The draft policy eliminates rights of tribals and tribal communities and traditional forest dwellers (TFDs) in ownership and control of non- timber forest produce (NTFP) as also in community resources. It snatches away the rights of gram sabhas for management of forests and instead hands it over to proposed centrally controlled corporations.
The Forest Rights Act in Section 5 gives beneficiaries the powers and rights to "protect the wild life, forest and biodiversity; (b) ensure that adjoining catchments area, water sources and other ecological sensitive areas are adequately protected; ensure that the habitat of forest dwelling Scheduled Tribes and other traditional forest dwellers is preserved from any form of destructive practices affecting their cultural and natural heritage; (d) ensure that the decisions taken by the gram sabha to regulate access to community forest resources and stop any activity which adversely affects wild animals, forests and bio-diversity are complied with"
This comprehensive understanding of the critical role of tribal communities and TFDs in forest management is replaced with a highly bureaucratized framework which includes setting up of so-called Joint Forest Management
Committees controlled and appointed by Government at the central and State level. At the local level, the secretary and joint account holder of these JFMs are forest guards. Therefore it is clear that these committees have little to do with communities.
The Draft states: 4.1.1 (g) "Management of forests and forest plantations will be done as per the central Government approved Working/Management plans and also in accordance with the guidelines issued by the Government of India and the MOEFCC." In the next section 4.4.1(h) it is stated that a "National Community Forest Management Mission will be launched with a legal basis and an operational framework." These "national and state level plans" will then be "synergized" with the gram sabha. It says "all efforts to ensure synergy between gram sabha and JMFC will be taken for ensuring successful community participation in forest management.' Thus a legally recognized body, the
gram sabha, which has powers of forest management under existing laws such as FRA and PESAA (Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act) is to be subordinated to a Government and Forest department controlled body acting to a plan which has been decided in Delhi or in State Capitals which have nothing to do with local communities wishes, plans or requirements.
This highly objectionable proposal undoes whatever little has been achieved in making tribal communities and gram sabhas as the central pivot in forest management policies. Of course the forest department and the centralized
bureaucracy have never ever accepted the role of tribal communities and TFDs. It was retired forest officials who went to the Supreme Court against the Forest Rights Act. It is the MOEFCC which tries to usurp powers to override the Tribal Affairs Ministry as the nodal agency for the implementation of FRA.
Much of the forest areas come under the FRA as community resources to which tribals and TFDs have full rights. It should also be noted that the 2014 guidelines issued for private plantations had reduced the rights of tribal communities and traditional forest dwellers to just 15 per cent of the project area. Now the extension of such plantations to areas traditionally used by tribal communities is an instrument to deprive them of existing rights.
The FRA categorically gives tribal communities and TFDs rights over
community forest resources.
Section 3 of the FRA states "right of ownership, access to collect, use, and dispose of minor forest produce which has been traditionally collected within or outside village boundaries; other community rights of uses or entitlements such as fish and other products of water bodies, grazing (both se led or transhumant) and traditional seasonal resource access of nomadic or pastoralist communities; rights to protect, regenerate or conserve or manage any community forest resource which they have been traditionally protecting and conserving for sustainable use; right of access to biodiversity and community right to intellectual property and traditional knowledge related to biodiversity and cultural diversity;
The Draft National Forest policy does not mention any of these rights. Instead it wants control over NTFP. It contains a section "Management of non-timber forest produce" which states that such products which provide
sustenance to forest communities will be "managed sustainably and " a value chain which is climate smart and market oriented will be made compulsory and part of the business plans related to NTFP." Thus the Draft proposes
Government takeover of NTFP from the ownership of the tribals and TFDs, blatantly violating the FRA. This is a most highly objectionable proposal in the Draft.
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