Introduction
Tribal Development in India has been problematical from the time of independence. This has been due to a conflicting situation arising from the opposition between the traditional community based subsistence economy of the Adivasis and the modern market based growth oriented thrust of the mainstream economy. The challenge for the State has been to integrate the Adivasis into the modern economy in a manner that was beneficial to them. This has generally not been possible because the Adivasis have lacked the requisite skills for this and the government system for equipping them with these skills has malfunctioned. Moreover, in order to save on the costs associated with modern development the Adivasis have often not been recompensed and rehabilitated properly for the displacement that they have had to face as resources have been extracted from their traditional habitats.
Not surprisingly this has led to dissatisfaction on the part of the Adivasis. This in turn has given rise to outright political revolt, rights based New Social Movements of Adivasis and also an emergence of Non-Governmental Organisations for bringing about better tribal development. Decentralised and local community controlled development has been acknowledged as a major desideratum for tackling tribal deprivation by scholars. With the award of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences to Elinor Ostrom in 2009, even mainstream economics has come to acknowledge the importance of collective action for the management of common pool resources. This has also gained in importance currently because of the benefits in terms of mitigation of climate change that such communitarian natural resource management can achieve. The collective action undertaken by the Bhil and Bhilala Adivasis in West-Central India to secure their rights and entitlements and in the process mitigate climage change are detailed here.
The Bhil Adivasis in West-Central India have traditionally had a communitarian culture based on a subsistence livelihood pattern that ensured sustainable use of their natural resource bases. The important characteristics of traditional Bhil society are as follows -
1. Habitations of small communities linked together by strong kinship ties
2. Customs of labour pooling in all social and economic activities
3. System of interest free loans in cash and kind
4. Minimal interaction with the external centralised trade based economy
5. High dependence on forests for daily as well as agricultural needs
6. Social customs that ensured the redistribution of the surplus of individual families among the community
There was thus a minimal role in this society for accumulation, trade and monetary profits and so it continued for ages at a low level resource use equilibrium. However, Bhil society is patriarchal like others and so women have to bear the double burden of poverty and patriarchal oppression.
3. Colonial Dispossession
The Maratha invasion of the region in the late eighteenth century and later the advent of the British colonialists in the early eighteenth century the situation changed drastically. The penetration of the modern market economy and the settling of non-tribal peasant farmers began in the Bhil areas. This put the Bhils in a precarious situation with the beginning of a process of alienation from their natural resource bases and their integration as ill paid debt ridden labourers in the centralised market economy.
The British enacted the Indian Forest Act in 1865 and took vast areas of community forests out of the control of forest dweller communities and handed over their management to the Forest Department created by it and this was the single most debilitating development for the Adivasis in India. Even though this act was implemented only in the provinces directly controlled by the British it nevertheless provided the new direction of commercial exploitation of forests to forest management in the Princely States that largely ruled over the Bhil areas and so they too were adversely affected.
4. Post Colonial Situation
Ironically, the coming of independence aggravated the livelihood situation of the Bhils instead of improving it. Most of the Bhil areas that were under the governance of Princely States prior to independence were assimilated into the states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan and the Indian Forest Act (1927) (IFA) was implemented. Vast areas of forests which were earlier still being managed by the Bhils with the Princely States only nominally in control, were converted into Reserved Forests.
The Bhils mostly were illiterate and so did not understand the legal procedures for conversion of their habitats into Reserved Forests and so lost most of their lands. Under the IFA, the government “can constitute any forest land or waste land which is the property of Government or over which the Government has proprietary rights, a reserved forest, by issuing a notification of this effect”. Settlement of rights was not carried out and large areas remain unsurveyed even today. The history of forest management thereafter has been one of continuous deprivation of the Adivasis and is briefly described below followed by a description of the failure of economic and social development schemes in Tribal areas.
4.1 Disempowerment and Maldevelopment of Bhil Adivasis
The situation of the Bhils was made worse by the fact that government services like education, development extension and health have not functioned properly and so the Adivasis have been deprived of the welfare benefits that they were entitled to under various schemes. Finally the patriarchal nature of Bhil society led to the burden of increasing poverty due to wrong development policies falling disproportionately on the women. The necessity of bearing more children to get male progeny has also led to a population explosion, increasing pressure on the natural resource base.
4.1.1 Decline of Local Self Governance - The most debilitating phenomenon immediately after independence was the marginalisation of the customary community based local self governance systems of the Bhils. The third tier of Panchayati Raj was not set up and instead the power in rural areas was transferred to the bureaucracy and especially the Forest Department and Police. The Forest Department staff took undue advantage of the restrictive provisions of the Indian Forest Act to demand bribes from the Bhils to allow them access to the forests without which they could not survive but which had become legally proscribed. The Police interfered with the traditional communitarian dispute resolution mechanisms of the Bhils and instead forced them to report their problems to the Police leading to unnecessary arrests and litigation. Even though the Bhils elected their own representatives to the state and national legislatures due to the policy of reservation this did not translate into power for the Bhils at large as the elected representatives went along with the overall policy of marginalisation of the Adivasis.
As a result, the general Bhil population was completely disempowered and left at the mercy of the bureaucracy. This disempowerment is the root cause of the mal-development of the Bhil areas. The specific micro level needs and aspirations of the Bhils have not been articulated and so macro level development policies that have been pursued have been inimical to them.
Thus, the actual state policy that evolved for Bhil tribal areas was as follows - “ top priority has been given to a programme of rapid industrialisation and extension of means of communication to the most interior regions. Our firm view is that the development of land and agriculture alone will not be adequate for the rehabilitation of the tribal communities. Agricultural land is insufficient and cannot serve the needs of even half the tribal population. The tribal areas are rich in industrial and power potential. There is no reason why in the wider interest of the nation and in the long-term interest of the Adivasis themselves, industries should not be developed and localised in tribal areas”.
4.1.2 Industrial Development versus Tribal Development - The assumption that industrial development in tribal areas is in the long-term beneficial to them has been proved to be totally fallacious. Invariably Adivasis are not rehabilitated and compensated properly for the loss of their traditional livelihoods and neither they are trained to gain employment in the new industries that are set up. The industrial areas set up on tribal lands in West-Central India are an example of this. The government provided cheap land and other subsidised infrastructure to the industrialists along with tax-holidays but the displaced Adivasis were given only pittances as compensation. Not being educated or skilled they did not get any of the permanent jobs that were created and are even today working as casual labourers. Pithampur, Indore, Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Surat and Kota, which are the main industrial centres in West-Central India in fact draw in Bhils from the whole region as casual labourers.
The other fallacious assumption is that agricultural land was insufficient to provide suitable livelihoods to the Adivasis. Inadequate attention was paid to developing the productivity of dryland agriculture on sub-optimal soils in upper watersheds on which the Bhils are dependent. Instead stress was put on developing green revolution agriculture on the plain lands with irrigation and chemical inputs. This was totally unsuitable to the hilly dry land farms of the Bhils. Today the green revolution technologies are proving to be unsuitable for the areas where they were started off with in the 1960s in Punjab and Haryana primarily due to soil quality degradation and lesser and costlier avialability of water and chemical inputs.
A resource conservation policy for land, water and forests, a research and development policy for the traditional organic agriculture of the Adivasis and appropriate technology for processing agricultural and forest produce combined with a vibrant local government system with a clear gender focus to counter the internal patriarchy of Bhil society would have worked wonders if it had been implemented. Appropriate education and health systems incorporating tribal knowledge would have been a bonus that would have produced a new generation of Adivasis able and ready to take on the development challenges faced by their community. This was not done and so the human development indices in the Bhil tribal areas have remained the poorest in the country.
5. Mobilisation of Bhil Adivasis
The Bhil Adivasis of West-Central India began mobilising from 1970s onwards primarily for their basic constitutional rights. Later this movement spread to include the integration of the Bhils into the modern market system without exploitation by moneylenders, traders and corrupt government officials. Currently the umbrella organisation of Bhil Adivasis in West-Central India is the Adivasi Ekta Parishad.
The introduction of the special Panchayat Raj for Scheduled Tribal areas under the provisions of the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act 1996 (PESA) gave a boost to the work of mobilisation. The provision in PESA Act that the tribal Gram Sabha is to be the final arbiter on all issues of local development and that this Gram Sabha could be as small as a hamlet of a village made it easier to implement development programmes. Often it is not possible to carry the whole village together on some development programme because the tribal hamlets of a village are situated at a distance from each other. Another law that promises to have far reaching consequences is the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forestdwellers (Recognition of Rights) Act 2006 (FRA) which gives rights to the land that the Adivasis have been cultivating and also community rights to the forests in which they have been residing. Finally there is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme which if properly implemented can in addition to providing employment to the Adivasis also improve the natural resource base of their habitats.
The specific mobilisational strategies adopted that have got the people to act collectively for getting their entitlements and the conservation of natural resources for climate change mitigation are –
- Problem analysis workshops in which the people have participated in open discussions to pinpoint the problems they were facing.
- Legal and rights training workshops in which the people were taught the basics of the liberal democratic framework.
- Collective Action for assertive rights through public demonstrations and sitins.
- Revival of traditional labour and resource pooling customs.
- Special women's meetings to get them involved in resource conservation work and also public demonstrations and also counter the internal patriarchy of Bhil society.
- Legal and policy advocacy to change the laws and rules in favour of the Adivasis.
6. Gaining Access to Forests and then Conserving them
The mass mobilisation began with the problem of ensuring access to the encroached farms of the Adivasis in the reserved forest. As a solution to this problem it was decided to protect the remaining forest area and prevent it from degradation. This was done to counter the claim of the forest department that the Adivasis were destroying the forest. Consequently, social protection of the forests to ensure their regeneration was undertaken. Small groups patrolled the forests by turns through a labour pooling system. The fodder generated from such protection is cut and bought by the members at the end of the monsoon season and the money thus generated is kept in a fund for carrying out plantation work. This forest protection has considerably increased the availability of fodder, fireweood and non-timber forest produce in the study watershed and this has especially benefited the women and children who are the main collectors of forest products. It may be mentioned here that tribal children treat the collection of forest produce as a playful activity and it is not labour for them. This is how they come to know their natural environment. Greater fodder availability has facilitated goat and buffalo rearing and so increased the supplementary incomes from animal husbandry which provides an insurance against livelihood shocks to the tribal households. It is not possible to quantify the increase in forest product availability because of a lack of records but people say that they now enjoy much greater forest product availability and have bigger herds of goats and cattle than earlier.
7. Soil and Water
Conservation
The villagers organised themselves into small groups of ten to twelve farmers each who then pooled their labour and cooperated with each other to perform their agricultural operations together and also undertake soil and water conservation activities. This was a revival of the traditional labour pooling custom of the Bhils called Dhas. In this system people used to work together to do agricultural operations on each others' fields, build each others' houses, and improve the quality of the farm fields through soil conservation work. However, this traditional labour pooling custom is dying out because of their integration into the mainstream money economy and the exploitation by the forest department staff.
A major feature of this cooperative soil and water conservation work is the participation of women in it. As is well known the ravages of natural devastation caused by bad development are mostly borne by women. Consequently it is not surprising, that when offered an opportunity to cooperate to reduce their drudgery, women come forward enthusiastically. This has not only ensured that women have participated in the community actions and improved their status in society but they have also as a result, changed the gender relations at home.
The intensive soil and water conservation work and the forest conservation have together ensured that both natural and artificial recharge in the watersheds have increased considerably and as a result the streams are flowing throughout the year. The farmers have used this enhanced water availability to cultivate dryland varieties of wheat which require less water. The greater availability of animal manure has resulted in the farmers using treated organic manure in larger quantities and improving the quality of the soil. The soil and water conservation work has also ensured the greater availability of soil moisture and so double cropping has become possible even without irrigation in some of the upper fields where a crop of gram is taken. In some cases the kharif jowar crop after being harvested, regenerates to give a small rabi yield from the soil moisture.
8. Implementation of the
FRA
The FRA has been plagued with problems right from the beginning. Even though the Act was passed in 2006 it took another year for the Rules to be framed and passed by parliament. Even after that Governments have been very tardy in setting in motion the process for application and verification of the rights of the Adivasis. The people have had to organise many demonstrations to first get the process started and then for it to continue. The people have also pro-actively used the MGNREGS to carry out soil and water conservation works on the lands for which they have gained lease rights under the FRA.
An associated achievement of the people is their success in getting the proposal by the Government to set up a Wild Life Sanctuary in the Katthivada Forest Range of Alirajpur district in Madhya Pradesh cancelled. Under the provisions of the PESA Act and also the Wild Life Protection Act any displacement of people in a scheduled tribal area has to be sanctioned by the Gram Sabha. Hard mobilisation by the people forced the Government to implement this provision and the Gram Sabhas unanimously rejected the proposal because of its many infirmities and it had to be shelved. This is the first time that a proposal for a Wild Life Sanctuary in this country has had to be shelved due to strong legal and mass action by the Adivasis.
9. Conclusions
The most important achievement is that the Adivasi Ekta Parishad has
been able to inspire the Adivasis to assert their identity and clearly
demarcate their sovereignty over their habitats. The laws and rules for
utilisation of the forests were that laid down by the government and
administered by the Forest Department and were not matched to the local needs
and conditions. The Adivasi Ekta Parishad succeeded in mobilising the people
through regular meetings and trainings to stand up for their rights against the
forest department staff and design their own rules for governing the use of the
collective natural resources. A section of the people initially
braved the opposition of the traditional Patels who were agents of the Forest
Department and even went to jail fighting for their rights and established the
organisation. Once the organisation was established and natural resource
conservation work began, the benefits began to flow and this acted as a
reinforcing factor in the continuation of the process and so later even the
Patels, who were initially opposed to the process, later became a part of it.
The mobilisation process resulted in a fairly strong people's organisation spread over the whole of the Bhil Adivasi homeland and the people were able to ensure that the Forest Department was forced to allow them to manage their common resources according to their own rules. The monitoring of the forests as well as the soil and water conservation work is done by the people themselves and that is why the system has worked very well for over three decades. The people have developed a system of sanctions beginning with fines for small infringements of the rules and going upto ostracism for more serious violations and this is administered by the people themselves. The traditional community conflict resolution mechanisms of the Bhil Adivasis have also been revived and these are also working very well.
However, unless the government ensures a participatory framework of rule
making and monitoring at several levels it is difficult for a people's
organisation to build up a larger movement of conservation. Since the
government through the forest department and police has actively opposed the
people's mobilisation it has taken place only in isolated patches in the Bhil
homeland. The laws and policies
that favour Adivasis are not implemented primarily because most people are not
aware of these provisions and the Government is not serious about them. The Adivasi
Ekta Parishad by raising the awareness of the Adivasis in this regard has
brought about a positive transformation in West-Central India. Thus, despite
its limitations, the mobilisation process described above has ensured justice
for the Bhil Adivasis and provided them with a better livelihood situation
while simultaneously making a significant contribution towards climate change
mitigation.
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