Earlier this week on October 18, the landmark Forest Rights Act (FRA) enacted by parliament in 2006 marked its 17 anniversary.
On the occasion, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and The Environment (ATREE), a Bengaluru-based research institution, released a bunch of resources including four videos on FRA, a documentary on the team’s work in Bastar, a webGIS mapping tool and a template for community forest rights management plan prepared in collaboration with TISS Mumbai. The initiative is under ATREE’s Forests, Governance and Livelihoods Programme.
The resources draw upon the institution’s work in Central India. An ATREE team comprising Adivasi youth has been working in states including Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Eastern Maharashtra and Telangana for the last five years to help forest villages in these states secure their community forest resource rights (CFRR).
Videos for laypersons
“The four videos are meant to explain to the layperson the essence of the Forest Rights Act (FRA), why it was introduced and what it tries to do. Made in simple language, they target the Hindi heartland,” says Sharachchandra Lele, senior fellow at ATREE. Mr. Lele has been leading ATREE’s ‘CFR in Central India initiative.’
He notes that many people, including urban dwellers, don’t understand the purpose of FRA which seeks to rectify the historical injustices committed to forest communities since the time of British colonial rule. The prevalent notion is that the Act is a political gimmick to legalise encroachments of forest land.
FRA recognises the forest dweller’s rights over their land and the community’s rights to manage and conserve the forest. Community Forest Resources Rights and Individual Forest Rights form two integral parts of FRA.
The Community Forest Resources (CFR) Rights recognise the rights of the community over the forest land within village boundaries and allows to collect minor forest produce, use grazing lands and water resources, and protect and regenerate any community resource.
Highlighting groundwork
Phulsingh Nag is a 24-year-old belonging to the Dhurva Tribe in Bastar. He has been working with the ATREE team in Bastar for more than two years as an FRA coordinator. Mr. Nag notes that awareness building among the villagers has been a challenge.
“Initially, when we began the implementation work, many people did not believe that Forest Rights could be granted through the Gram Sabha for their traditional forest lands. However, through a series of meetings targeting women, youth, and other forest-dwelling communities in each village, along with documentary screenings highlighting the implementation and benefits of FRA, belief slowly took root.”
Public meeting on CFR claim making oragnised by ATREE team
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Special arrangement
The ATREE team has so far facilitated 56 formal title deeds that recognise the CFR rights of the villages in Bastar.
The documentary in Hindi sheds light on such grassroot level work of the team.
“Villages getting the CFR title deeds is a nice outcome of our work in Bastar, but it has been achieved through a certain process of building the capacity of the local Adivasi youth. That’s the highlight of the documentary,” Mr. Lele explains.
Laxmi Kanth Kashyap who belongs to the Koya tribe in Bastar is testimony to this. Mr. Kashyap who speaks Gondi and Halbi languages had been working independently on the implementation of FRA and PESA prior to his association with ATREE.
“After joining ATREE, I have enhanced my capacity in terms of tools, technology, and community-building skills,” he says.
Mapping progress
The team has also come up with a webGIS tool that would allow one to see the terrains of a particular village as captured by Google satellite images with administrative boundaries overlaid on top of it. The ATREE team has also added to the map an estimate of the CFR area that each village could get.
According to Mr. Lele, the mapping tool would allow policymakers to see the areas where CFR rights should be provided and how far they are from reaching the end goal and put pressure on them for the implementation of FRA.
It would also enable the villagers to see their terrain through an administrative lens, he notes.
“One of the biggest lacunae we found was that villagers have almost never seen the village maps or the forest department maps. The two departments also don’t talk to each other. They don’t know how their area is represented in the other departments’ maps.”
A template for management
While states like Maharashtra and Odisha have done significant work in terms of issuing the CFR title deeds, Mr. Lele notes that there has been very little guidance from the central ministry on what happens next, although the law requires them to create a management plan.
The Government of Maharashtra notified ‘Guidelines for CFR Management Planning’ in September 2017. These were drafted with the help of ATREE and TISS.
“We have now brought out an updated version with a wider perspective based on more feedback from the ground. The document is available in Hindi and English. The idea is that activists, NGOs or even villagers themselves could read it and figure it out.”
FRA implementation
In Karnataka the situation with respect to FRA has remained complicated. Except in pockets of southern Karnataka, awareness is scarce on community forest rights, says Mr. Lele.
“In B.R. Hills, the Soligas got community rights in 2010. But after that, there has not been much progress, be it in Nagarhole or Bandipur or other such places. In the rest of the State, there has been complete apathy due to lack of knowledge about these rights.”
In Shimoga, ‘encroachment’ continues to be a sensitive issue. The Linganamakki dam constructed in 1964 led to displacement of several people. Many of them, who did not get any compensatory land, simply moved to other parts of the forest and were later labelled as encroachers.
It gets more complicated in other parts of the state.
In the Western Ghats districts for example, some communities within villages have individual rights over forests.
“In Kodagu they are called Bane lands, in Dakshina Karnataka they are called Kumki lands, in Uttara Kannada they are called Soppinabetta lands. So, when the village itself is divided between those who already hold forest privileges and those who don’t, it gets complicated. In such situations when you say there should be an application for a community right, the question of which community and which forest it should be applied for arises,” says Mr. Lele.