Memorandum submitted by Ekta Parishad,
India
It has come to our attention that the UK Parliament's
International Development Committee is holding an inquiry into
the World Bank and IMF. As our organisation, Ekta Parishad, works
directly with people affected by World Bank funded projects in
India, we welcome this opportunity to share a few of our experiences
and concerns.
WORLD BANK
FORESTRY PROJECTS
IN INDIA
In recent years the World Bank and IMF have
tried to persuade that they have changed their policies, are more
open and more concerned to support projects which tackle poverty
and are more socially, culturally and environmentally sensitive.
However, in our experience of working in five Indian states, including
Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Orissa, the World Bank's support
for forestry projects has been very damaging to the interests
of forest dwelling indigenous people who are supposedly the main
beneficiaries of the projects. Indigenous people have been forcibly
evicted from forests where they have lived for generations to
create national parks and wildlife sanctuaries. To make matters
worse, these people have rarely received any compensation or rehabilitation.
For example research by CPWD, a Bhubaneswar based research institute,
showed that only 25 per cent of 60,000 people evicted for forest
projects in the state of Orissa have received any rehabilitation.
The World Bank funded Phase 1 of the Madhya
Pradesh Forestry Project from 1995-99 (MPFP: Cr 2700-IN). The
state of Madhya Pradesh has since been split into two, so two
follow-on projects, in Madhya Pradesh (Project ID P050644) and
in the new state of Chhattisgarh (Project ID P077572) are planned.
Both are currently suspended for dialogue between the World Bank
and the Government of India. Ekta Parishad has major concerns
that these projects cannot meet any of their objectives and asks
that they be cancelled.
The World Bank's Project Information Data Sheets
(PIDs) claim that lessons have been learned from the first phase.
But in our view, there has been no discernible change in the attitude
and method of working of the Forestry Departments (FD) in these
two states. The change in name from Joint Forest Management (JFM)
to Community Forest Management (CFM) is just window dressing,
on the ground nothing has changed or will change.
CONFLICT BETWEEN
FOREST DEPARTMENTS
AND FOREST
DWELLERS
The first phase of the Madhya Pradesh Forestry
Project centred on Joint Forest Management which was supposed
to co-ordinate the activities and interests of the FD and forest
dwellers. But there is long standing conflict between the FD and
the forest dwelling tribal groups and the project has done little
to reduce that.
One major source of conflict is the failure
of the state (as in other Indian states) to regularise indigenous
people's rights as enshrined in the 1980 Central Forest Conservation
Act. Those living in the forests before October 1980 have a right
to remain there. Instead, these people are referred to as encroachers
and the FD, with World Bank funding, has relentlessly driven them
from forests where they have lived for generations. This problem
has become more serious after an order issued by the central Ministry
of Environment and Forests on 3 May 2002, which gave the green
light to evictions. If people are viewed by the FD as encroachers
(and the Chhattisgarh Phase II plan states that there is widespread
encroachment on forest lands) how can these indigenous people
be provided with alternative land or businesses and how can they
be involved in CFM?
The Integrated Safeguards Data Sheet for both
projects notes that there will be involuntary rehabilitation.
The state of Madhya Pradesh has greatly increased the use of firearms
against people resisting eviction in the last two or three years.
The project will strengthen the FD and its ability to act with
impunity against indigenous people. This must contravene the Bank's
own policies on indigenous people.
Our UK partner, Action Village India has just
published a short booklet "Truth Force" describing Ekta
Parishad's mobilisation in Chhattisgarh earlier this year. During
the eviction of a small forest dwelling community from forestland,
one villager, an Ekta volunteer, was hacked to death by members
of the Forest Protection Committee with support from the FD. Ekta
Parishad investigated the incident and then sat in Satyagraha
for five days before persuading the Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh
to agree to provide land to all members of the victim's tribal
group (the Baiga), to end evictions from the forest and suspend
the FD officials behind the killing. This killing indicates that
the partnership the projects envisage between the FD and forest
dwellers with the people having some autonomous control over the
forests is not possible.
LAND OWNERSHIP
AND AUTONOMY
These two projects are to be carried out in
forest fringe areas on degraded forest land. Whilst that is admirable
on paper, in reality there are many problems. Not the least of
which is that much of the land is claimed in the records of both
the Forest and Revenue Departments. From the mid-1950s to 1999
the state redistributed land returned to it by the FD for cultivation.
Now the FD is claiming that land back and evicting cultivators
without compensation. When there is such confusion and conflict
over land, the concept of community forest management is meaningless
and the project, and its plans for involuntary resettlement, will
only increase that conflict. Ekta Parishad has filed a writ petition
in the Supreme Court of India to prevent further evictions from
this "double entry" land.
The Government of Madhya Pradesh has also filed
a writ in the same court seeking permission to amend the 1980
Central Forest Conservation Act to regularise indigenous people's
rights, making it easier for them to remain in the forests. Unless
and until the tribal people are given secure title to the land
the project plans to give "the rights of forest produce and
autonomy of forest land and resource management to indigenous
people" cannot materialise in practice. The FD will not give
up its control over the forests and forest dwelling people.
The plans for autonomy are also flawed in that
the PIDs state that "Communities will be empowered to take
autonomous decisions assigned to them. In reality this is no different
to the failed JFM model as all power will be with the FD. Lack
of autonomy will undermine the project's aim of "providing
sustainable livelihoods for forest dwelling people". The
PIDs note that changes are needed in the way that the FDs operate,
and so far there has been no sign that they are willing or able
to do so.
Ekta Parishad's own researchers found that in
the state of Madhya Pradesh alone, 474 villages have been displaced
for national parks and wildlife sanctuaries. Very few of the people
who have been evicted from their ancestral homes have received
any compensation. One of the main reasons for this is that the
state government and forestry department accept only about one
in four of the claims to ancestral land according to the FD's
own records. The remainder are left to fend for themselves.
Until the rights of indigenous people to their
ancestral land and their right to autonomy under Tribal Self-Rule
are fully implemented, the partnership between the FD and the
people cannot work as envisaged in the PID. Ekta Parishad demands
that the land should be settled permanently with the tribals who
have actually been using the land both prior to 1980 and since.
DfID may well become involved in these two projects
as the World Bank envisages DfID taking up a rural livelihoods
programme in the project areas. The UK government should put pressure
on the World Bank not to proceed with these two projects until
the serious practical problems have been overcome. At the moment
it is unjustified to start these two projects.
October 2003
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