By Jerome K Diengdoh
On July 27, 2023, the Lower House passed the Forest Conservation Amendment Bill sans a shred of debate admissible to the oppositions by the Modi- led government by cynically leveraging its brute majority. Subsequently, the same has been endorsed by the Upper House with the aid of a few opportunistic regional parties like BJD of 0disha and YSRCP of Andhra Pradesh, to name a few. The President of India Draupadi Murmu has, obligingly signed the Bill to become an effective Act.
While recapitulating the historical context of forest land, it’s well known that tribals vis-a-vis forest have been coexisting since time immemorial. The tribals consist of 7% of the national population who are inextricably homogenized with forest life. These are indigenous aboriginals like the Adivasis and the Hynñiewtrep of Khasi-Jaintia communities; the latter are per se the first dwellers of such stretch of landscapes. It’s par for the course that tribals have had the right to forest land being the primeval dwellers thereof. The customary laws and cultural practices of tribals are closely knitted with the virgin forests like the sacred groves of the Khasi-Jaintia Hills. More often than not, the tribals linked to the forest milieu have had to counter various challenges and being on the verge of deprivations by forest legislations passed from time to time by those at the helm. Nonetheless, to ameliorate such disabilities, the then government in its forest oriented policy in 1996 declared some forest areas as scheduled areas for the tribals to have self-governing powers, to avail natural resources of forest on the premise of it being its dwellers for aeons. To add icing on the cake, in 1996 by way of The Scheduled Tribe & other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, the Government is to ensure the basic friendly rights of the tribals whereby they can protect, regenerate, conserve, and scrupulously manage the community forest that is intrinsically dear to their heart of hearts!
Alas, the saffron government at the centre has slyly engineered this Act in collusion with the big corporates with brazen commercial mindset in order to leverage the rich forest natural reserves. The government has justified this Forest Act on account of so called climate change, whereby it can ensure better management of forest, improve productivity and usher seamless flow of ecosystem produce to their respective destinations; euphemistically, a term for minerals exploitations. Additionally, zoos, safaris and eco-tourism will be established therein. The knowledgeable friends of mine have visualized that in such Kafkaesque situations corporate bigwigs like Ambani, Adani et al will be given spaces to have a free level playing field!
If we contextualize this Act in question to Meghalaya, it’s feared that the same will only spell disaster in the long run given that the major chunk of indigenous tribes dwell in and around the periphery of the forest land having rich mineral-deposits. In the land of Hynñewtrep alone there are deposits of Uranium to the tune of 9.22 million tonnes of high grade quality and Domiasiat, village in Southwest Khasi Hills district sits on top of India’s biggest Uranium deposits. Such invaluable deposits have become a mouth-watering temptation for UCIL (Uranium Corporation of India). However, to have access to this mineral, the Corporation has had to procure the unhindered consent of the District Council, local durbar etc.
It was once reported that Khasi Hills District Council was on the verge of endorsing UCIL to mine Uranium, but NGOs and the concerned villagers stood their ground in opposing the move, notwithstanding manifold strains of allurements. But the most defining fact was when a nonagenarian lady, named Kong Spelity Lyngdoh Langrin, who owned a large tract of land where Uranium is deposited, flatly refused to accept Rs.45 crores for a 30 year lease of her land to UCIL. This noble lady had told reporters, thus, ” Money will not buy my freedom.” Perhaps, Modi knows that there are hundreds of Kong Spelity in the land of Hynñewtrep; hence, this Act!
As to the enforcement of this forest Act, the citizens of Nagaland are said to have exhorted their government to oppose it tooth and nail as Nagaland possesses significant reserves of oil. And no wonder that the ongoing mayhem in Manipur is artfully engineered by some political vested interests to get the Kuki- Zo people displaced from their hill-tracts as these landscapes contain large reserves of oil. This assertion is exposed by none other than the Ex-Lieutenant General Shakti Gurung, who has gone on record to say that the land spaces inhabited by these tribals contain a bowl of oil estimated to be 5 trillion cubic feet in size! Come what may, if the Nagas have visualized that the implementation of this Act could land up being profited by the corporates and some unscrupulous representatives and in the end of the day precipitate wanton destructions of flora and fauna, I can’t see why we too not pursue the same strategies and oppose the Act. It’s certain that the Government of Nagaland will listen to their respective citizens’ concern and pass viable legislation to counterpoise this Forest Act. I can’t see why our NPP led government does not emulate the anticipated action of the Nagaland government? So ”let’s hope for the best and prepare for the worst,” as stated years ago by the former dynamic AASU general secretary, late Bhrigu Kumar Phukan at the height of foreigners’ agitation in Assam!