FORTUNE IN THE WOODS

“There is the Delhi government at the Centre. There is the state government in Mumbai. But here we are our own government.”

This intriguing sign, in Marathi, greets visitors arriving at Mendha Lekha, a small village lying deep inside the forests of Gadchiroli, Maharashtra’s easternmost district. What does it mean?

It is a pointer to the pride the 450-odd, mostly Gond tribals, living in this isolated corner 205 km from Nagpur, take in the manner they have used an unexpected opportunity that came their way to reap a fortune. On April 27 last year, Mendha Lekha became the first village in the country to secure community forest rights – following the passing of the historic Forest Rights Act (FRA) in December 2006.

Till the Act was passed, forests were governed primarily by the Indian Forest Act, 1927, a colonial law that gave the government the right to declare any area a ‘reserved’ or a‘protected’ forest, after which no one except the state had rights to its produce. Thus the residents of Mendha Lekha, living in a reserved forest, had no right to pluck even a leaf from the thick bamboo clusters that grew near their village.

The passing of this law by the British – mainly to provide themselves unhindered access to Indian timber – was a crushing blow for the hundreds of thousands of forest dwelling tribals who depended largely on the forests around them for livelihood. Worse: most of them, living in forest villages, had also cleared land, which they had been cultivating for generations. The Act turned them into encroachers overnight. It did have provisions directing forest settlement officers to look into the claims of such tribals and‘settle’ with them the lands they were cultivating, but in practice this was hardly done. Even in Independent India, forest tribes remained forever at odds with the forest departments of different states, with forest officials frequently arresting them or taking advantage of their vulnerability in various ways. The FRA, passed after decades of prodding by activist groups, recognises the individual forest dweller’s right to live in and cultivate the forest land he had been occupying. It also allows the government to grant community forest rights to village gram sabhas (governing councils), thereby permitting them to manage the forest around them and utilise its ‘minor produce’. (Cutting trees and selling timber is still barred.)

But passing an Act is not enough. A committee appointed by the Ministry of Environment and Forests to examine how the FRA was working, which submitted its report in December 2010 – the only evaluation carried out so far – was strongly critical of the way it was being implemented. Apart from noting that 11 states had yet to start implementation, it pointed out that most states had confined themselves to the first part of the Act: allotting forest land to tribals. A total of 3.19 million claims had been made till June 2010, of which 86 per cent had been settled. But not many villages had sought community forest rights. Till date, fewer still have been granted them.

And that is what makes Mendha Lekha, which has secured such rights for over 1,800 hectares of forest surrounding it, special. Within months, the residents have turned bamboo cultivation into a thriving business. The gram sabha pre-sold much of its bamboo this season – which runs from October to May – by auctioning it. With the help of a few local activists, it drafted tender notices and published these as advertisements in local newspapers; it printed tender forms and sold them for `2,000 each. The response was enthusiastic: the buyer for green bamboo, one V.K. Anand of Bhopal, paid `8,151 per notional tonne (or the weight of 2,000 metres). “In comparison, neighbouring Godalwahi village, which does not have community rights, had to sell to the state forest department, and got only `3,300 per tonne,”says Subodh Kulkarni, an independent researcher working in Gadchiroli. The villagers also auctioned the dry bamboo for `2,100 a tonne, earning more than `1 crore overall.

“We believe in self-rule,” says frail, bespectacled Devaji Toffa, the village head. “We have won our rights through peaceful means, unlike the Maoists who use violent methods.” Gadchiroli is a hotbed of Maoist activity.

The gram sabha intends to use the money earned for the development of the village and its environs. It has already prepared a biodiversity register of the forest under its control, with details of all its flora and fauna. Development projects planned include soil and water conservation schemes, improving access roads, erecting barricades in the forest to regulate entry, and creating natural watering holes for wildlife. Toffa even wants to set up a centre to train young people to make bamboo artefacts.

The villagers, who worked for the gram sabha, cutting and collecting bamboo, have prospered too. Among them are Naresh Kirangi and his wife Sumitra, both of whom worked as labourers during the bamboo-cutting season, earning an additional `40,000. They proudly point to their newest possession, bought with part of that money – a TV set.