Woolly headed environmentalism
the draft Scheduled Tribes (Recognition of Forest Rights Bill) 2005 is now an endangered idea. The bill is meant to hand back rights to tribals over land and forest produce that they have traditionally inhabited and used for sustenance and continue to do so even today.
But a campaign, more covert than up front, by some wildlife groups, has instead turned the bill into a battle of people versus wildlife. The campaign has found friends in a set of parliament members who with their powerful reach in Delhi's corridors have perhaps got away with scuttling the bill. The Union ministry of environment and forests has enjoined the battle. Albeit, the ministry does so on a pretext that only a landlord would use upon seeing his land being redistributed