Simple living, or zero thinking?

Adivasis have votes. Elephants and tigers do not. Besides, as we can see from our rivers, forests, mountains and even our cities and towns, the average Indian could not care less about the environment. So it will be easy to push through a law that will benefit nobody except powerful timber mafias and poachers.

There are many compelling arguments against this Tribal Land Rights Bill becoming law but the most important in my view is that one of the things that defines a country’s level of development is the number of people who move away from the land. In developed countries less than 5 per cent of people depend on agriculture for their livelihood. It is in only wretchedly poor countries that people are encouraged to live off the land in sub-human conditions because economic policies have failed to create other means of livelihood.

We like to think of ourselves as an emerging economic giant so we should be aiming to reduce the number of people who depend on subsistence farming. This law ensures the opposite. Those who argue for it talk about the need to preserve the Adivasi ‘‘simple’’ way of life. We need to ask what about it is worth preserving? It is shaming that in the 21st century any Indian should live in the primitive squalour of Adivasi life, shaming that we should be proud of the fact that so many Adivasis live without clean water, electricity, schools and healthcare. Is this the ‘‘simple’’ life we need to preserve?

What Adivasis need is a concerted effort to bring them the basic amenities of the 21st century, not the opposite. And, it is the opposite that they will be given if this Bill becomes law. Subsistence farming is an unreliable means of survival so the first chance they get Adivasis resort to other means of improving their living standards. It is no secret that they are willing helpers of poachers and timber mafias. This is without having legal rights to forest land. Imagine what will happen once more than 80 million Adivasis are given legal ownership of forest land.

Another argument that is put forth in support of the proposed new law is that it will put brakes on the spread of the Naxalite movement that already engulfs a large swathe of central India stretching from Chhattisgarh to Bihar and Orissa in the east, and Andhra and Maharashtra in the west. Most Naxalite recruits come from the Scheduled Castes and Tribes. Again, the question to ask is whether young people would be picking up the gun if they had other alternatives. If there were schools and colleges to go to and towns that offered jobs and new opportunities would they still become Naxalites?

If the law is passed it will amount to the Government tacitly admitting that it failed to provide real development. The problem is that the damage will be permanent. Long after Sonia Gandhi and Dr Manmohan Singh have been kicked out of power they will be remembered in the footnotes of history books as the two people most responsible for destroying India’s forests. It is not just about elephants and tigers, it is about turning India into a wasteland.