Policy Report No. 17: Narratives of Dalit Inclusion and Exclusion in Formulating and Implementing the Forest Rights Act, 2006

Historically, Adivasis and Dalits have had an interdependent relationship, but over time, this has increasingly been impacted by divisive religion-based politics and the  advance of industries onto forestland, which have displaced these forest dwellers, forced them to relocate and restricted their access to resources.

For long, forests rights have been seen as an issue only related to Adivasis, and caste was not recognised as an important factor when the Forest Rights Act (FRA) of 2006 was drafted. Perhaps the absence of Dalit mobilisation for forest rights and inadequate data on the number of Dalits living in forests created this oversight.

While drafting the FRA, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, argued about the risk in recognising everyone’s rights, which, it said, would make it difficult to reject their claims over forestland. The ministry also supported ‘positive discrimination’ for forest-based Scheduled Tribes because they were considered ‘the most vulnerable’ of the forest-dependent communities.

Dalits communities, however, faced violence from state forest authorities, and there were also clashes with Adivasis, when they tried to access their forest rights, and were inadequately represented on committees set up to evaluate the forest rights of Scheduled Castes (SCs).

Initially, under the Act, to be able to claim their individual – and not community – forest rights, Dalits had to provide evidence such as pattas to prove their presence in the forest for 75 years.

While the Forest Rights Act was seen as a huge victory by forest communities, the people in Chitrakoot district of Uttar Pradesh were not categorised as Scheduled Castes because they failed to provide evidence of residence in the forest. The conflict over the land reclamation processes were exemplified by Chitrakoot, and such struggles – led by the National Forum of Forest People and Forest Workers – for forest rights speak of the opposition to ‘appropriation’ of land by the state.

So in 2012, the people of Chitrakoot district used force to reclaim forestland.  As they were unable to provide evidence required under the Act, the use of force seemed to be the only option.

In Kandhamal, Pano Dalits (a Scheduled Caste community living mainly in Odisha, and in a few other states) were denied land and access to forest resources. The exclusive rights for these were given to Kondha Adivasis because Kandhamal is a Constitutionally-mandated ‘Scheduled Area’ with a tribal majority. This added to landlessness among Dalit communities, as well as violence against them in the region.

After protests in 2012 by the Campaign for Survival and Dignity, the evidentiary requirement of the FRA was relaxed. A written statement by a community elder could function as evidence of an individual’s residence in the forest, but not a community’s.

Other provisions that were later included in the FRA were community forest rights over minor forest produce, the right to manage and conserve community forest resources, and the right to traditional knowledge and biodiversity. 

Focus and Factoids by Divya Jain.