Spoils of the Soil

Before the British came in 1825, the Bhils ruled the forests and let later waves of adivasis—Konkans, Varlis and others—till little parcels of land. British policy slowly ended the adivasis’ traditional rights over the forest and their practice of shifting cultivation.

Independent India’s forest laws are not much different—reserved forests are out of bounds and rights of cultivation in ‘protected’ forests are limited. Yet nearly the entire population lives on agriculture. Little wonder, then, that Jeeval Pawar, a Bhil from Kangariyamal village in north Dangs, is all set for the annual migration to the cane factories in Surat and Bardoli.

Unlike migrant labour from Bihar and Orissa, in the Dangs, entire families—74 per cent of the population according to a recent government survey—leave together and spend seven to eight months a year as koythas (cane-cutters) at rates of Rs 4,000-5,000 per season.

Kangariyamal is one of the 311 villages in the Dangs. It is officially electrified, but not a single mud-and-thatch home has a light bulb and more than half don’t even have kerosene lamps.

Local activists and sarpanches debate the merits of decentralisation and development, display an amazing grasp of the intricacies of the National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREG) )Act and the yet-to-be-passed Scheduled Tribes (Recognition of Forest Rights) and Right to Information bills, and complain bitterly about the lack of “real grassroots democracy”. They are oblivious that their raucous criticism is itself a sign that democracy works, if only partially.

Every Monday and Thursday, district officials and elected representatives—four-term Congress MLA Madhubhai Bhoye, zilla panchayat president Ramjibhai Gavit, and taluka panchayat president Dakshaben Kunar—hold ‘janata durbars’ where village leaders come with complaints or seek advice.

The Forest Rights Bill is the most alive issue in Dangs today. Since the bill seeks to regularise land holdings cultivated by individual adivasis in the protected forests, there is a race to get plots registered. Bachubhai Bagul, former sarpanch of Galkund village, is one among many who have come to seek Bhoye’s help in filling out the registration forms. Bhoye tells us that over 13,000 forms covering 30,000 acres have already been filled.

Local activist Ghulambhai Pawar is not a little amused. When he and fellow activists of the Dangi Lok Adhikar Sangh battled forest officials through the 1990s in defence of adivasi rights, the local Congress— which still dominates this corner of Modi’s Gujarat—sided with the forest department. “But now that Delhi is pushing the forest bill, the Congress leaders are suddenly active,” says Pawar.

But if civil rights NGOs and local politicians have joined hands on the forest issue, local bodies’ representatives and development NGOs are at loggerheads over the implementation of the anti-poverty schemes. The district administration, following guidelines from the top, has entrusted NGOs to implement central schemes such as food for work (which will soon be subsumed by the NREG Programme). Angry at being left out, all 70 sarpanches in Dangs formed an association in 2002 to demand that gram panchayats be given rights to implement the schemes or at least “monitor” them.

“The NGOs don’t have local knowledge, we do. And they siphon off government funds in the name of development,” says C.P. Gawli, president of the sarpanch association. District officials have a different version. “The truth is that most sarpanches are also contractors. Since they can’t make money from these schemes, they have started a campaign against the NGOs,” says an official.

Activists agree. After all, if everybody loves a good drought, chronic poverty provides a veritable bonanza. “Decentralisation of power has meant decentralisation of corruption,” says Bharat Pawar of the Dangi Mazdoor Sangh.

With NGOs becoming the new vehicle of development, there is a mushrooming ‘NGO industry’. Every other local politician has floated an NGO. If local MLA Madhu Bhoye runs the Ambika Education Trust, the man he defeated, BJP district chief Ramesh Bhai Chaudhury, has started the Adivasi Jan Kalyan Mandal. So have 25 of the 70 sarpanches, a dozen of the 17 taluka panchayat members and all 19 zilla panchayat representatives.

The new development paradigm breeds both cynicism and hope. Local journalist Laxman Bagul is convinced that all the anti-poverty schemes are a waste and have only created an elite in an otherwise egalitarian casteless society: “Over Rs 50 crore is pumped into Dangs every year for a population of 186,000, but poverty persists.” Unless forest-based industries providing year-round employment are set up, the key problem of migration will not be solved, he says.

But others feel real empowerment of the gram sabhas, coupled with the Right to Information Bill, can remove some of the distortions. On paper, gram sabhas are the seat of power—every villager has a say in how funds will be spent. In reality, the agenda is set by officials, who use the gram sabhas to ratify pre-decided plans.

The only long-term solution, a district official admits, is greater awareness and more transparency.

And given the passion for debate we witnessed, neither is an impossibility.