well as hydro-electric) in forest areas. The resulting undermining of equitable social and economic development, human rights, peace, food security and environmental conservation has made such areas the hot beds of left wing militancy and conflict.
This has been happening despite special protection provided in the Indian constitution for the cultures and resource rights of its indigenous communities. For translating the constitutional mandate into practice, a law enacted in 1996 made gram sabhas of indigenous communities “competent to safeguard and preserve the traditions and customs of the people, their cultural identity, community resources and the customary mode of dispute resolution”. But even this remained largely on paper.
The central Forest Rights Act, 2006 enacted in response to a sustained grassroots movement and protests against forcible eviction of forest dwellers from forest lands due to their being labelled ‘encroachers’ for lacking title, finally recognizes a wide range of the pre-existing individual and community rights of traditional forest dwelling communities. The preamble of the Act, for the first time, admits the historical injustice to India’s forest dwelling communities by stating:
“the forest rights on ancestral lands and their habitat were not adequately recognized in the consolidation of State forests during the colonial period as well as in independent India resulting in historical injustice to the forest dwelling Scheduled Tribes and other traditional forest dwellers who are integral to the very survival and sustainability of the forest ecosystems;”
By further declaring that rights recognized under the Act include the “responsibilities and authority for sustainable use, conservation of biodiversity, and maintenance of ecological balance thereby strengthening the conservation regime … while ensuring livelihood and food security” [emphasis added], the FRA questions the very basis of current state-controlled, exclusionary forest and protected area management.
Although recognition of rights under the Act has so far been uneven across the country, communities in several areas are beginning to assert their authority to protect and manage their forests. While every effort is being made by the authorities to treat the Niyamgiri case as ‘special’, rejection of bauxite mining by gram sabhas empowered by the FRA and backed by a Supreme Court judgment has become a precedent for other communities to follow. As threatened communities demand their rights under the Act, it is equally important for all others involved, including international financial institutions and the private sector to integrate recognition of rights in their activities as the alternative is unsustainable and unproductive investments and continuation of deprivation and conflict. It is hoped that the Conference on Scaling-Up Strategies to Secure Community Land and Resource Rights will help make some significant moves in that direction.
Madhu, an RRI Fellow, has worked on community based natural resource management for over 30 years. For the last 10 years, she has been actively involved in the movement for forest tenure reform in India. She was one of the members of the Technical Support Group constituted by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs for preparing the initial draft of the Forest Rights Act. She remains an active member of the Campaign for Survival and Dignity in India, which works to mobilise communities for claiming and asserting their rights under the FRA.
