Making tribals pay the Bill

The so-called rights assurance takes away from the tribals as many if not more rights than did the ‘‘historic injustice’’. They will now get insecure land rights if they agree to marginalised living for all coming generations, carrying the burden of protection of forests and wildlife on behalf of a nation which has failed that brief abysmally. If their progeny choose to find jobs outside the jungles, or become small-time entrepreneurs or professionals, they lose their ancestral land and right to roots.

The tribals actually dwelling in forests, to whom this Bill applies, must comprise just two-three per cent of the country’s total population. On which Constitutional premise are they to be condemned in perpetuity to be locked in a time warp, and be bonded to serfdom for conservation of their environs?

There is no similar ownership-linked coercive compulsion thrust on the remaining 98 per cent Indians to protect anything, not even the freshwater bodies, air quality or flora and fauna, or lose their home and habitat. In any case, one would have thought that the Government knew that begaar is absolutely banned by Art 23 of the Indian Constitution.

That critical issues of survival in forest are not addressed deepens the injury. Life and death anxieties of protection of the tribals themselves, their animals and their crop from marauding wild animals, delivery of survival services to their children, the disastrous health status of their women isolated from quality medical service, the recurrent inadequacy of minor forest produce they live on, the compulsions of seasonal migrations for earning wages are all bypassed.

A detailed critique of the Bill is not the burden of this piece. So let us move on to the flip side of the core proposal: conservation. The most absurd and fraudulent pitch of the Bill is that you get ‘‘sustenance of the forest eco systems, including wildlife’’ as a free gift. While nurture and reinforcement of natural forests and the wildlife within, must be a perennial key agenda, to restrict conservation concerns only to forests and declared sanctuaries is not only an unethical indulgence, but it is also an insolent negativism that criminally deprives future generations.

This country is blessed with infinite diversity of geo-strata, vegetation, life forms and water sources. The rich network of underground aquifers, the sparkling springs, the grand rivers flowing from time immemorial, the velvet red beetle, the magnificent turquoise blue kingfisher, the chirpy house sparrow, the fragile orange stemmed parijat flower, the elegant snow peaks of Himalayas — do they not deserve conservation? India’s unique natural heritage is spread across the cities, rural areas and in between.

According to a study by Dr Anish Andheria of Sanctuary magazine, there were 199 species of birds belonging to 18 out of 21 world orders of birds along the Mula-Mutha river segment in Pune. If the marsh birds etc are added to this list, 395 species of birds have been sighted in this ancient city with seven sangams. For three years I have been taking up this issue with everyone from the chief secretary to the last local minion. I suppose this treasure would have been a concern of all if tribals lived here.

To focus national resources, energy and debates only on forests — already the charge of the Forest Department — is a developmental felony, a civilisational sin, a brutal denial to future generations.

What we need is a national heritage & resources (conservation and nurture) Act that comprehensively deals with conservation and mandates that all town planning, developmental control regulations, local, state and national administrative policies and Planning Commission plans must be informed by conservation concern. We should set up independent environment courts with at least one reputed conservationist on the presiding panel.

As for the forest dwellers, the issues are numerous and torturous, not the least among them is what should be done about the tribal areas totally controlled by Naxals who have killed even children to ensure that their writ rules in the jungles. That is the subject of another article.