Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

Women in Pastoralist and Shifting Cultivation Communities 57
complex land-use patterns, all talk of involving communities (and women)
to sustainably manage, conserve and regenerate these lands, and to make
these systems more ‘efficient’ is a wasteful exercise.
Women are demanding clear legal rights for their communities so as
to continue to practise their livelihoods and use natural resources in these
specific ways. Another point of concern is the way in which women are
being used by the state in the name of equal participation and genderbalanced
development to sidetrack the issue of rights and divert their
attention from the struggle for the right to means of production and livelihood
to artificial, virtual livelihoods, such as earning through carbon trade
from growing forests or the trade in biodiversity and other germplasm.
The experience of the Joint Forest Management is a clear example of this.
In mid-2005, a Bill to recognise the rights of adivasis and other forestdwellers
(including pastoralists and local graziers) to the forests was
drafted and placed before Parliament.∗ While serious flaws, which need
critical attention still exist within the draft, it is a historic step towards
resolving the century-long conflict between forest communities and an
authoritarian, corrupt and repressive forest bureaucracy. This means that
perhaps for the first time in the last 200 years, these women will lead
slightly less insecure lives. However, almost immediately after the Bill
was first drafted, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF),
including the Forest Department and other wildlife lobbies, reacted
(as was expected) negatively. Their response is summed up succinctly by
the following statement of an activist wildlife conservationist and a member
of the Tiger Task Force (which was recently constituted by the MoEF
under the instructions of the prime minister):
The situation is bad enough with all the restrictions, and now the draft
Bill makes a mockery of all conservation efforts. Give them land rights
today and expect total chaos as their population grows. Traditional pastoral
or nomadic lifestyle is not viable in many parts of India due to the decreasing
land-people/livestock ratio. Tribals were wrongly stripped off
their rights under the colonial rule. But we can’t unlive history and it will
be a much greater mistake today if we dream of restoring the pre-colonial
situation. Instead, we must share the economic fruits of our mega-diversity
with the locals and address their livelihood concerns. (Reported in
The Indian Express, 29 April 2005)
∗ The Scheduled Tribes (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006.