OneWorld.net (U.S.)

PRIME FOREST is perhaps our greatest resource and heritage. It is the repository of our living history. It is precious and fast becoming precariously rare. In India, we are in a situation where in the last 50 years our dense canopy forest area has shrunk markedly, from 22 per cent to eight per cent, and our population has bounded, three times, to a billion.

The proposed Scheduled Tribes (Recognition of Land Rights) Bill 2005 if passed will let the tribal people (seven per cent of the population) settle in the prime forest (eight per cent of the land area). This will be the end of the forest. Equally, it will be the end of the tribal people since their identity derives from the forest. It may end up as a ploy to get the forestland in the name of the tribal people and then grab it from them.

We now turn to forest dwellers and their predicament: a classic example is at hand. From ancient times the nomadic wilderness dwellers, the Gujjars, have retained their distinct identity, living apart in the forest as graziers who seasonally migrate to the upland fastnesses in the summer and down to the Terai foothills in the winter. They are a romantic people, tall with deepset blue eyes and hennaed beards moving with their herds of cattle along their traditional routes in the forest. Year after year they return to their camps with the feared and hardy Bhotia dogs turning the cattle in for the night.

They have come a long way today. In the Rajaji National Park, near Dehra Dun in the western extremity of the Terai, is a large population of Gujjars. For whatever reason, probably because of shrinking habitat, they have become more fixed and less migratory. Mostly, they still look magnificent in their traditional flowing embroidered robes. But now as we take a turn on the forest road we run into the incongruous — a Gujjar speeding away on a motorbike. Around Chila, near Hardwar, it seems things have gone even further. On seeing a bunch of tall men walking along a dry riverbed in the forest in ill-fitting trousers, carrying transistor radios, we were surprised to learn that they were Gujjars returning home after a day's work. So the assimilation into the outside world has now even made them discard their traditional wear. Even a stranger will not fail to be disturbed by the traffic going in and out of the forest. Here is the breaking of their integral forest identity and a transformation to conventional livelihoods. Yet they retain their bivouac in the forest. It seems things may have gone too far.

This shows that a community that retained its distinct identity for a millennium has strayed and lost some of its links to the forest. And it means that unfortunately in this day and age even such a community may not necessarily remain guardians of the forest. It is unfortunate that history has brought the forest dwellers to this. They have had a kinship with the forest from the beginning and so have been sensitive to the health of the forest. They have been spartan users of the forest for their simple livelihood.

However, such is the force of technology, industry and development that in a few decades these sections have aggressively exploited all the forest they could lay their hands on. They have drilled into the forest to mine for stone or ore. They have logged for wood and bamboo. They have, for their use, pushed for more monoculture plantations like eucalyptus. In short, they have brutally laid the forest low. It is a classic case of permanent loss for transient gain. Whereas industry can just move out after clearing out the forest, the forest dweller is stuck there to face a bleak landscape and an equally bleak future.

People and parks

We have homed in on the very substantive debate on parks (or primary forest) and people. Both parks and people have their separate defenders. The most conservative park protector is the forest service, which is rapidly losing credibility. In the people's park, the human rights activists are the most vocal.

The debate is set in today's idiom of human rights or people's rights. The forest dwellers are perceived as the oppressed and the forest as their heritage or sometimes even inheritance. The fact is that the problem is diminishing habitat. This is perceived as usurping the forest from the rightful owners, the forest dwellers, by the development-oriented industry with the active collusion of the state machinery.

Often, one finds cogent and sensitive appeals that we would never have come to such a pass if the forest people had managed the forest. Traditionally in India forests and people have been linked. One cannot but agree that the forest dwellers would not have allowed the pernicious forces of development to pillage the forests. However, the forest officers, even the upright and committed, are seen in this light of being corrupt, rapacious and interested only in raising revenue.

There was only recently a time (50 years ago) when there was no debate and no problem. The forest was healthy and secure and the dwellers happy within. Most of the protagonists do not go back that far. Most have not been intimate with those forests and those times. Most lack the old experience and the old knowledge.

It may come as a surprise but much of the knowledge and the preservation of the forests is due to the old forest officers. Even today, it is the committed minority of forest officers who stand in the firing line to save the forests. It is wrong to write off all forest officers as being sold out to the exploitative interests. It may not be right to identify the righteous only as the forest dwellers. It may not be right to think of the forests as their inheritance alone. It is true that violence has been done to both the forests and their tribal inhabitants. Both need defending. Development has always gone against both. It professes to be for the people but then it wipes out the forest and leaves the people at a loss. The forest or `nature' is even more vulnerable than the people as it has to take the axe of the exploiting outsiders and the forest dwellers as well.

To the here and now. Reportedly, about seven per cent of India's population is tribal or wilderness based and only 8 per cent of the country's area is left with dense forest cover. If these two are to go together our prime wilderness will have the average population density of the country. By no account is this the definition of a wilderness and by all accounts it is a recipe for disaster.

There is so little prime forest now (and so many people) that if we do not watch out, the debate may continue even as the forest is gone.

It is clear from this that the Tribal Bill will first kill the forest and then the tribal people. Many concerned people have authored reports that make a very strong case for people's involvement in forest management. They even quote many examples of forest dwellers jointly managing a protected area successfully; from Kakadoo in Australia to Yellowstone in the United States, from parks in Zimbabwe to those in South America. All these have happened where the population of tribal people, aborigines or `Indians' is tiny and the wilderness area is enormous. Today's India is different as we have pointed out: the tribal populations are large and the forest area has come down. If the tribal people were to settle in the dense forest area, the population density would be the average for the country; it just does not square up. Certainly, tribal people should have a stake in the management of the forests; the Bishnois in Rajasthan with their conservation ethos are some of the most passionate and effective protectors of forests and wildlife, but it is clear that all forest dwellers cannot live in the prime forests.

Perhaps, it is appropriate to recall that we now have areas of degraded forest that account for the same fraction of the area of the country as that for the dense forests — around 10 per cent. Given the lasting links and identity that the forest dwellers have with the forest they could contribute importantly in the renewal of the degraded forest and themselves.

It is here that joint forest management programmes with the forest department could be most effective. On no account should this land fall into the hands of industry, as is being suggested in some circles. Is it too much to ask that human beings leave a tiny fraction of this planet to nature — that is, all of creation excepting them? Remember, it is only in silence that you hear the sounds of the jungle.

Source:The Hindu