Analysis of the effectiveness of the forest rights act 2006 in the Vidarbha Region

Abstract

The scheduled tribes and other forest dwelling communities have been staying on the forest areas since time immemorial . They have been depended on the forests for their livelihood purposes either through agriculture or collection of forest produce like leaves, honey, and glues, among other things for sell to the outside communities. With no legal claim to the land being used, tribals and other forest dwellers have been the easy prey of exploitation by the forest department officials and outside forest mafias having business interest inside the forest territories. This ironic situation of ruling out ownership claims on the land used by generations of tribal people was going on till the Forest Rights Act (FRA) passed by the central government in 2006. Forest Rights Act 2006 is passed by the Indian Government to recognise the rights of tribes and other traditional forest dwelling people who have been battered and exploited for centuries due to neglect and injustice done to them. With the Central Government passing the FRA in 2006, the forest dweller got a new hope of claiming their enriched land with legal rights. Surprisingly, many stakeholders have taken contrary stand on the implementation of the FRAiv. Major stakeholders in the implementation process are tribal department officials, forest department officials, revenue department officials, and representatives from the Panchayat Samitis, local administrative bodies. For centuries, forest department officials have been controlling the activities of the tribal and other traditional forest dwellers inside the forest area . In the process, there have been many instances in the past when tribals and other forest dwellers have been exploited by the forest department officials. Due to the implementation of FRA, the forest officials are bound to lose their authority over the forest living tribal people. Therefore, forest officials have seems to adopted apathetic approach to the whole process of implementation. This is quite evident from the recent report of the Tribal affairs Ministry, Government of India . Wildlife and environment conservationist have been shocked at the first place at the passage of this type of act. Conservationists are referring some instances of deforestation in the Melghat region of the Vidarbha to take a stand that the FRA would lead to widespread deforestation. Though wildlife conservationist don’t have a legal standing in the implementation process, but due to their frequent protests the process of FRA implementation have surely have got slowed down. As per the estimate done by the secretary of the tribal development department of the state government, around 1.5-2 lack hectares of land would be handed over to the target beneficiaries eventually in the state. However, till September, 2010 only 0.54 lack hectare lands only have been allotted. Also, out of 3.38 lacks claims made only 17.5% claims have been approved finally for title distributionviii. This wide divide in the target level and the actual implementation has brought out lot many glaring issues in actual implementation of the act. Some of the issues related to the operational and administrative aspects of the FRA.