Community fights state over control over forests in Manipur

The joint forest management (JFM) regime being enforced "in a massive manner" in the North East is brewing discontent in hill states with tribal groups in Manipur seeking a halt to the seizure of community-held lands.

The groups want modification in the Supreme Court order of 1996, which says that state forest departments should take over community-held lands and convert them into reserve forests.

The groups allege that the JFM order is suddenly being pushed as more funds are coming to the forest departments as part of the UPA government's Look East policy.

Under the 1996 interim order by the Supreme Court in the TM Godavarman versus Union of India case, the state governments are supposed to set up joint forest management committees at village level and take over community-held forest lands and convert them into reserve forests in order to conserve them.

According to a statement made by the tribal groups a few days ago at a conference organised by All Tribal Lawyers' Association, Manipur, and Naga Peoples' Movement for Human Rights in Imphal, they were "anguished by the imposition of developmental projects that are detrimental to our society and ecology in the name of 'national and public interests' and in the name of the Look East policy.''

The organisations said they would go to the Supreme Court to seek modification of the interim order of 1996 as it is not in the interest of conservation in its true sense, and the tribal peoples of India and Manipur in particular. They also demanded that the JFM programme should be immediately withdrawn and rejected by all.

According to Maniratan Mai, the independent Member of Parliament from Manipur, the committees headed by a forest official and village members have been so far allowing villagers to continue with plantation activities in these lands. But they have been stopping short of taking over plantations and converting them into reserve forests, he said.

The Manipur government has set up JFM committees in the villages in the five hill districts. If there is a takeover, there will be resistance, he added.

Says Mai: "The court should just modify the clause in the order by saying that forest should be reserved by villagers rather than saying that government will take over land."

He supports the idea of seeking a court intervention, but recalls that Meghalaya had initially sought strengthening of its local method of forest protection but was rejected by the court.

Where is the need for rigidity? The spirit of the court's ruling was to conserve forests. It cannot, however, be done unless the villagers cooperate, he says.

The Manipur groups say that "the state forest department has already surreptitiously claimed that the state forest constitutes 78 per cent in Manipur (a quantum jump from 9 per cent). Following this order and the claim over the community forest, the forest department has claimed crores of rupees from the Border Roads Task Force (BRTF) for trees that are felled for the construction of roads in hills.''

The groups say that the forest department has been taking tax on various forest products and enforcing permits on plantations of cane and bamboo. It has also expressed dislike of the programme taken up by the Union Agriculture Ministry under the bamboo mission which shifts ownership rights of tribals to the state.

Says Mai: "A middle path can be found by forming forest committees within existing village councils rather than superimposing something on them."

Once you convert community-held land into reserve forests the people of village will not be able to touch the trees they themselves have planted.

Says Shankar Gopalakrishnan of the Campaign for Survival and Dignity which works for tribal rights: "North East remains the last bastion of community control of land in India having retained control over their resources unlike in other states where there is a private and state-owned property driven system. That is also the reason why it is prosperous unlike the other tribal tracts in the country."

He adds that the conversion of community land to reserve forests is with the intention of bringing land first in the control of the forest department and then to divert it to other uses leading to the kind of conflict and blood shed that is being witnessed elsewhere.