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POSCO: One More Case of Forest Land Grab

On June 12th, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh made national headlines when he ... to the Odisha government to avoid force when taking people's land for the POSCO project. He called upon them to respect "dialogue and discussion" and "democratic processes." The Minister's "concern" followed the statements of national Congress leaders condemning the police operation in the area, as the media was filled with images of protesters lying in burning sand, children and women facing off with armed police, and appeals from thousands of people to halt the takeover of 3,000 acres of forest land for POSCO.

But the Minister failed to mention a rather important fact. The law already provides for such a democratic process, and his Ministry is the single biggest reason that those laws are not followed. The result is gross injustice to millions of people across the country, who find that their lands and forests are grabbed for corporate profit (incidentally, let's not call this "development"; in the case of POSCO, for instance, the project will destroy three times as many jobs as it will create...).

Let's take a closer look at the process involved. Under section 2 of the Forest (Conservation) Act, "diversion" of forest land, or the use of forest land for "non-forest purposes" (essentially any activity except afforestation) requires the permission of the Environment Ministry. This is the so-called "forest clearance" process. Approximately 23% of the country's land area is recorded as forest; under a 1996 Supreme Court order, all land recorded as forest is subject to the Forest (Conservation) Act. Thus, land use in almost a quarter of the country is technically under the jurisdiction of a single Ministry of the Central government.

These vast areas have millions of people dependent on them for individual cultivation, collection of forest produce and other livelihood activities. In many areas they are also under some form of village management, ranging from the informal forest protection committees in the POSCO area, to the elaborate state-sanctioned Van Panchayats of Uttarakhand, to the entirely community controlled areas of parts of the Northeast.

But unlike most other processes concerned with natural resources - whether it is private land acquisition, the Environmental Impact Assessment process, urban planning, etc. - neither the Forest (Conservation) Act nor its Rules provides for even informing the public, leave alone consulting them, before decisions on diversion of forest land are made. This extreme centralisation of power leads to both absurdity and tragedy. Examples abound: the Lower Subansiri Dam project, where the MoEF has diverted forest land that does not even belong to the government (it is community land); the Polavaram dam, bigger than the Sardar Sarovar project, where more than 250 adivasi villages are to lose their lands and community forests without a word about their rights; and of course POSCO.

Until January 1st, 2008, this was deemed to be legal, despite being grossly unjust. On that date, the Forest Rights Act came into force. The FRA had two critical sets of provisions that affected takeover of forest land. First, it recognised individual and community rights of forest dwellers on forests and forest lands, and explicitly barred (section 4(5)) removal of forest dwellers until the recognition and recording process is complete. Second, and more importantly, the FRA gave communities - and specifically their gram sabhas (assemblies of all village residents) and village institutions - the power to manage and protect forests, biodiversity, water sources and their cultural and natural heritage.

But this clashed headlong with the entire basis of the forest governance regime in the country, under which forests were treated as the private property of the state, to be policed, protected and destroyed as per decisions made by the forest authorities. As a result, despite the fact that it was now engaging in a direct violation of a law, MoEF simply carried on diverting forest land for projects as if the FRA and people's rights did not exist.

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Comment by Subhajit Pal on June 19, 2011 at 5:08am: I think Odisha government does not want to learn anything from West Bengal, where 400 acre of fertile land was given back to farmers to save their livelihood and Environment.