Given the badly fractured relationship between forest departments and forest-dwellers, involving the tribal population in the preparation of working plans is critical
Among the prominent depictions in Buddhist iconography is Buddha The Teacher, unravelling the knot of life with the thumb and forefinger of both hands. It will take quite some unravelling to undo the knot underlying the violence unleashed on Indian security forces in April.
As is well known, the maps of tribal occupancy, forest cover and underground mineral wealth in India can be overlaid on one another with a good degree of concordance. Tribal populations live on the strength of renewable forest produce, and the forests, in turn, have rendered inaccessible the mineral wealth underneath them.
The first line of battle is between the imperative to protect forest cover in India, for preservation of our water resources, agricultural productivity and food security, and the fevered push by the mining lobby to get at the mineral wealth underneath it. Conversion of forested land to non-forest uses is actually permissible under the law, following a Supreme Court judgment in 2002. Such conversion is subject to compensatory payments calibrated to cover the expenditure required for equivalent afforestation, in addition to the net present value of forest land lost. The exact method by which these payments were arrived at need not detain us here, although the numbers do matter a great deal. The more serious issue is that the fund into which these payments were to flow was to be managed by a Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (Campa), which was never formally notified. The payments meant for afforestation and compensation accumulated with an ad hoc Campa at the national level. Following protests from states, a decision was taken recently to release Rs 100 crore annually to the respective states’ Campa, over the next five years, in proportion to the area diverted in each state to non-forest uses.
What the states do with these funds will be the function of the monitoring system in place, and the penalties in place, if any, for diversion to other uses. In a bid to give states an incentive to direct Campa funding towards afforestation, among other compelling reasons, the Thirteenth Finance Commission (TFC) provides for a forest grant of Rs 5,000 crore to states for the period 2010-15. To quote the TFC report, the provision will provide states “with the wherewithal for preservation going forward, so as to halt and hopefully reverse past declines in the quantum and quality of area under forests”. The formula for allocation of the grant between states is calibrated to the standing stock of forest cover and, therefore, rewards those states that have not in the past fallen victim to the lure of (promised, but not yet realised) compensating Campa payments. The conditionalities attached to the forest grant require that states draw up working plans for forest zones within their jurisdictions, within the first two years of the award period, i.e. 2010-12. Working plans carry a 10-year horizon, and prescribe the pattern and limits of sustainable forest harvesting. The baseline documentation provided by working plans serves as a valuable measurement benchmark on the basis of which progress over time, or the lack thereof, can be assessed. Ground-level surveys of this kind are the only possible basis on which biodiversity, the key dimension of conservation, can be reliably marked and measured.
Working plans clearly need funding. Accordingly, one-fourth of the forest grant prescribed by the TFC will flow over the first two years and is unconditional, designed to cover survey costs. For the following three years, the remaining three-fourths of the total grant entitlement will be disbursed, conditional on well-documented working plans. This provision for the three years is earmarked for state forest departments only to the extent of 25 per cent. The remainder may be used by states for any developmental purpose. The idea is to signal that forest cover will entitle states to generalised compensation for the economic disability posed by it.
None of this resolves the problems of tribals displaced by past diversion of forest land, unless they are actively involved in the afforestation programmes of state forest departments, which will now have funding from two streams, the statutory Finance Commission flow, as well as the much smaller flow from delayed Campa entitlements. Forest departments would be well advised to involve tribal populations in the preparatory work for putting together the working plans required as conditionality for release of the Finance Commission grants, and indeed to give them a measure of control over the process. The present relationship between state forest departments and forest-dwellers is badly fractured. Involving tribal populations in the preparation of working plans will provide immediate employment in a field where their expertise is unmatched, and can pave the way for mainstreaming and re-settlement in newly afforested areas, admittedly not their original homes which are lost forever, but in a milieu which will be familiar. The untied portion of the forest grant can be directed towards the welfare of displaced tribal populations.
Too much, however, cannot be expected from the forest grant. The inducement of Rs 5,000 crore over five years for all states may be a feeble counter to what mining lobbies can promise.
Before any new mining is sanctioned, the first imperative is to enforce pollution-control laws on pre-existing mines, and on downstream smelting and processing units. A visual sweep of mining areas in these states, even where the activity is legally sanctioned, exposes the ravages wrought on the land and water bodies. It does not have to be that way. There are states in the country, Goa being an example, where iron ore mining has been accompanied by successful ongoing restoration of the original density of vegetation. State Pollution Control Boards hold the key to environmental monitoring and enforcement. Until these bodies function in a manner protective of the public interest, we will not have begun to address one of the many factors that feed the insurgency.
The author is honorary visiting professor, Indian Statistical Institute
