Supporters of the forest rights law intimidated in Orissa
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COMMENTS 
A misinformation campaign on who will benefit from the Forest Rights Act is setting adivasis against non-adivasis in Bolangir district, Orissa, while those creating awareness about villagers’ rights under the Act are being harassed by the authorities who fear they are losing their control over natural resources
In yet another unfortunate illustration of how the Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006, dubbed an instrument to correct the ‘historical injustices’ meted out to forest communities, is instead being used as a tool of oppression and intimidation, a dalit villager in Orissa was arrested on July 21, 2010 for raising the issue of forest rights.
An intense conflict over rights has caused a face-off between two neighbouring villages in Bolangir district. As a result, villagers in Kuiminda (with seven adivasi and three dalit families) now live in absolute fear of being thrown off their land and out of their homes. In November 2009, they were attacked by hundreds of people from the nearby Bharuamunda village (mostly inhabited by non-adivasis) and their houses destroyed. All the men fled in fear, so the women had to face the abuse and blows of the angry mob. All this happened in the presence of policemen, government officials, and members of an NGO. Since then, the men in Kuimunda go into hiding the moment they sense trouble.
We know how difficult it is for ‘non-adivasi’ forest people to prove 75 years of existence on the land before they can claim rights to it under the FRA. We also know that state agencies – especially the forest and revenue departments – don’t want to see the FRA implemented in letter and spirit because it will undermine their control over the resources. So these agencies, along with some NGOs and feudal lords, have been spreading misinformation about the Act to create confusion and conflict.
Bharuamunda is one of the villages misinformed about the FRA. They have been told that the FRA is a menace, that it will usurp the lands of the non-adivasis and distribute them among the adivasis, that the forest department will clear all the forests they have been protecting and turn them into farmlands for the adivasis…
So while the villagers of Bharuamunda rant and rave and the villagers of Kuimunda cower in fear, the forest is being clear-felled right under the noses of those who are accountable for the implementation of the FRA process.
The conflict erupted soon after a couple of tribal families received pattas (land titles) for some tiny pieces of land under the FRA last year. Bharuamunda villagers suddenly started alleging that some people of Kuimunda had moved in after December 13, 2005 only to avail of these pattas. The allegation clearly stems from some rumour-mongering. To add to Kuimunda’s woes, the watershed department is now planning a watershed project on the lands of Kuimunda villagers, which means the whole village will have to move out. Besides the attacks on Kuimunda village, several (false) criminal cases were filed against some villagers, especially against Rabi Bagh who is a dalit with some knowledge of the general state of affairs and so was helping his people in filing FRA claims.
On the one hand, he has been alleged to be acting as an ‘agent’, hand-in-glove with the forest department, to get his fellow villagers pattas in exchange for money, and on the other, he and other villagers of Kuimunda have regularly been summoned by both the forest department and the police, and terrorised. On the morning of July 21, 2010, Rabi Bagh along with his wife was on his way to the weekly market in nearby Lathor when he was again summoned to the Lathor police outpost. There, he was forced to sign on a blank sheet of paper, was told that he had been arrested, and his wife forced out of the office. Rabi was then taken to the Patnagarh court.
In a similar case, Trilochan Punji – a leader of the Orissa Jana Adhikar Morcha (OJAM) of Bolangir district and also a state committee member of OJAM – has been subjected to harassment by state agencies. Trilochan has been creating legal awareness, along with Rabi Bagh and others, on the FRA in the district since the state agencies assigned to do so are actually spreading misinformation. He has also organised a series of protests highlighting provisions in the FRA about ‘community rights’ – which even NGOs are not talking about – and has become an enemy of the administration.
Suggesting a well-coordinated method to repress the people’s voice, none other than the district welfare officer is alleged to have obtained signatures from some tribal people on blank papers saying that by doing so they would get pattas. To their shock, they report that they later learned that their signatures had been used to lodge an FIR against Trilochan Punji in Tureikela police station in June 2010. Trilochan had to seek anticipatory bail from the Orissa High Court.
The cases registered against Rabi Bagh have now also been registered against Trilochan Punji. And Trilochan fears arrest at any moment—for raising issues about people’s rights, which the state should in fact be facilitating.
The fact that individuals and organisations creating legal awareness on the FRA are considered “illegitimate third parties and liable to persecution” by government agencies is a blatant disregard of constitutional rights.
Forest rights movements are asking: how could Rabi Bagh – a poor dalit farmer – act as an agent? Where is the room for an agent in the FRA implementation process? Can someone act as an agent on his own, ie without the knowledge, consent, and direct involvement of the concerned departments? If there were such malpractices going on in the name of making pattas available to people, should not the forest and revenue officials involved be booked on charges of criminal conspiracy, rather than tormenting and illegally keeping in detention an innocent dalit man, and thereby intimidating the entire village?
Isn't this a classic case of terrorising the real beneficiaries of the FRA 2006 to the extent that they leave behind their houses and lands and move into an uncertain future elsewhere, so that the forest department, the revenue department, and the local feudal lords do not have to rearrange their nexus in the wake of FRA 2006?
(Subrat Kumar Sahu is an independent filmmaker and journalist based in Delhi. He was also an Infochange Media Fellow for 2009.)
Infochange News & Features, August 2010