‘Forest Rights Act can give tribal communities their due’

Around 600 claims have been filed within a span of ten weeks

Ashwini Chhatre, professor at Indian School of Business, at a conference on forest rights at ISB in the city on Friday.

The Forest Rights Act of 2006 could help ensure rights for tribal and other forest-dependent communities. As many as 600 claims have been filed by the ISB’s project for Upscaling Community Forest Resource Rights, Recognition and Governance in India.

Speaking about the initiative at the Recognition of the Land and Forest Rights of Indigenous People and Local Communities conference, project specialist Avijit Chatterjee said while the target is to submit 5,000 such claims, around 600 have been filed within a short span of ‘10 weeks’.

He said the project, which is in collaboration with NGOs, intends to empower communities to secure rights to customary forests and build private sector support for community resource rights. The project will also entail setting up of systems for socio-ecological monitoring of community lands and forests. Mr. Chatterjee emphasised that tribals and other forest dwellers have been suppressed for decades and the practice is continuing. The only way to move forward to secure land rights of these communities is to enter into dialogue. Speaking to

The Hindu on the sidelines of the conference, Academic Director - Digital Identity and Bharti Institute of Public Policy, Prof. Ashwini Chhatre explained that physical resources, i.e. forests, are best managed collectively but should not be privatised.

“Privatising a forest will destroy it. To maintain it as a forest and also to derive value from it, it is important to think about an alternative way because privatising will not do and the government has failed,” he said.

Prof. Chhatre said while it was true that some private companies and corporations have not respected the rights of communities, he underscored that the phenomenon is not ‘monolithic’.