Chhattisgarh polls: Why BJP's popularity is sliding in the tribal heartland

In the first phase of its assembly elections on November 12, 2018, Chhattisgarh witnessed a 70% voter turnout in tribal areas

Deep in the forested heart of eastern-central India, at the clearing of the Hasdeo Arand forest, paddy farmer Nanasaheb Armo (58) sat atop a fallen sal tree trunk, his shoulders sinking, as he silently surveyed the destruction.

Thousands of trees were chopped and strewn across land larger than a football field. The silence was punctured only by the noisy beeping of a hydraulic mining shovel, at work in a nearby open-cast mine. Armo and his Gond tribal community knew this forest to be theirs for generations-- and to which they were given official titles five years ago.

But