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By Richard Mahapatra
Is the rigid Forest Conservation Act, 1980, derailing ongoing peace talks with the Naxalites in Andhra Pradesh and other states with its stringent provisions disallowing settlement rights on forestland?
The first round of peace talks between the Communist Party of India (Maoist), (CPI), and the Andhra Pradesh government has hit a roadblock. That roadblock is the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), 1980. The talks are the culmination of a five-month negotiation process between the Congress government and the Maoist party: the first time in the Naxalite movement’s 35-year-history that direct talks are taking place. For 12 Naxalite-affected states, it’s a hopeful sign of peace.
At the end of the fourth day, the talks focused on land reform. Outside the heavily guarded venue, it was becoming clear that what the state government assumed would be the most convenient issue to start the dialogue with was indeed the toughest. For land reforms in Andhra Pradesh largely involve the settlement of rights on forestland, thereby attracting the stringent provisions of the Forest Conservation Act.
For the other 11 Naxalite-affected states keenly monitoring the peace talks in order to replicate them, it was a major disappointment.
The issue of land reform is closely linked with forests in all 12 Naxalite-affected states, as most tribals are settled inside forests. “Land reform is definitely an agenda that we can start work on. However, some central legislations (the Forest Conservation Act) need to be changed and for that we need time,” says K Jana Reddy, Andhra Pradesh’s home minister. “Our concern is that many of the landless people are inside forests and for them reform means regularising forestland. It is a complex issue,” he adds. The state government had, in fact, decided to form a commission after the first round of talks to assess the land to be distributed. However, the outcome of the findings will prove useless unless the FCA is suitably amended.
It’s not that the state governments did not foresee this hurdle before setting up talks with the Naxalites. Since 2000, the chief ministers of Naxalite-affected states have been demanding that the provisions of the FCA be suitably amended to allow development activities to be taken up inside the forests. They claim that the act has turned forests into soul-less islands and that Naxalite groups exploit the alienation between states and their people.
On the eve of the talks, the CPI (ML) People’s War Group (PWG) and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) merged to form the CPI (Maoist). This outfit, with 18,000 cadre and a presence in 125 districts in 12 states, is India ’s largest armed insurgent group. Operating mainly out of forests, the group controls close to 15% of India ’s forests. It also targets forest-dwellers.
In future, it would seem, forest issues will be a major platform for Naxalite groups, as the issue of land reform has now become synonymous with the regularisation of settlements inside forests. In 2002, when the erstwhile PWG circulated a questionnaire among sympathetic intellectuals and community groups on its future agenda, the feedback recommended it look at forest-related issues as an entry point into future activities. In fact, the Maoist Party (then PWG) conducted a survey called SOCOMA (social conditions in Malnad, Karnataka) in the early-1990s to assess whether conditions in the Western Ghats were conducive to the expansion of the Naxalites’ base in the region. The survey found that forest-related land problems allowed the group easy access. The result: the CPI (Maoist) has established its base in areas around the Kudremukh National Park (KNP). With the pressure off in Andhra Pradesh, the PWG has now shifted its attention to Karnataka to look into the “socio-economic problems” of tribals in areas surrounding the park. The Karnataka state unit of the Maoist Party has demanded that the government immediately end the eviction of tribals from the KNP in Chikmagalur district.
As they expand into this virgin territory, the Western Ghats (hill areas) of Karnataka are fast emerging as a new base for Naxalites.
Opposition to the FCA is gaining momentum. Most of the 12 states are demanding amendments to the act to facilitate the regularisation of settlements inside forests. This demand has received a fillip with ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi lending her support and directly attributing the spread of Naxalite groups to the FCA.
Three weeks before the dialogue was initiated, at a meeting in Hyderabad , the chief ministers of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Jharkhand demanded Union home minister Shivraj Patil’s intervention in amending the FCA. The meeting reached a consensus that the Centre should take steps to amend the FCA to allow tribals to build houses and harvest and trade forest produce inside protected areas. It was also decided that forest rights settlements should be speeded up. A helpless Patil could only promise that the concerns of the chief ministers would be put before the ministry of environment and forests.
This was the second time that state governments had put up a collective demand for the FCA to be amended. In 2002, the then chief minister of Madhya Pradesh Digvijay Singh wrote to then prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee asking for the act to be scrapped in order to facilitate peace in the Naxalite-affected areas.
Orissa, the second state to initiate direct dialogue with the CPI (Maoist), has also shown helplessness in taking up the issue of land reform. Probably disappointed by the reaction of the home minister, on September 25, the Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh demanding that the Union government take the initiative in settling the ownership rights of tribals living on forestland. His letter included a request that the FCA be amended. Orissa is home to around 5,113 tribal families who live on 4,729.0802 hectares of forestland. The state government is unable to transfer ownership of land to these people as the Forest Conservation Act, 1980, clearly stipulates that no land settlement can be made in favour of any person who has started living on forest land after 1980. According to a government-appointed emissary, who is now engaged in preliminary talks with the CPI (Maoist): “Before coming face to face with the Naxalites we need to do our homework on what we can do and what we can’t. It is clear that land settlement is proving to be very difficult. That is the reason why we need to involve the Union government very actively in the process.”
As things now stand, and going by past experience with India ’s forest bureaucracy, the much-sought-after changes will not come anytime soon. Meanwhile, the spectre of fresh Naxalite violence looms large over 12 Indian states.
(Richard Mahapatra is currently on a Prem Bhatia Memorial Scholarship, studying the environmental underpinnings of social conflicts in India . He is coordinator, environment and poverty, Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi)
InfoChange News & Features, November 2004
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