Pathological Mendacity

I have never ceased to wonder at the extent to which the minions of the Indian State will go to defraud the poorest of its citizens. One of the conditions for the environmental clearance given to the construction of the Sardar Sarovar dam on the river Narmada is that compensatory wildlife sanctuaries have to be set up in lieu of the forests being submerged. So the Government of Madhya Pradesh proposed to set up two sanctuaries one in the Mathwad Reserved Forest Range and the other in the Katthiwada Reserved Forest Range in Alirajpur district. While the proposal to set up the Mathwad sanctuary was quickly shelved when it became clear to the government that given the fact that it was the base of the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath it would be extremely difficult to displace the villagers residing there, the Katthivada sanctuary was pursued with. A study team from the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun came to make a mandatory environmental impact assessment in 2007. The terms of reference of the EIA report clearly mention that the resident tribals would have to be taken into confidence regarding their perceptions about the proposed sanctuary. The methodology also mentions that people and sarpanches in 24 villages to be affected by the sanctuary were surveyed and interviewed. However, the truth is that not a single villager was spoken to by either the Wildlife Institute team or other officials regarding the proposed sanctuary. The forest department meanwhile has prepared a draft declaration of the establishment of the sanctuary under section 26 of the Wild Life Protection Act 1972 despite that fact that the initial gazette notification under section 18 of the Act announcing the proposed sanctuary has not yet been made. The sections 19 - 25 of the Act which provide for filing of claims and objections by the affected people and the award of compensation by the district collector after a fair and mandatory natural justice process have been totally ignored by the forest department as if the people did not exist.
All this came to light when some of the tribals came searching for the Khedut Mazdoor activists asking for help. We then began ferreting out information using the Right to Information Act and found out this highly objectionable attempt by the state to shortchange the poor tribals. Again and again the Indian State displays this tendency to cheat the most deprived of its citizens when it comes to initiating some development project or other. When the state is so pathologically mendacious only a major systemic treatment can improve matters. Unfortunately the fraudulent environmentalism of the rich and powerful along with the greed of the modern development acolytes so overshadows the simple environmentalism of the tribals that this seems to be a distant, nay, impossible goal.