 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. There is a big discussion happening on the Forest Rights Act. So we've been seeing that the centre and the opposition parties together are now finally appealing to the Supreme Court to put a stay on the tribal evictions. The decision which had come out of the Supreme Court on the 13th of February was the biggest blow to the tribals and the forest dwellers and as many as 20 lakh tribal dwellers could actually face evictions from their forests. To have a discussion on this and to shed light on what are the consequences of this decision and what lies ahead for the community and the Forest Rights Act we have with us Brinda Karath, Politburo member of the CPIM. Thank you so much ma'am for joining us. So my first question to you is that with all this happening there is a big question mark being raised on the Forest Rights Act and the rights of the tribals in general. So finally the opposition and the centre have woken up to realise that there must be a stay on the evictions but this has come a little too late since the decision had come out on the 13th of February and as we know and we are gathering from news reports that the ministries did not even appear for the proceedings in the court. So what do you make of all these developments currently? I think the Forest Rights Act acted as a barrier to the new liberal thrust to take away the land from the tribals and to hand it over to corporates and the Forest Rights Act which gives not only individual rights to tribal families through patas, through giving off land titles but it also has the concept of community resources and community held land, land which is used by the community of tribals in forest areas for minor forest produce collection, for grazing, for their own personal requirements. So this is also a very big issue because if tribals get community resources as a right then how are you going to evict them for the big mineral companies or the big private projects which the governments have been promoting. So ever since the Modi government came into office it is not as though the Congress was very committed to the act. I mean it was the left which actually forced the government to go through with this act. It took one year even for the Congress government to get the rules framed for the act. So there has always been a lot of pressure against the act. But once the Modi government came in one of the first things they did was to clear projects which had been stored because of environmental concerns. So the MOEF just cleared it immediately and in the first three months thousands of hectares of forest land were handed over to private parties. So this gave the message for the last five years we have seen a dilution of the rules of the act. We have seen an encroachment by the MOEF into a jurisdiction which is not theirs but because it was driven by the PMO who wanted to rush everything through. I mean that is the irony of it. In the name of giving tribal rights they wanted to rush through the rejections and that was a directive of the PMO itself. So the government is committed to a concept of ease of business which requires taking possession of forest land which is now in the possession and occupation of tribal communities. That is the core of it and therefore everything else follows from that. So this what they are doing now going to the court. I mean it is such hypocrisy because the central government its council was missing in the last four days not just one day. Four days they were missing and many of these state governments at that time were under the BJP and they deliberately did it. After all it is a co-livens between central government and the state governments. You made a very interesting point here that they have been very committed to the idea of the ease of business. So this ease of business is being do you feel that it is now being packaged as a dichotomy between conservation versus tribal rights. So this is being projected to us that this is being done for the conservation of forests. Absolutely correct because even if you look at their conservation policy you know they have this now national forest policy. They have a document if you study that document what they are promoting is privatization of India's forests. What they are promoting is the raising of commercially viable plantations. The emphasis on indigenous trees, the emphasis which is really what conservation should mean. How you protect your indigenous trees and how do you grow them, where they are being depleted or where by natural reasons forests you know get depleted. So that issue is not there. So ease of business how do you co-opt conservation into it. We have seen it done at the international level also. What is this compensatory afforestation? What does it mean which has got international recognition? You give companies a right to destroy forests and you say give us monetary compensation or grow so many trees. This is even got international recognition this absolutely flawed approach which is really handing over forests to private parties. Because now you have this concept of compensatory afforestation. So there are two aspects here. One whatever you destroy you give the monetary value to that which is backed by the supreme court. And everybody is very pleased because under the camp of fund every state government gets money which they use for entirely different purposes rather than development of forests and development of adivasis. The second aspect is you are supposed to grow trees in compensation. Where is a land to grow trees? You are taken over the land. Then you are going to evict more adivasis to grow trees and all that kind of trees you want to grow there. You want to grow trees which have a commercial value for commercial purposes, commercial plantations which again are going to be in their hands of private parties. So, every way you look at it right now the forests are under grave threat by this predatory policies of the central government to serve the interests of people who corporate big corporate houses whether they are mineral companies whether they are private irrigation I mean private projects that they are setting up whether it is for power for irrigation or dams etcetera. It is all on tribal land. And if we look at just the sheer magnitude of how many people that it will affect. In the beginning of FEB the communist party of India Marxist had also written to the center and it seemed completely unmoved. And you had given out the sheer number of people that it is likely to affect in what it is going to do to their rights and to their homes. So, if you could just discuss that as well. Because the supreme court in its analysis of the figures had said 1.1 million Adivasis whose claims have been rejected. Why have you not evicted them? And that is a huge number 1.1 million 11 lakh tribals. So, how many lack those are family. So, it will go up to so many more million. But when we looked at the figures and this is something which we do periodically because there are big struggles going on all over India. Against the arbitrary rejections of claims which have been made. So, all over India the claims made are approximately 42.18 lakh tribals and traditional forest dwellers have made claims. Saying that we have been on this tribal land and according to the law you must give us the pata. How many has the government accepted? Less than 40 percent. So, right now if you go by what the supreme court's understanding is. More than 23 lakh tribal families are under threat of eviction. Why? Because their claims have been rejected. What is the rejection process? That is also very important issue. And they didn't have from what we are gathering as well that there is a lack of documentation being given out as the prime reason for the rejection of these claims. But you know the process of this rejection like you mentioned is extremely skewed and nuanced and as far as the tribals are concerned there are many who don't even understand the meaning of their seals or the documentation process. So, this is going to be a major blow to their rights and to their livelihoods and to their families. So, what is the kind of message now being given out to the Modi government? The first point is that the Gram Sabha's by and large have accepted the claims. It is the bureaucrats, it is the higher committee stacked by bureaucrats of the forest department who are dead set against and whose set of retired officers are now in the supreme court challenging the act itself. It is they who are arbitrarily rejecting. The Gram Sabha's are the nodal agency and they have accepted those claims. So, that is the first point. The other very important thing is which law says that you can evict them? Forest rights act is no such provision. So, the supreme court is acting under which law and therefore the government was duty bound to point out in the court that there is no such provision for eviction. By absenting themselves from the court, the supreme court was not informed by the government council. So, it is the criminality of that action which we point out today. Because you didn't tell the court today you are going in a petition. That petition would not have been required. If you had been in the court to tell the court there is no provision in the law for eviction. So, this all should have been said before the court. So, the whole thing is obviously before the elections. They cannot dare to do it. They were hoping that this would happen after the elections. They could take it forward. Of course, thinking that they are going to be reelected which they are not. But that is I am not going into that issue right now. So, the point is before the elections they have been forced into recognizing this. And I think it is more strength to the Adivasis. There is going to be an all India protest day on March the 5th of which the Adivasi, Adhikar, Rajachar, Manch and the Dalit, Soshan, Mukti, Manch are going to be participants of. And this struggle is only going to get stronger. So, on that note the fact that this struggle for the tribal rights and for the traditional forest dwellers is only going to get stronger as the protest builds. So, on that note we end this interview. Thank you so much for discussing these specific aspects with us. Thank you for watching.