 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. I am Samedha. We're talking today about the Indian Forests Act. The Modi government is overhauling a series of environmental laws, the most recent being the Indian Forests Act. And to discuss more over what are the kind of changes that are being proposed to the Draconian Act which was already there, we have with us Nitin Sethi of the Business Standard. He has exhaustively covered the kind of changes which are being made to the Forest Rights Act and has now more recently analysed the changes which are being made to the Indian Forests Act as well. Thank you Nitin for joining us and discussing this. Before we jump to the kind of changes that are being made in terms of the policy, there is a pattern that we are seeing. So more importantly, I want to begin with the kind of struggles of the 1850s through which the Indian Forests Act was, it was already a draconian law and post that to correct the kind of historical injustices that had happened, in 2006 the Forest Rights Act had come into being. So just a little bit more context for our viewers as to what this change was like and my question to you is that the kind of changes that we are seeing right now, are they in an attempt to subvert the FRA? You rightly put it, the historical context in how forestry in India has been governed is essential to understand how we have seen us tribal citizens as part of the country to begin with. The introduction of the Indian Forest Act by the British regime at that time primarily had a single focus. It wanted to extract resources particularly timber from Indian Forests. It found it difficult to deal with the amorphous and multifarious ways in which communities governed, controlled or regulated forests or how different princely states did that as well. The British brought in a single act which suggested that all forest property thereafter would belong to the state and citizens who had any right particularly tribal and other forest dwellers, their rights could be extinguished at the mercy of the British regime. Typically the administration would take over a forest and say well, you have this much space in it or not, this is all you can extract or not extract. Even that extraction would be limited and controlled by the wills and fancies of the forest bureaucracy at that time. To imagine a colonial state doing that is pretty legit, that is the nature of a colonial state. We continue to live with it for very long. It led to mass displacements. We have reports which suggest that because of this and the kind of forestry regimes we built up even post-independence, almost one in every four tribal would expect to be displaced by the end of their lifetimes. Around one in every eighth would be expected to be displaced at least twice in their lifetimes. These are reports of the government of India. In some sense we had set up a state right from independence where the tribal communities and the forest dwellers would be seen as second grade citizens. To understand that I think it's valuable to imagine a same set of laws being applied in the urban areas. To give you a very meek example, it's still stark I think. To imagine that in the Indian Forest Act it was said that if the forest officer believes fire might have been set to a forest by somebody unknown but seems to be from one of the villages, the forest department could shut off all access of the entire village over that area. Now imagine if the same kind of rules were imposed in the city where you said, oh somebody is thrown away or does pain or thrown some garbage onto street. Therefore the entire rights of all community or RWA can be blocked out in Delhi by the local municipal commissioner without any judicial process whatsoever is the nature of governance we've had. To correct this you rightly say in 2006 the Indian Forest Rights Act was legislated. Its purpose was very simple as a preamble of the law itself states. It was to correct historical injustices done in the colonial era and in the post-colonial era by different kind of forest laws and governance rules. The purpose was simple that millions of people had been removed or their access to forests or their rights over forests had been diminished over generations and this was to be corrected. One way to do that was to hand back some of the rights to the communities not all the rights but these hand back some land rights, restricted land rights to these people. Also hand back what are called use of rights or the ability to use the resources that grows on these forests and have a sustainable livelihood from this. Third pillar to my mind that the Forest Rights Act created was to say the governance of these forests of how they would be used and for what purpose they would be used. The statutory body that would look after that would be the Gram Sabha and not the forest department alone. This in some sense corrected what was almost like a century of exploitation by giving communities a democratic right to decide what would happen to their forests. We must remember both in the utilization of forests and in the destruction of forests for different development projects so far till 2006. The forest bureaucracy and the political executive had the sole discretion to decide what would be done and what would not be done. The people and sometimes could be consulted and even that was not essential. That is what the Forest Rights Act tried to set right. But now we have the Indian Forest Act 2009 bill in place. Yes so we have been seeing that there are documents which were actually leaked out and where the Modi government has given a directive to the states to sort of give them suggestions on the changes that it's trying to bring to the Indian Forest Act. In a sense making it probably more draconian by giving extra powers to police officials as well. And you have in your article very rightly pointed out that it looks like it's like an AFSPA like situation giving the extra powers to the police officials. So what are the kind of changes that you analyzed in your analysis of the Indian Forest Act and what does it even mean for the FRA and the kind of subversion that is being done to the FRA. So I think there are three seminal changes that the Indian Forest Act 2009 as proposed by the BJP government proposes to bring in. One it enhances the policing and the judicial powers at the forest department that holds over all forests. What that really means is that in these forest areas a forest officer of a certain rank can also go in and police also be a judge on his own policing actions. And the policing impact can be as far as saying a right to shoot or right to use firearms in doing his duty which will not his or her duty which will not be challenged by courts. Even the state government or the political executive would have to go through hoops and it can question what a low ranking forest officer is done. Now from past experiences we know even when such provisions have not existed and they were slightly less draconian the forest departments in different parts of the country have undertaken forced evictions which has led to deaths, there have been accusations of rapes and violence etc when this has happened. Ironically that's what led to the creation of the Forest Rights Act in the first place. The second pillar that this forest Indian Forest Act 2019 proposal by the central governments brings in to my view it sets up a formalized legalized framework for the forest department on its discretion opening up forest to private commercial interests. Now this again we must remember has been opposed for almost decades. Several governments have toyed with this idea and let it go because it impacts millions of people who live in these forests. The bill now suggests that there will be a production forest area which the forest department on its discretion can decide what it is and open it up to plantations. This has been a demand from the industry for very long and this now gets a legitimate space. It also creates a legitimate space of displacing people and people's rights in forests in the name of carbon sequestration. Again this is part of a large move that we've seen under the climate change negotiations where red and red plus kind of strategies are coming in saying governments can earn money out of their forest by sequestering carbon. It also gives it a legal legitimacy in India. The third and I think this is as pernicious as the rest is that it subversed the Forest Rights Act by bringing the veto of the forest department to sit on top of the Forest Rights Act. It allows the forest department and its discretion to decide what part of the law will apply to what areas, how they can extinguish any rights being created and it's almost to some extent summarily extinguished when the forest department wants. Again if you go back to the Forest Rights Act the only institution that could do this was the Gram Sabha and the consent of the people without which you could not make these moves. The Indian Forest Act 2019 in some ways subversed this entire process. So there is a pattern that we're seeing. So last month the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change they had also failed to defend the Forest Rights Act in the courts. They were missing from the last four hearings and that is when the Supreme Court had ordered the states to also give out details on the claims of the tribals. So do you see that there is a pattern to subvert the FRA in terms of the timing in terms of this attempt being made to overhaul the Indian Forest Act ahead of the elections as well? So projection is a bad idea for journalists to do but I still try and make a projection and inference into this. I think the government failing to defend the Forest Rights Act in the Supreme Court in February and March and previously to that was pure callousness on its part. It wasn't intentful but it was callousness in the sense that the government's not been very keen to implement the Forest Rights Act therefore didn't keep a good eye on what was happening in the courts. I would presume any national political party in this country cannot imagine that it would displace millions of people and win elections three months down the line. So I think that was pure callousness. That said I think there is a degree of... to a degree you are right in saying that there is a larger game in place somehow of what's happening. Now one thing that this government and to lesser extent previous governments have wanted is one part of the Forest Rights Act to not get too much focus or not get implemented well which is the consent part. That when you divert a patch of forest to any development activity do you take consent of the community or not? No governments like this because then the discretion and the political economy that arises out of discretion disappears. One can see patterns in the last five years where the government has tried to dilute it in different forms. They have tried severe dilutions at the beginning of their 10 year old in 2014 and 15 which then got busted out then they tried smaller tricks to do it. I think what the forest bureaucracy has done has taken advantage of the fact that this is what the political executive wanted to dilute consent on one side and then come back and say give us also a little more power to have a petty corruption at one level and be in command like a Zamindar yet again of forest. So I think it's a mix of the forest bureaucracy taking advantage of the callousness of the BJP government at this stage. At the other level it is a purposeful intent of the state to say we do not like citizens to have consent powers over what we do. Put together this draconian form comes out. Yes and ahead of the elections because this you know the issue of the tribals and the traditional forest dwellers do you see it becoming an election issue as well? Unfortunately I think it will not. History shows that tribal citizenry and forest dwellers have been treated for generations as second grade citizens. They do not constitute the kind of political force. They do not vote as one across the region. They operate as separate entities like most other communities I would believe and large national parties do see some advantage in catering to them but it's not as if any political party in power and their political economy of running an election is disconnected from exploitation of forest and natural resources. So far we have not heard either from the BJP or the Indian National Congress or any of the large national party opposing the Indian Forest Act amendments that the BJP has proposed. To some extent yes as far as making the right noises is concerned perhaps they will jump in at some point but so far we have not seen any indication from any of them. Yes and you know this whole benefit like you said the callousness on the parts of the governments and the kind of benefits that the forest bureaucracy would have so it also is creating this dichotomy of this discussion about you know environment and conservation versus the consent of the people and the corporate lobbies interests as well. So there is this conflict of interest which becomes pretty evident in this whole discussion. I would like to put it like this. I think between the interests of few influential conservation groups which like to sequester forests away from the citizens who use it and the interests of the industry of using the natural resources that lie under this forest there is a double whammy that the tribal and the forest dwellers face. There are repeat cases where both the conservation groups and the industry would like tribals and tribal rights to be diluted and tribals to be walking away from forests. It helps in aids both these ideas. That said I think there is a strong sense of development of what conservation is in India. There is a maybe not so politically powerful but an influential group of individuals who believe conservation will not work in the long run without tribal communities and the forest dwellers get their democratic rights. This small group unfortunately is not politically influential. You are right in the sense that when these two forces couple out whether willingly or unwillingly they end up doing the same and in some sense diluting the democratic nature of our society to relegating tribal communities and forest dwellers to a yet lower station in life than they already hold. Yes and how do you see these developments unfolding? The states have been given a deadline of June 7th to give their suggestions and so in terms of the amendments how do you see what would be the course of action here? So procedurally still long drawn but tactically what it does is this is the nature of how governance politics plays out. Once the central government presented a template to the states even a state which is slightly more progressive it does not want this. The best option left to it is to say okay delete 10% out of this remove that. This becomes the base template for a negotiation on new law. Ideally one would say if the environment ministry had begun the process of reviewing the Indian Forest Act and it rightly should be reviewed. It's a colonial law. It could have set up a multilateral body which included thinkers and bureaucrats and parts of governance from say the tribal affairs ministry in other concerned states. It could also have set up an institution where states were involved in the right from the beginning to say what should happen to the Indian Forest Act. I think the fact that the template was set and was in some sense chucked to the states and say you know just respond to this creates a bad zero draft in some sense. A better zero draft would have allowed states to respond better. I presume some states will come back and say this is true draconian. I hope so at least. But again the question is will the next government whichever it is whether it's the same incumbent government continuing on the new government that comes in will it have the courage to say that this is draconian enough this is anti-democratic enough that they will not even look at this draft to begin with. I think that's where we need to go back and say this should be scrapped entirely and this policy and this process of revising the 1927 Act which is essential should be undertaken accepting the basic democratic principle that all citizens have same rights. You cannot go around in Indian forest shooting down people with immunity. Yes. So on that note and looking forward to the next governments or if the BJP government comes back to power will they actually say that this is too draconian will the states actually say that this is too draconian in terms of the changes. That is something that will be unfolded and we will keep track of those changes and the story as well. So Nitin thank you so much for discussing extensively about the changes to the Indian Forest Act. Thank you for watching.