Description
The Forest Rights Act (FRA) promulgated in 2006, redefined the meaning of terms such as ‘forest’ and ‘land’ itself. Replacing the terminology of possession with the language of ‘belonging,’ the FRA promised a giant leap in the development of community rights in the country. By articulating legally binding definitional changes in the notions of property and ownership, the FRA empowered forest dwellers of the country to resist encroachment of traditional lands by empowering communities to exclude those that do not lay communitarian claims on the land.
Implementation of the FRA however, has been riddled with obstacles. An environmental opposition has been mounted that argues that the FRA and the representation it offers traditional forest dwellers amounts to a threat of destruction to forests itself. A binary between community rights and forest rights has therefore been created. Meanwhile, the State, remains absent in the proceedings of the Supreme Court, despite being the chief defender of FRA as its drafter and enforcer. The development logic of the new regime in power is significantly different from the regime that first enacted the FRA.
This paper attempts to look at the debates around the FRA and argue that the changed logic of development under the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) government has joined forces with forces of hyper-conservationism to present a misleading narrative that attempts to undercut a worthy piece of legislation guaranteeing rights to millions of forest dwellers in India. Further, it attempts to situate this debate in theories of degrowth and attempt to locate the changing definition of development both for the State and the people it defends.
