Your Op-Ed contributor, Himraj Dang (‘Cutting down Forests for Votes’, IE, May 5) seems worried about the Forest Service being “further emasculated” and about the Forest Department’s case being “weakened” with the proposed Scheduled Tribes, Recognition of Forest Rights Bill. In his drive to over-zealously protect the Forest Department, he comes up with several internal inconsistencies.To cite a few examples: the Tribal Bill in fact legitimises the actual occupations of the degraded forest land, which got deforested under the Forest Department’s watch. How can and would then “the remaining forests preserved under great odds and at a great cost since 1864” be gifted away by the Bill?Dang says that Sariska has not been notified after 20 years of its proposal. And he himself admits, “Village rights have largely not been settled.” So this, in fact, demonstrates the case of historic injustice to the tribals. The Bill belatedly corrects at least some of the historical wrongs. He is worried about non-settled rights of the tribals in Sariska, because the proposed Bill can provide a legitimate means in the hands of the local people to get long overdue redress of the historic injustice done to them. What he really wants is not settlement, but the extinction of the rights of the local people.It is this type of one-sidedness of the elite that is difficult to stomach. In a poor country like India — especially one involving large communities of the most neglected tribals — opposition to any moves to redress historic wrongs is a perfect recipe for a social explosion in the future. Yet, an alienated elite couldn’t care less. Their contact with reality is worse than tenuous.They cannot even imagine that the tribals given heritable rights can in fact best protect and regenerate forests, protect the environment, including the tigers and elephants that live in them. The disaster of Sariska is squarely the responsibility of the Forest Department and Himraj Dang wants the Forest Department to be put in charge of the forests!
