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GREEN TALK

The Green Gold Rush

BITTU SAHGAL

Over the years, a lethal combination of ill-intentioned and misguided politicians has destroyed much of India’s vast forest wealth. How? By bartering forests for cash and votes, thus earning money and popularity in one fell swoop.

The Supreme Court of India is now well aware of this game plan. That is why it has delivered judgment after enlightened judgment to prevent our elected leaders from plundering that which rightfully belongs to generations unborn.

But our politicians are not easy to tame. They are not paragons of virtue. And they do not learn from past mistakes. This is why they have come up with their latest, and most dangerous proposal... to destroy forest India and thus the food and water security of over one billion Indians.

The instrument of destruction is the proposed Scheduled Tribes and Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2005, which sounds innocuous enough, but has the capacity for destroying the very fabric of Indian life.

Modus operandi

Politicians in search of votes wish to use 68 million hectares of forest land conservatively valued at Rs 34,00,000 crores (calculated at Rs 5 lakh per hectare) as coinage to win popularity with eight per cent of India’s population by cornering “the tribal vote”.

Quoting a litany of very real and tragic human rights abuses, politicians wish to gift these forest lands (currently protected by law) to as many as 20 million nuclear families of “tribal people.”

The fig leaf behind which the scheme operates is a stated desire to undo “historical injustices” to such tribal communities. As with many flawed but populist ideas, there is just enough substance behind the rationale to provide thin legitimacy, but not enough to pass even the most superficial scrutiny.

Injustices and traumas have indeed been inflicted on the tribal communities of India at the hands of dams, mines and other projects, which displaced them mercilessly. What is more, urban India has ruthlessly usurped the water, land and forests of tribal communities, quoting vague justifications of “development” for the greater good.

India’s clumsy development machine needs to be curbed, about this there can be no two opinions.

But to wipe out natural India as compensation for injustices done by a development machine gone wrong, is throwing the baby out with the bath water. That people can even being to think of this as a “solution” speaks volumes for the abysmal ecological “adult illiteracy” that prevails today.

To some extent, it might even be possible to forgive some of the ecologically illiterate people who champion the proposed STFD Act. They are, at the very least, “innocent” of malafide. But behind such innocents is a veritable army of cynical exploiters who are using the gullibility of the well intentioned to push through a land grab of epic proportions.

But there are some who should not and will not be forgiven. These are legion of well-read, intelligent social activists, who are all acutely aware of the consequences of such an orgy of land distribution, but who chose to side with the destruction because of it suits their narrow objectives in an age old battle between “people and parks”.

These stalwarts know that whenever land has been gifted to tribal people in the past, it has been snatched away using threats, or inducements. In the end, the land ends up in the hands of petty and not-so-petty commercial interests. Examples of such ecological and social crimes dot the four corners of the nation.

In Maharashtra, dams were built to benefit poor tribals, who were displaced and got neither water for their crops, nor electricity for their homes. They ended up as urban migrants on the streets of cities such as Mumbai and Pune. Elsewhere, in places such as Rajasthan’s Jamua Ramgarh, mine owners induced daily labourers to file petitions to claim their ‘human right’ to earn wages through mining. The Supreme Court saw through this ploy.

This unbelievable “Tribal Act” will set into motion a “Green Gold Rush” for land. Already desperately poor communities are being given the impression that using little more than a tent and a few poles they can start claiming title to 2.5 hectares of forest real estate, which had thus far been set aside “for tigers and elephants”.

The Act’s largess specifically includes reserved forests, national parks and sanctuaries [Section 2 (1) d]. And what is more, the proponents of this Black Act want the land distributed “without observing the due process of settlement as provided in Forests Acts. [Section 3(1)]”.

In other words, everything that the Supreme Court prevented land grabbers from doing under the current law, the destroyers of natural India seek to do by changing the law itself.

Repercussions

One little understood side effect is going to be social unrest and riots, as Dalits and rural destitutes express anger at the fact that they are being left out of the “party.” First came the “Mandalisation” of India. Now comes the “Vandalisation.”

If this political scheme is actually pushed through, there will be no forest left, even for Lord Ram, if he were ever to return for a second “Banvas”.