People and the forest

I read a very interesting article in the newspaper the other day about the tribes and other traditional forest-dwellers of India. They still live a very simple life; living in the woods, surviving on the fruits and crops, farming, re-cultivating the forest land, roaming around with their herds.. and have done so for ages. But now they seem to be cought in the middle of a political battle. In 2006 an act was passed that concerns the rights of forest-dwelling communities to land and other resources. In practice, it gives title rights ie ownership to land farmed by tribals or forest dwellers on 2005, subject to a maximum 4 hectares. The tribes are very connected to the nature, understanding that ”we are the forests and the forests are us, and our existence is mutually dependent”. So the lands are well taken care of and the tribes economy is mostly self-sufficient. Many of the villages are truly agricultural success stories. These famous lands are coveted by industrialism, for example; Essar Steel that wants to build a 3,2 million tonne steel plant on the lands, demanding altogether 600 hectares from the nature loving forest-dwellers. Where they have the industrial companies pushing on one side, there’s the naxals* pushing on the other, saying that they will kill everyone who accepts the Essar’s compensation packages and surrenders their ancestral land. This promise has also been put into action. At the same time the governmental security forces of Chidambaram attacked the village Tatemargu allegedly killing four, raping three and burning down 60 buildings with all of their produce, leaving nothing but ash behind. The reason for the attack was the hunt of the Naxalites, but where’s the proof of this village ever being in action with such a radical group? Tatemargu owes its now vanished success to the water resources; ponds dug by all the villagers, under the instructions of the Maoists. So that seems to be the only link to the communist party.

The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh states (2007) that ”I have always believed that India is destined to emerge as an important industrial power. It is only through rapid industrialisation that we can find meaningful solutions to the problems of mass unemployment and underdevelopment….We have to find ways and means to accelerate the process of industrialisation and also to ensure that this process is sufficiently labour intensive”. But the outcome in the tribal area is somewhat different. The waters are being polluted by the factories and no development (hospitals, schools, etc) has arrived.

It’s an on going battle beetween agriculture and industrialism that divides people for different reasons; money, politics and survival. And these simple tribes are in the middle of it all. And yet again, here in India, I am left puzzled by the fact that there’s nothing much I can do.

*Naxalites, Naxals or Naksalvadis (name from the village of Naxalbari in the Indian state of West Bengal where the movement originated), are a group of far-left radical communists, supportive of Maoist political sentiment and ideology. Their origin can be traced to the split in 1967 of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), leading to formation of Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist). Initially the movement had its centre in West Bengal. In recent years, it has spread into less developed areas of rural central and eastern India, such as Chhattisgarh,Orissa and Andhra Pradesh through the activities of underground groups like the Communist Party of India (Maoist). They lead the Naxalite-Maoist insurgency. As of 2009, Naxalites are active across approximately 220 districts in twenty states of India accounting for about 40 percent of India’s geographical area. They are especially concentrated in an area known as the “Red corridor”, where they control 92,000 square kilometers. According to India’s intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, 20,000 armed cadre Naxalites were operating apart from 50,000 regular cadres working in their various mass organizations and millions of sympathisers, and their growing influence prompted Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to declare them as the most serious internal threat to India’s national security. The Naxalites are opposed by virtually all mainstream Indian political groups. In February 2009, Central government announced its plans for broad, co-ordinated operations in all affected states (Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal), to plug all possible escape routes of Naxalites.