Advocacy and lobby EXPERIENCES AND LESSONS LEARNED
RIGHTS AIPP
AIPP Regional Capacity Building Program - Training Manual on the UNDRIP
According to the Forest Survey of India Report of 2003, about 37.82 of the forest cover of the country and 63 of the dense forests lie in 187 tribal districts out of a total
of 449 districts in the country. Hence, the Adivasi were to face one of the worst expres- sions of state brutality in contemporary India.
The current crisis was precipitated when the Inspector General of Forests issued a circular on 3 May 2002 to the chief secretaries, as well as the Secretary of Forests and
Principal Chief Conservator of Forests PCCF of each state and union territory, outlin- ing a “time-bound action plan” for the eviction of encroachers by 30 September 2002.
Between May 2002 and March 2004, evictions were carried out from 152,400 hectares. About 300,000 forest dwellers were removed from their habitat and deprived of their
livelihood during this period. Their houses were burned, crops and food were destroyed, women were raped, and men were shot at and killed. Hundreds of villages were set on
fire or demolished, and this led to clashes and deaths in police firings.
Earlier, in 2000, the Supreme Court banned the “removal of dead, diseased, dying or wind fallen trees, drift wood and grasses, etc.” from all national parks and wildlife sanc-
tuaries. This deprived about four million people living inside protected areas of access to a critical source of survival income.
At the slightest sign of opposition, the Adivasi are branded as extremists, arrested, or shot at and killed. In May to June 2002, an estimated 40,000 families were evicted
from their homes, with 15,000 families forced out in the Sonitpur District of Assam alone; eight people were killed in police firings in different parts of the state. Elephants
were deployed to raze the villages. On 19 February 2003, mass police action forcibly dis- persed the peaceful protest occupation of barren, deforested land by the Adivasi, with
one protester killed and hundreds injured in the Muthanga Wildlife Sanctuary of Kerala. Stories of this type were widespread across the country.
The unprecedented nationwide eviction drive led to widespread protests. The Cam- paign for Survival and Dignity CSD emerged as a result in the latter part of 2002. In July
2003, the CSD held a public hearing in Delhi, the nation’s capital, where the horror sto- ries from different parts of the country were narrated. In a coordinated move to thwart
large-scale evictions, hundreds of thousands of Adivasi and other forest communities in the states of Orissa, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu,
Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal started filing claims of their rights in the offices of the district collectors. This process of filing claims to their lands
has taken the shape of a mass movement. Around 70,000 Adivasi from the impoverished districts of Kalahandi, Bolangir and Nuapara in Orissa declared their boycott of the par-
liamentary elections if their ownership rights were not settled.
Towards the middle of 2004, the United Progressive Alliance UPA came to power with the promise to settle the rights of the Adivasi. In October 2004, the government
was seized by crisis, and dialogue with the CSD commenced. On 21 December 2004, the Ministry of Environment and Forests MoEF was forced to issue another order to
all states and union territories to stop evictions of forest dwellers until their rights had been settled. Even this had no effect. The Prime Minister, in a meeting held on 19 January
2005 with the ministers and other heads of all concerned departments plus the Plan- ning Commission, decided that the Ministry of Tribal Affairs would formulate a “Sched-
uled Tribes and Forest Dwellers Recognition of Forest Rights Act” with the assistance
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Module-4
RIGHTS AIPP
AIPP Regional Capacity Building Program - Training Manual on the UNDRIP
of a technical support group, keeping the discredited MoEF at bay though not out of the process.
On 15 August 2005, while the nation celebrated Independence Day, the forest dwell- ers launched a nationwide protest where well over a hundred thousand participated.
The CSD declared filling up jails as a form of protest, demanding the forest rights bill. About 80,000 courted arrest from mid-November until 13 December 2005, when the
bill was introduced in Parliament. The left political parties had also begun taking active interest in the issue.
The CSD finally won the battle for legal recognition of Adivasi rights over forest- lands, with an Act that has the following key features:
• the right of Adivasi to claim their ancestral lands; • customary rights over local natural resources;
• rights of settlement of old habitations and unsurveyed villages; • the right to intellectual property and traditional knowledge related to forest biodi-
versity and cultural diversity; • the right to protect, regenerate, or conserve or manage any community forest re-
source that they have been traditionally protecting and conserving; • determination of the rights by the gram sabha village assembly.
However, since its formulation, the Act has been met with opposition from the governments at the center and the states, the forest bureaucracy, and a section of the
conservationist non-governmental organizations. Cases demanding that Adivasi forest rights be declared null and void have been filed in the high courts and the Supreme
Court. Hence, the struggle is far from over, and the CSD continues to take the lead.
The CSD now is composed of about 200 mass movements covering about 13 states in India.