by Raju Kumar FOR forest communities living in the interiors of Madhya Pradesh, the Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers Act 2006 should have signalled a new era. Recognising the symbiotic relationship between forest dwellers and the forests, the Act seeks to correct a historic injustice by giving forest communities a primacy in forest management and give ownership rights to them. However, this noble intent has seen a dilution down its various stages of interpretation and implementation. The Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) constituted to look into this in a comprehensive way envisaged community control through gram sabhas. They will be empowered to settle forest rights within the local jurisdiction. However, in areas in M.P, this seems to have fallen by the wayside. In 93 per cent of the gram sabhas there was no discussion, let alone concrete steps in the direction. While forest rights committees have been set up in 80 per cent of the villages, around 67 per cent of its members were unaware of the very fact of their membership. Nearly all were ignorant about what they are meant to do, what their rights and duties are. Even amongst forest communities, there is movement away from the forest to centres of commerce and industry. They too do not continue to live in pristine isolation but are affected by the shrinking of traditional livelihoods. According to latest statistics, out of 9,543 families in 43 villages, 3,054 families (32 per cent) have migrated away from their homelands. This accounts for 32 per cent of the local population which is simply absent. This naturally reflects in poor attendance in the gram sabha meetings where issues of relevance are discussed and perspectives formed. These findings were unearthed by a group of local organisations coming together under an umbrella of the Madhya Pradesh Lok Sangharsh Sajha Manch to conduct a survey. Conducted from March 15 to April 10, they covered 11 development blocks and 43 villages in eight districts of the state, including Rewa, Dhar, Shyopur, Mandla, Balaghat, Satna, Damoh and Dindori. In a typical scenario, the Forest Act will serve as a guide to the numerous claims and ownership rights of the community. Settlers who earlier were seen as encroachers of land they have occupied for generations will now become rightful owners. Govind Yadav, who plays a significant role in awareness and implementation processes, lamented that even after four months of the enactment of the Forest Rights Act, the process to hand over rights of forests to the tribal people is yet to take off. Worse, in many villages official forms to be filled to make claims, have not yet reached. There is then the more fundamental question of efficacy of the Forest Act to address the present issues and protect the forest communities from exploitation. There has been a move away from the original recommendation of the JPC. For all decisions at the local level, the gram sabha does not have the final say, it has been deftly shifted to panchayati raj officials along with Forest Department officials. Activist groups say that this is the original source of exploitation of the tribal people as it opens them out to machinations of a group that does not hold the interests of the communities at the core. Clearly there are many loopholes, some of them at the ground level. As per the new law, all those who occupied forest land before December 13, 2005, have a right to live and earn their livelihood from forests. However, Section 2 of the law says that the beneficiary will have to produce evidence to prove that his or her previous three generations have been living on the same piece of land. With a generation being defined as 25 years, it is a tall order for tribal people for whom oral tradition is the more reliable way of transferring information and local wisdom down the generations. Given this hard guideline, totally out of sync with the tribal way of life, communities are finding it difficult to produce this evidence. There are other glaring discrepancies. In Jhabua, a Bhil would enjoy rights to the forest land whereas in other districts the same Bhil would not get the same benefit as he may not fall within the ambit of the SC/ST category there. It is rather a quixotic situation where one section of the same community benefits from the Act while the other section gets shut out completely. In January itself, a group of adivasis from Burhanpur forest area were evicted arbitrarily. In response to a PIL filed, the M.P High Court upheld the rights of this group to continue in the forest till adequate arrangements for land distribution and rehabilitation are made. The Central Government has come out with a policy to recognise the claims of forest communities to their land, even if they are presently living on what is called