Forest dwellers in Ganjam village under threat of losing their rights

By-Manish Kumar

Icchapur (Ganjam): On a cold morning of Sunday (December 14^th) I embarked on a four-hour road journey to Icchapur village under Polsara block in Ganjam district from Bhubaneswar. I had earlier heard about the threat the villagers have been facing from local authorities. 

The people living in the remote village have now received letters from the local authorities saying the villagers don’t have any rights over the local forest area and all their claims of land rights have been rejected by them. Saddened by the whole affairs the villagers have now roped in their hopes on some local NGOs and community leaders to avert the possible plights the villagers may face in the near future.

However a personal visit to the site was an enlightening one and an eye opener. I believe deliberations and discussions on forest rights, adivasis, poor and other dimensions in an urban area in a big hotel do not hold much significance if you cannot realize the gravity of any situation which could be achieved more effectively if you personally see the problems in hand.

A visit to the small remote village will reveal that at a time when the country is pushing to be into the United Nations Security Council, many villagers and parts of the country is still living in a pre-independent state like situation. The maverick fact about the remote village that can flummox many visitors is the literacy levels of the villagers. Most of the villagers are either illiterate or if literate have not studied beyond standard V.

Under such circumstances, the people eye on the literates from the village and on some activists, journalists and other social workers who can raise their issues to the concerned authorities and help their voices and plights to be heard. 

Once I and some of my friends entered the village we were garlanded and given flowers nicely tied up by the villagers, mostly STs, dalits and other traditional forest dwellers.  It was a very different kind of feeling as for the first time I received such a warm welcome by a group of people with hopes in their eyes.

A local meeting of aggrieved villagers was organized to ponder over the conundrum and to eke out future course of actions to avert the damages. During the meeting it came to the fore that the local government has sent them letters in January 2015 rejecting their claims of forest rights. The villagers were meanwhile asked to respond if they want to object.

However, the villagers reported that they received such letters only after the time given to them to respond exhausted. Literate persons from the village say that letters relating to land rights never reach the persons through post man but it rather gets delivered by some office person working in local offices.

Later the interpretation of the letter takes time as they search for literate persons to read it and paraphrase it. However thumb impressions on receipt letters are often taken from them and they give it easily without understanding the content of the letter.

A 5^th pass villager from the village said, “We also never see any official coming to the village and talk directly to us or rather demonstrate the consequences and their plans. However we can see local MLAs, gram panchayat leaders and other coming to our village during election. But no one come to help us at the time we need it.”

The Forest Rights Act, 2006 mandates verification of the local forest land by the forest rights committee, role of gram sabhas, role of elders in verifying the facts of their existence in the area for more than 3 decades and others. However most of them according to the villagers seemed to be a Utopian job.

A septuagenarian villager told me that his family has been living in the village for the last 7 decades but the letter has been threatening their occupational and economical rights. They also fear that the authorities may do the same thing with their village too anytime, bolstered with the dearth of literacy and awareness levels of the local villagers and nonexistent knowledge of the villagers about the legislation made to safeguard their interests.

The historic Forest Rights Act,(FRA) 2006 came in the country after the 60 years of India’s independence and was a landmark constitutional reform. It was a result of a long struggle of the Adivasis (ST) and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (OTFD) depending upon the forest for their basic livelihood needs.

The draft act placed in the Parliament in 2005 was only for STs. But later it was realized in the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) in 2006 that along with the STs, there are large number of Other Traditional Forest dwellers, which comprise a number of Dalit population living in and around the forest and depending upon it for their very survival.

Accordingly, the name of the act was also changed and it became “The Scheduled Tribe and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition) of Forest Rights Act, 2006 and OTFDs other than tribals are also recognized rights over forest.

Ghasiram Panda, Programme Manager of ActionAid, Bhubaneswar who is well versed with forest right issues told me, “FRA is very clear in respect of providing forest rights to OTFD along with STs. Ironically most of the states including Orissa has shown step-motherly attitudes towards the OTFDs while there is no such conflicts at the village levels in the grounds. Despite possession of forest land by the OTFDs, verification of that by FRC and recommendation of Gram Sabhas, submission of evidences certifying three generations by the elders and gram sabha, the other executive bodies Sub-Divisional Level Committee (SDLCs) and District Level Committee (DLCs) at the district are arbitrarily rejecting the claims of the OTFDs. “

He also added, “It is because the officials at higher level have issued informal direction to these bodies (SDLCs and DLCs) on not to approve the claims of OTFDs.  In Orissa, only in very few districts have very minimal claims on IFR of OTFDs have been sporadically recognized while in rest of the districts OTFDs have filed IFR claims, shown to have been approved by concerned Gram Sabhas but their claims have been arbitrarily rejected by the SDLCs.”

The Act and Rules make responsible the sub divisional committee to provide evidence and necessary support. The amended rules in 2012 also clearly spell out that no one can reject the claim except GramSabha. However in this case the Subdivisional level committee of Bhanjanagar has arbitrarily rejected the claims of OTFDs which is a clear violation of FRA.