om e 's Ali a - Land ss De elo en - Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, India Office

88
Women’s Alienation
in their own fields. The state now
plans to hand over leased land to
private players for tea, tourism and
real estate development.
In 1997 the then Uttar Pradesh
Government reinforced the defunct
British Act of 1893, which had
declared all benap (unmeasured)
arid land as forest land. Thus by
revival of this dead Act, thousands
of hectares of land belonging to
the local populace was converted
into forest land over which they
had no rights. The rights of people
over forests and their land were
further snatched away when the
BJP government passed ‘Uttaranchal
Forest Panchayat Regulations 2001’
and ‘Forest Ordinance Amendment
2002’. Further two Forest Land
Amendment Ordinances were
brought in September 2003 and
January 2004 and an Ordinance by
the then Khanduri government in
May 2007 have displaced people
from their land and have paved the
way for land grabbing by corporate
giants and the capitalists from
outside the state.
In the last few decades, a
considerable areas of land and forest
resources throughout the region
have been excluded from people’s
use in the name of biodiversity
conservation – a chain of national
parks, sanctuaries, biosphere
reserves and other such means
of protection have been created
without any discussion or debate
with the people affected. This has
led to a situation where communities
which are critically dependent upon
the natural resources of an area for
their survival, are often seen as lawbreakers.
In the current era of globalisation
and rapid transformations in
the economy, particularly in the
developing countries, there is an
ongoing threat to the livelihood
and survival of people who are
dependent on the availability of
natural resources and traditionally
having their rights and control over
these resources.
In a situation where the wealth
of the state is equated to the
revenue earned by the state, and
there is constant pressure on the
state to earn even more revenue,
there is deepening of the erosion
of people’s rights over natural
resources. More often than not,
these resources, which people are