Governments Crushing Democracy, People's Struggles in Forest Areas
Throughout India, the Central and State governments have intensified
their efforts – coercive, legal, extra-legal and illegal – to suppress
and destroy the attempts by people to build democratic processes
across the country. Some of the most brutal repression has been
directed at those in adivasi and forest areas who have sought to build
democratic control over resources and their homelands.
At a meeting held in Nagpur on June 20th and 21st, tribal and forest
dwellers' movements affiliated to the Campaign for Survival and
Dignity condemned these assaults and declared that the struggle for
people's control over resources, particularly in forests, will
continue. In Burhanpur District of Madhya Pradesh, several people
have died since the beginning of this year in the violence unleashed
by forest authorities against the communities of the area. In
Jagatsinghpur and Niyamgiri, Orissa, the tenacity of people's
resistance against illegal attempts to grab their resources has been
matched only by the brutality of state repression and the sheer
brazenness of the Central government's illegal actions on behalf of
POSCO and Vedanta. In Mudumalai, Tamil Nadu, an ongoing and expanding
people's struggle against resource grabs in the name of tiger
conservation has been met with bribes, threats and the ever-present
possibility of violence. And across the country, from Gujarat to West
Bengal, from Rajasthan to Andhra Pradesh, the Forest Rights Act, a
partial victory of people's movements and a legal instrument in our
struggle, is being violated at every level of the state machinery.
Where it is unable to deflect, bureaucratise or undermine people’s
struggles, the government responds with armed force, leaving a trail
of blood in places such as Nagarnar, Kashipur, Kalinganagar, Muthanga,
Singur, Nandigram, Jagatsinghpur, Niyamgiri, Bastar and now Lalgarh.
Some of the issues that were highlighted from forest areas were as
follows (updated State-specific information is available at
www.forestrightsact.com):
* Forest authorities illegally suppressing people's rights: Even as
the Forest Rights Act is being “implemented” across the country, in
most areas (such as Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh,
Maharashtra and elsewhere) Forest Department interference is
continuing to result in rejection of individual and community rights
claims. The Department is insisting on illegal requirements such as
presence of claimants' names on earlier lists of “eligible
encroachers”, primary offence receipts, etc. In Kerala, West Bengal,
Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere, the Department has also attempted to
sabotage community control over forests by expanding and consolidating
its Joint Forest Management committees in an attempt to retain control
over community resources.
* Suppression of democratic control over resources: Where communities
are seeking to protect their forests, and particularly attempting to
use the Forest Rights Act's provisions as a tool to do so, they are at
best being ignored by authorities and at worst – as in the corporate
land grabs – being actively repressed. Community are attempting to
exercise democratic control over forests across the country, such as
in southern Gujarat, parts of Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Orissa,
the Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu, etc., but their legal right to do so is
neither being recognised nor respected.
* Illegal grabbing of forest land by corporates and government
agencies: The Ministry of Environment and Forests has continued to
grant clearance for use of forest land by corporates and government
agencies, even though such diversion is now happening in direct
violation of the law and of people's rights. At the ground level,
illegal evictions of forest dwellers continue, such as in Burhanpur
(MP), the Dangs (Gujarat), Raigad (Maharashtra), and so on.
Meanwhile, with huge funding from the Japan Bank for International
Cooperation, other donor agencies and the Central and State
governments, the Forest Department is continuing oplantation
programmes on people’s cultivated lands, in direct violation of the
law.
* Utilising wildlife conservation to legitimise resource grabbing: In
protected areas across the country, wildlife conservation is being
used as a shield to hide the forest authorities' seizure of land and
resources. This is particularly true of tiger reserves, where an
illegal process of relocating people is underway across the country,
even as tigers disappear.
The struggle that lies before us is a struggle for democracy, for a
new system of control over resources in this country. It is a
struggle that has been sought to be repressed many times before, but
it has grown and flourished across India.
Campaign for Survival and Dignity