 |
Bill of wrongs
The Pioneer The ecological impact of the Joint Parliamentary Committee's recommendations on the Scheduled Tribes (Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill will be catastrophic June 11, 2006 |
The law has caught up with Salman Khan for killing blackbuck and chinkara and India's most notorious wildlife criminal Sansar Chand has been dragged to court. While I am all for the two being punished for their heinous crimes, who, may I ask, will take to task the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) - appointed to look into the Scheduled Tribes (Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill, 2005 tabled in the Lok Sabha in December last year - for having sounded the death knell of our wildlife and its habitat? The impact of the Bill on India's ecology has been debated widely. But how many readers are aware of the JPC's recommendations on the same, submitted just over two weeks ago, considering that the item occupied just some four inches of column space in a few dailies and barely 60 seconds of airtime in news channels? Shocking, that news about a bill of such importance and long-standing repercussions on the country's ecology should get no more than a passing mention in the media. The JPC was appointed in January 2006 apparently as an answer to the controversy around the Bill, with the tribal lobby aiming to right the "historical injustice" done to forest dwellers and the forest lobby warning about ecological devastation should forest lands be transferred to individual owners. This has been discussed extensively before, hence we will go straight to the JPC's recommendations, which in its infinite wisdom has taken the scope of the Bill much further. Here is a summary of what the JPC recommends, contrasted with the original Bill:
The impact on wildlife and ecology can only be termed catastrophic. With this Bill, the Government has signed away our forests and wildlife in one swift, brutal move so that it may cling to power. Even a conservative estimate indicates that redistribution of forest lands in such a huge scale will mean that all forests will pass into private hands, and, in fact, we won't have enough land to dole out in future. If these recommendations are accepted in toto, or even partially, it will also mean the end of India's biodiversity. We will lose them all. All our forests, all our wildlife, already reeling from unprecedented poaching and habitat destruction. Wild animals - including tigers - need undisturbed habitats, inviolate spaces, if they are to thrive and breed. They will be exterminated if the wilderness is trampled upon to make roads and be developed into villages that morph into ugly towns and cities. By all counts - though of course the Government lives in a fairy tale land believing that numerous tigers are still living happily - we have no more than 1,500 tigers in India today. It lives under the shadow of the gun in increasingly tiny, isolated patches. Now, instead of ensuring its protection, we have driven the final nail in its coffin, speeding up its imminent extinction. How do lawmakers envisage that tigers will live in forests inhabited, nay, owned by Homo sapiens? Together, in shared spaces? Tigers and people cannot have a cozy, live-in relationship. The tiger is a carnivore - it will attack livestock and, when its prey base depletes (thanks to a plundered habitat), it will attack humans. There is no example, worldwide, of large carnivores co-existing peacefully with humans. Of course, we will only have to worry about this till the time tigers and leopards survive. Which won't be for long if this Bill is passed. How innocent can the JPC be, with such touching faith in the innate goodness of man? Its recommendations give the forest dweller the right to protect the wilderness, a carte blanche to use forest resources, the power to make regulations to prevent damage to wildlife. In essence, the dwellers themselves will be the policing authority. A bit like asking the country's citizens to do self-policing. Sounds nice, but hardly practical. No matter how decadent the police as an institution in this country may be, most would agree that the nation would plunge into anarchy were we to remove it for a day. And this is worse, for there are immediate gains if the forest is plundered. Can we, in all honesty, leave treasure or a bank unguarded and hope that it will be safe? How can we then leave the wealth of our forests ungoverned and unprotected by law? Can we depend on the goodness of the forest dweller to preserve the tiger if he can sell its skin and bones in the market for a hefty price? Or not cut a tree whose wood will fetch him good money? No, I am not casting aspersions on the forest dweller - only, he is as susceptible to the lure of easy money as the rest of us. If we, the educated "elite", lack the wisdom to safeguard India's ecology for future generations, why do we expect the disadvantaged forest dweller to do so? It has been established that wild animals are often poached with the help of locals. Data for the past five years suggests that at least 3,000 forest dwellers have been involved in wildlife crimes, which includes tiger poaching. There is simply too much money in exploiting forests and killing tigers to do away with the laws governing wildlife and forests as the Bill proposes. The classic example is of course Sariska, where once lived tigers. Then forest dwellers and tribals, who set up steel traps, speared tigers through their mouths so as to not maim their coats and bring down the price of the skin in the market. The issue here, though, goes beyond tigers. This Bill defies logic: How can we even imagine in today's consumerist times that tribals want to forage in the forest? I wonder how many of our esteemed JPC members have ventured out to check how tribals and other forest dwellers live today. If they had, they would know that the day of the hunter-gatherer is over. Jeans have replaced loincloths and caves have given way to pucca houses. Televisions and jobs in cities are what the tribal youth now aspires for, and more power to him. Grant him his rights, give him the best rehabilitation package money can buy, bring him to into the mainstream of society - but is it necessary to destroy forests in the process? Significantly, the Bill overwrites the two most important acts - the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 and the Forest Conservation Act, 1980 - which have helped preserve Indian wildlife. These laws were the legacy of a leader whose portrait is routinely garlanded at Congress party meetings even today - Indira Gandhi. It also undermines the Indian Forest Act, 1927. This is of course intentional - it would be prudent to question the real motive behind this Bill since it throws open miles of rich, pristine forest land to miners, industrialists and developers who will move in for the kill once laws that keep the forest alive are done away with. Those who help write such bills should try moving beyond the air-conditioned confines of the North and South Block and visit India's wildernesses. Then they would know that tribals loving and protecting forests and wildlife is a romanticised myth. Yes, tribals do like their forests, but much in the same way as we love our malls and supermarkets - as a resource base. Try visiting Dangs in Gujarat. The once-abundant wildlife has been hunted, and forests cleared. But the people have paid a price for their greed - they now live in dire poverty and the forests lie sterile. My abiding memory of the place remains that of women walking miles to fetch wood and water. Khargone, Badwani, West Nimar and Jhabua in Madhya Pradesh can be used as case-studies. They had rich forest cover, but post-Independence, there was a movement to encourage the Bhils to encroach on forest land, leading to massive deforestation in the area and following an agitation, the Government, in an act of abject surrender, had these lands settled with encroachers. The tree cover has disappeared in Jhabua, and the place now epitomises drought and is an ecological disaster of unimaginable dimensions. Nimar is no better. In an area where average rainfall is 880 mm, there is no water to drink, no fodder for cattle, no wood for the people and agriculture is so degraded that even in a good year, cultivators do not get enough to eat for six months a year. It is important to remember, too, that there are no sides in this battle. The issue is not tribals vs tigers, the people vs conservation. It is for the people that tigers must be saved. "Save the tiger" is a not a luxury of the rich, it is a necessity for the poor. Who will suffer most if tigers vanish, and forests go? The poor, as is the way of the world. The marginalised, who bear the brunt of nature's fury and suffer most from man-made calamities. If tigers go, the forests go, and if forests go, so do our water sources. That is the crux of the matter. Peninsular India has no snow and its rivers are fed not by snowmelt but precipitation. Their dry weather flow occurs because forests enable penetration of rain water into the subsoil leading to its subsequent emergence downstream as groundwater and surface water. Unless the watershed forests of India are protected there will be no water in many rivers like the Narmada, Tapti, Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna, Cauveri and their great tributaries, and the entire Central India will be a waterless desert. Forests are the watershed for more than 300 Indian rivers, and if they are destroyed or degraded then the rivers dry up. Who will bear the brunt? The forest dweller. How will he light his kitchen fire? Where will his wood come from? And minor forest produce like honey, tendu etc which are his livelihood? Most significantly, how will he survive without water? Oh, the haves will suffer too, but they will be able to keep the wolf from the door for longer. Money will let the rich live under delusion for a while even as he burns his cash for packaged water, but then resources are finite, and if we kill it, we kill ourselves, too. Who, we need to ask, will be the real beneficiaries? The land mafia, evidently. Once forest lands come under private ownership as the Bill proposes, the land mafia will move in and raze the forest to sell its timber, and make way for mines and industries. It is a moot point whether tribals and forest dwellers will benefit. Of course, the other real beneficiary is the politician, who hopes to gain votes from those he doles out land to. But I sense political trouble too. Is it for the Left, that will beat its chest in triumph when it has pushed the Bill, or the Congress, leader of the coalition at the Centre, which will gloat over the victory and hope that it has insured votes for the future, or the BJP, which holds sway in states most affected - Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Rajasthan - and will, therefore, actually hand out the pattas? In reality, none of the above is the winner: no party, no politician, no tribal, no forest dweller and no land mafia. Ultimately, as we will soon find out, we all will lose. When forests die, so do our water resources. India's future has been sacrificed at the altar of the vote bank and the gods of lucre. |
 |