Treasure hunt in the Kendujhar forests
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Dark clouds are gathering over Kendujhar district in north Orissa, this chronicle reveals. As in other forested areas across India, adivasis are standing up to fight the takeover of their forest resources. What kind of wisdom is the forest department driven by when it undertakes large-scale commercial plantation after clear-felling natural forests that rightfully belong to them, they ask
The district of Kendujhar (or Keonjhar, as the British pronounced it) in north Orissa, bordering the state of Jharkhand, has many a tale of woe. With a predominantly adivasi population, including many aboriginal tribes who the Indian state in its inherited colonial lexicon calls PTGs (primitive tribal groups), Kendujhar was part of an expanse that once signified the ‘dense and dark wilds’ thanks to the forests and wildlife it contained. That was before the traders set foot there. And first among the traders was the Indian Forest Department itself, which opened its ‘forest administration’ in the area in 1892, followed by the arrival of ‘a Dehra Dun-trained Ranger in 1906 to place the Department on an organised basis’.
The princely state of Kendujhar coming under the British administration in 1911 was, according to the forest department today, what “marks the first milestone of forest administration at the district level”. The natural wealth of Kendujhar was well-known. Interestingly, one of Hitler’s metallurgists is also reported to have remarked, “You cannot rule the world, unless you control the iron ores of Keonjhar!”
But 100 years under the forest department – many community forest management (CFM) groups in Orissa actually call it the Timber Department! – have reduced Kendujhar’s ‘dense and dark wilds’ to 40% of the district’s total land area. And while the forest department has made its billions in these 100 years, the world of the 46 tribal groups in the district has shrunk in several ways.
Decades of rampant mining in Kendujhar for iron ore, dolomite, coal etc have ravaged 33,000 hectares of forests. The Joda and Badbil areas are today a landscape that would resemble – if you look hard – Pablo Picasso’s Guernica! About 150,000 people from 32,000 adivasi families have disappeared from the frame, and from the face of the earth.
But as in other forests, in Kendujhar too forest communities are fighting valiant battles against the takeover of their life-sustaining resources.
On July 30, 2010 hundreds of Juang and Bhuyan adivasis (officially PTGs) swarmed the office of the DFO (divisional forest officer) in Kendujhargarh, the district headquarters. They had some simple questions to ask the DFO – questions adivasis all over have been asking for the past 150 years or so: what kind of wisdom or scientific insight is the forest department driven by when it goes for large-scale commercial plantation after clear-felling large tracts of natural forests that rightfully belong to the adivasis? Why is the department pumping so much money into the forests and destabilising their sustainable, traditional economies?
Says Duskar Barik, a local activist who stands in support of the adivasis, “Hundreds of forest folks from Juang and Bhuyan pirhs (traditional domains) of Bansapal, Harichandanpur and Telkoi blocks staged a dharna (demonstration) protesting against plantation of commercial species in Kendujhar district. The dharna that started on the morning of July 30 extended till 1.30 pm the next day when the DFO assured them that all their demands would be met. Despite his assurance, the department is still trying to carry on commercial plantation at the village level by offering money and liquor to the local people.”
Even after the dharna, Duskar informs, the forester at Raidiha gave the villagers Rs 1,100 for a ‘community feast’; the money was returned to the DFO by the villagers warning him not to try giving any more bribes or else there would be widespread public outrage.
A report in a local daily (The Dharitri, July 28, 2010) says that between 2001 and 2010, the department has carried out plantation of acasia and eucalyptus on 1,030.14 hectares under CAMPA (compensatory afforestation) and 5,104 hectares under the OFSDP (Orissa Forestry Sector Development Programme) covering 95 villages of the Juang and Bhuyan pirhs.
“Why is the forest department cutting down trees such as sal, piasal, mohua, asan etc, which are precious to the livelihoods of the natives and their livestock, and planting useless trees like acasia, eucalyptus, teak, simbarua, chakunda etc?” asks Padu Juang from Nadam village. “If such plantation continues, we will soon be pushed into great hardship. The soil will degrade and our food security will be at risk.”
Gadadhar Dehuri of the Pahadi Bhuyan community from Bhaliadala village is equally worried. He says, “These commercial species are enormously harmful to our primary livelihood system. They do not allow mushrooms, traditional roots, tubers, and other local varieties of species to grow around them.” Prafulla Dehuri, another Pahadi Bhuyan of the same village, adds, “We are losing our food base due to plantation of these species; animals are losing their fodder. Even the living space and fodder options for wild elephants are affected; as a result, elephants are now entering tribal villages and eating up stored grain, destroying huts, and killing people. Plantation of such varieties should immediately be stopped by government.”
The Juangs and Bhuyans have also asked the chief minister of Orissa in a memorandum “why the government is hell-bent on destroying the natural livelihood resources of the adivasis”. They are waiting for an answer.
Rabindra Juang, ex-sarpanch of Gonasika panchayat snaps, “The forest department is planting trees the leaves of which are neither eaten by our livestock nor wild animals. Even birds do not make nests on these trees. Grass does not grow under their shadow. How do you expect us human beings to survive on them?” After a brief silence, he adds, “Only the forest department can live on them because to them, such plantations are forests that grow currency notes!”
The adivasis have always considered the forests – which incorporate farmlands–their primary provider and know only too well that any change in the natural biodiversity would invite utmost hardship in making ends meet. On the other hand, the forest department, with all its biodiversity and wildlife experts on board, knows only too well how to meet the ever-multiplying targets of revenue-generation from forests. So, the conflict is clear, very much present, and intensifying.
The flurry of protest by the adivasis in Kendujhar began in 2005 when attempts by the forest department to make commercial plantations under CAMPA in Fulbadi village in Bansapal block were successfully resisted by the Juangs. The very next year, Juangs and Bhuyans in Kadalibadi, Talabaitarani and Talapada villages foiled the forest department’s attempts to plant foreign species on village commons. Then, in 2007, a massive campaign was launched in 32 Juangs and Bhuyan villages – using RTI (right to information) provisions, supported by some peoples’ collectives – against plantation of alien species on some 4,588 hectares of land. The district collector was forced to hold a meeting with the adivasi leaders on December 22, 2007 and hear them out, after which the department had to stop the madness, though temporarily.
It no longer baffles anyone why and how the department is able to find ‘degraded lands’ to the tune of thousands of hectares on the maps that it carries. For the Juangs and Bhuyans of Kendujhar, however, there is no such thing as ‘degraded lands’ or even ‘degraded forests’. Even the famed N C Saxena Report 1998 (commissioned by the Planning Commission of India) had clearly stated that no forests in the country could be labelled ‘degraded’. It had also categorically refuted industry’s claims that the so-called ‘degraded lands’ do not support biodiversity and communities.
Says a Bhuyan tribesman of Bansapal, “The forest department would come and arbitrarily mark an area degraded forest and then display a plan to regenerate it through plantation! We do not know what makes a forest ‘degraded’ here; leave an area to itself without tampering, and a dense forest will stand in front of you in five years. Why do you need plantation for that? And that too with species that are neither useful to us nor edible for animals.”
Well, it’s about ‘unlocking’ a new-found ‘treasury’ in the forests, as the MoEF’s India: State of Forests Report 2009, hints. It says, “Putting a conservative value of USD 5 per tonne of carbon dioxide locked in our forests, this huge sink of carbon is worth Rs 6,000 billion (USD 120 billion); and if India’s forest cover increases at a rate higher than the historical rate by 2015, it will add a value of around Rs 60 billion (USD 1.2-billion) every year to India’s treasury of forest sink.”
So, it is no longer simply about raising a plantation and harvesting it after a few years to sell the timber for revenue, as the department has been used to doing for decades. Now, the millions are turning into billions, as international carbon traders knock at the doors. That is why the investment amount too has shot up and is being publicised to attract ‘competing’ traders. Union Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh writes in the Foreword to the said document, “Our commitment to the forestry sector continues to be strong. India has more than doubled its budget for forestry this year to Rs 8,300 crore (USD 1.85 billion) and this financial increase is going to be sustained.” Besides this whopping budgetary allocation from public money, the MoEF also hopes to mobilise a mind-boggling Rs 44,000 crore (USD 9.5 billion) for the recently announced ambitious and controversial Green India Mission.
In this ambiguous arrangement, one thing is clear: the investors are the new absentee landlords of India’s forests, but without upsetting the forest department’s ‘official’ zamindari (landlordism). And in order for the investors to stake their claim, expenditure needs to be visible. That is why standing natural forests (and even farmlands) have to be razed and replaced with ‘plantations’—the exclusive wisdom base of the forest department. So, with one deal, the virtual ownership of a forest will change hands from communities to companies.
Sensing the thousands of billions of dollars ‘locked’ in the forests with the advent of carbon trading, the Orissa forest department has also intensified its ‘efficient forest management’ with huge ‘loans’ from IFIs (international financial institutions) such as JBIC (Japan Bank of International Cooperation), the World Bank, and Dfid (UK Department for International Development).
In the case of the OFSDP, JBIC has put Rs 6,598 million into the forest department’s kitty for plantation – never mind where and how, and whether it entails razing invaluable natural forests. No amount of public outrage or debate is going to make them refrain from playing this game of ‘treasure hunt’ in people’s forests. In addition to the JBIC money, the state is pumping in another Rs 1,310 million under the compensatory afforestation programme, or CAMPA, in which forests destroyed by industrial operations are supposed to be afforested elsewhere.
On the annual Van Mahotsav day on July 6, 2010, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik announced in Bhubaneswar, with a proud smile, “To counter the effects of climate change and global warming the government will take up afforestation activities, better forestry management, mass plantation programmes, and thereby increase forest cover.”
So, going by the sheer size, strength and assured political patronage the initiative enjoys, one may begin to write an obituary for the forest communities of Orissa. For it is clear by now that large-scale ‘plantations’ – the priceless, packaged commodity in the global forestry carbon market – are soon going to replace natural forests, thereby rendering forest communities displaced in their own homeland. For example, where would the forest department find 33,000 hectares of land – the area of forests ravaged by mining in Kendujhar – to fulfil the promise of compensatory afforestation, unless it promotes plantations on people’s farmlands or clear-fells large tracts of standing forests?
Will the FRA (Forest Rights Act) 2006 – which the government calls a tool to correct the ‘historical injustices’ meted out to forest communities – come to their rescue?
Consider this: the said report in the local daily states – and Duskar Barik and his fellow activists corroborate it – that the forest department is forcibly undertaking commercial plantation even on the 104.87 acres of land that 47 families of the Talaraidiha village of Juang pirh own after being legally entitled under the FRA 2006! As a result of the July 30 protest, forest officials visited Talaraidiha village on August 11 and told the 47 families that they would now get another piece of land elsewhere!
Rabindra Juang, who is from the same village, says rather indignantly, “Can you believe this! The new piece of land they are talking about is some 10 km away from the village and is actually a dense sal forest while these families already possess documents of title deeds officially given to them for the land close to their village. So, now what it means is that the department will not go back on planting its chosen species forcibly on people’s land and that the dense sal forest will be destroyed too!”
Do we call this unchecked despotism?
Besides, land settlement under FRA 2006 in most places in the district is incomplete, with the mining-ravaged Joda and Badbil blocks totally unattended.
The JBIC-funded OFSDP, which is on the plantation rampage at the moment, aims to cover a mind-boggling 196,650 hectares of what the department calls ‘degraded forests’ in 11 districts of Orissa, “to improve income levels of villagers by sustainable management of forests including JFM (joint forest management) plantation and community/tribal development, with the larger goals of improving environment and alleviating poverty”.
Adivasis in Kendujhar have ripped this apart, calling it the ‘habitual lies of traders’. They say that the forest department, in the first place, is calling their affluent resource bases ‘degraded forests’ because they see revenue there. Second, far from improving the income level of any groups, their activities are breeding more poverty, especially in the Juang and Bhuyan pirhs. “Nobody is benefitting from such plantations; maybe JBIC is,” says Rabindra Juang.
Third, they ask, “What scientific insight could justify clear-felling of natural forests, and how could monoculture plantations be termed sustainable management of forests? You may probably call it a foolproof formula to destroy forests and forest communities!”
Fourth, “What is this JFM plantation? The JFM is a mechanism invented by the forest department to kill the democratic ethos and success of the CFM efforts in the state, and replace them with the fund-driven autocracy of the department. In fact, the JFM is illegal and should be abolished,” they say.
It must be noted here that Orissa demonstrates the inspiring effort of communities throughout the state to regenerate and protect their forests since the beginning of the 20th century. Today, there are about 17,000 village forest-protection committees covering nearly 20,000 villages protecting about 2,000,000 (2 million) hectares of forests in Orissa. This means that more than one-third of the total forest area in the state is now under community control and care, even though ‘legally’ it is state property.
However, the JFM – the illegitimate but obedient baby of the forest department, which came into existence only by means of a ‘resolution’ and has no legal standing – has been able to weaken and appropriate people’s efforts in many places. “Fortunately, where people’s movements are strong, the JFM has not been able to make an inroad, sparing the forest and its inherent biodiversity along with the interests of communities,” says Debasis, a local activist.
Adivasis here also say that, besides the JFM menace, many NGOs are now hand-in-glove with the forest department in the plantation spree, especially after JBIC funds have poured in. “Why don’t all these entities understand that the forest is our home? It is not something that you can barter for currency! And why does the department harbour such mindless ideas about forest regeneration and forest management? In fact, they neither have any knowledge about the forest nor any wisdom as regards how to take care of a forest… and least about the people who survive on them,” said an old Bhuyan woman.
“If the forest department does not cease these devastating activities, our resistance will intensify and spread to newer areas,” warns Duskar Barik.
(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