 No work, no earnings, no land, no water, for tribals, but everything for the corporates. India's Environment Ministry has proposed new rules in the Countries' Forest Conservation Act. Many are asking if these new rules are meant for forest conservation or forest corporatization. Several environmental experts and opposition parties have expressed concern about this move. India's BGP ruled central government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has often been criticized for its covert efforts to hand over the country's resources to its corporate cronies under the guise of ease of doing business. This most recent action is being seen in the same context. This last change that has come about is an extremely serious one and will have a very adverse impact on the people living in tribal areas, living in forest areas and unfortunately, the government has gone all ahead to promote the corporatization of forest areas. In fact, handing over the natural resources in forest areas very easily to the corporates. The owners are the tribals, the non-tribal forest dwellers who have been looking after the forests all these years. But this act has been made or changed in a manner to facilitate the takeover of the forest land by corporates. The Forest Conservation Act was enacted in 1980 with the stated aim of combating deforestation. However, the new rules allow the central government to clear the forest without consulting its inhabitants, which leaves them with no choice but to accept it. So before the Forest Rights Act, the Forest Conservation Act was used against the tribals. Now what the government has done, it has weakened the Forest Conservation Act in a manner whereby whatever minimum laws that are there to protect the tribals also get totally scrapped. For example, the Gram Sabhas are not required to give any consent. Even if the local people, if it's adversely going to affect their lives, even then now they are denied the right to be able to oppose. The Pesa is there in place to protect the tribals' rights. That is also not now applicable. Means such blatantly the government is handing over the forest. The new guidelines also do away with the old rules that required developers to obtain consent of local authorities and community representatives before acquiring forest land. Under the new rules, the approval can be provided by the central government alone. The rules say nothing about resettling the inhabitants once they are evicted. The central government can now collect payment for compensatory afforestation from private developers before even obtaining the consent of the forest dwellers. There is absolutely no talk of the rights of the people who may be living in that land or around that land. A place may be taken over by the government for afforestation with payment from the agency who has taken over the forest land for whatever purposes it wants. So here also the tribals will get totally displaced and in the lands which may be taken over for afforestation to compensate the loss of forest cover in a forest area which may be taken over by a corporate. The people in both the places in this law there is no talk, there is no line which talks of safeguarding the rights of the people who will be affected. The new rules also contradict the Forest Rights Act of 2006 which recognized the symbiotic relationship between forest dwelling tribal communities and other traditional forest dwellers to forest resources on which they rely for their livelihood, habitation and other socio-cultural needs. And women especially because women are very dependent on forests and the tribal community per se are dependent on forests, they live with the forest and the forests also live because of tribal people, they protect the forest. Many opposition groups and parties in India have opposed the new rules. The Communist Party of India Marxist has demanded a public consultation with all stakeholders and stated that the views of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs need to be taken into account as well. The reality is that these laws are going to put the tribals and the poor dwellers in forest lands into a much serious and critical situation. So they are very very perturbed, very agitated by this and surely there are meetings and protests going on. The government today has proposed the candidature of a tribal woman for the President of India and that same government on 28th of June has brought about the rules for divesting the tribals of their right to their own land. This is a contradiction in terms and this is what the Modi government has always been famous for. It talks of one thing but actually does something else. It gives a slogan but takes policies exactly the opposite of those slogans.