A tribal was beaten to death by three forest guards on the mere suspicion that he may have cut a tree. The 'evidence' of this offence was that he possessed (The horror! The horror!) a wooden cot...
This is not a unique case of excess, though it would be one of the more extreme in the tribal and hinterland areas of this country--particularly in central and eastern India. The quotidian and appalling oppression of the Indianstate is so pervasive that the Muria tribals of Bastar have a saying that goes something like this:
"Heaven is a forest of miles and miles of mahua trees. And hell is a forest of miles and miles of mahua trees with a forest guard in it."
And while the agencies of the state have acquired such an often-deserved reputation for oppression, they are almost completely absent from widespread regions as benefactors or providers. For the tribal areas, this has been a matter, largely, of the well-intentioned but entirely misconceived policies inherited from the Nehruvian era, which sought to'protect' the tribals from predatory interventions into their areas of traditional habitation, and to create a system of'controlled contact' under which they would be prepared for 'full citizenship' in modern India. Under a string of unenlightened political successors, and in the hands of an increasingly ignorant, obdurate and corrupt bureaucracy, this system was transformed into a structure of isolation, neglect and, progressively, exploitation and abuse. If anything, the problems have been compounded by a series of judicial directives intended to'protect forests', which offer little protection against the contractor-forest official nexus that is clear-felling vast tracts, but which divest the tribal of any right to the resources that have been his for the millennia, and that infinitely strengthen the petty tyrannies of local officials andgovernment extortionists.
Gigantic 'development' projects and industries are now making renewed inroads into tribal areas, but yielding little benefits to them. They are ousted from their homes, to which they have no legal title, since all their forest lands'belong' to the government, and are paid little or no compensation--a legally impeccable position, since they'own' nothing. The state's record of rehabilitation of populations displaced by development projects is inexcusable and, of the millions displaced by dams, mines, industries and wildlife protection schemes only a fraction have been'resettled'--usually under grossly ill-planned and mismanaged rehabilitation projects. The rest of them are simply left to their own devices, to migrate, survive, or starve, as the case may be.
K.P.S.Gill is former director-general of police, Punjab. He is also Publisher, SAIR and President, Institute for Conflict Management. This article was first published in The Pioneer.