Welcoming the pirates
to the tribals of India, February 25, 1996, had seemed like a red-letter day. On that day, S S Ahluwalia, the minister of state for urban development in the erstwhile Congress government, had formally announced that the Centre was at last ready to pay heed to the Bhuria Committee Report, granting them self-rule in their original homelands.
Blackballed for more than a year, the report clearly stated that tribal areas should not be arbitrarily clubbed under the Panchayati Raj system, as charted out in the 73rd constitutional amendment. The report took the position that adivasis should be allowed to set up their own structures of governance; most importantly, it rooted for tribal control over natural resources. But despite Ahluwalia's promise of either passing a law or issuing an ordinance, nothing has happened.
Meanwhile, in another part of the planet, similar negotiations were on. In mid-February, the Zapatista National Liberation Army in Mexico signed an accord with the government, which recognised the peoples' right to adopt their own forms of government, but sidetracked the issue of specific rights to their natural resources.
The two cases reflect the same trend. Governments can be cajoled, threatened or arm-twisted into letting the indigenous people rule themselves, but allowing the native peoples to manage their resources is a path none of them would like to tread. This is unfortunate. More so because the world community has finally come to terms with the fact that the planet's biodiversity is locked up in the territories of indigenous peoples who have always used their land, soil, water and genetic resources sustainably, and that they need to be recompensed for their efforts. The Convention on Biological Diversity (cbd)