Lamkanhar, Chhattisgarh: The morning sun shines bright and harsh in the forests around Rowghat. Sitting under the cool shade of a sal tree from where two armed BSF guards can be seen resting, Jageshwar Oraon, 50, asserts that his forefathers have cultivated on a part of that land for about a century now, their cattle have grazed there, and they used the forest produce for generations.

“The 'force' is always here. They come walking from Pondgaon, the neighbouring village,” he whispers, cautiously. A subsistence farmer who depends heavily on this patch of land and the PDS to make his living, Jageshwar said, “We grow urad, kulthi and dhaan to feed our family of six. This year I have dhan ki kheti (paddy cultivation).” For cash requirements, he said, he sells forest produce, shared with other villagers. “I sell tendu leaves, mahua and kusum laakh, and I use the job-card for work, which fetches me about Rs 25,000 a year. Other families dependent on this land earn about the same amount,” he said.

As he eloquently explained the significance of the village deities on the land, Jageshwar conceded that he neither had a patta or individual forest right nor has his village ever claimed for community forest rights for use and management of forests and the resources therein guaranteed under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA).

Jageshwar's home is at Lamkanhar, under Antagarh Tehsil, 40 km away from the proposed Rowghat mines on the road to Narayanpur. The area is home to around 800 traditional forest dwellers, mostly Gond Adivasis like him. The dense forest-covered hills of Rowghat, an hour from Lamkanhar, separate Kanker district from Narayanpur. The village lies on the way to these hills in the midst of the vast forest-lands, dotted with lush-green paddy fields.

Importantly, the area has the second highest deposit of iron ore in the country.

Since 2014, the process of land acquisition for housing, schools, hospitals and other support infrastructure for the prospective mine workers started with Bhilai Steel Plant leading the initiative. With the onset of these mining prospects, there were instances of growing resistance by the locals. The state had deployed the Border Security Force here much before that. Lamkanhar now snuggles between security camps on two sides.

In the last 12 years, the Chhattisgarh government has taken no initiative in implementing the FRA to recognise the rights of adivasis but has begun to disturb their quietude. Jageshwar is now aware of the impending perils to his land and livelihood as the fear of dispossession looms over him.

Also read: To Respect Human Rights, the Government Should Strategise to Coexist First, Not to Evict

In June this year, the collector of Kanker acquired about 30 acres of land of farmers like Jageshwar, to transfer it to the Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) for its township and other uses. They executed an adla-badli in lieu of the land taken for setting up IIT in Bhilai from the BSP. The provisions of this scheme have been used with a disingenuous motive. Part IV, Serial no. 3, clause 20 of the Revenue Book of Circulars, Chhattisgarh is clear about the scope of adla-badli: it is meant for consolidation of agricultural lands of a farmer, if scattered in faraway places, inside a district. The provisions clearly say that the adla-badli being carried out “should not create adverse situations for any other persons.” Clearly, the district administration has blatantly overruled all procedural principles.

The rights of the Adivasis are often diluted while the preamble of the FRA recognises that “the forest rights on ancestral lands and their habitat were not adequately recognized in the consolidation of State forests during the colonial period as well as in independent India resulting in historical injustice to the forest dwelling Scheduled Tribes and other traditional forest dwellers who are integral to the very survival and sustainability of the forest ecosystems.” Hence, it states, this Act is necessary “to address the longstanding insecurity of tenurial and access rights” of forest dwellers, including “those who were forced to relocate their dwelling due to State development interventions.”

Undercutting rules, overriding Adivasis

The trail of illegalities and intimidation in this region is quite long and murky. Three months before the collector’s order to secure the land for the Bhilai Steel Plant, the villagers of Lamkanhar had written out an apatti-patra (objection letter) to state that the acquisition of the proposed land would create a dearth of grazing land for their cattle. “We had drafted a panchnama stating our objections to the patwari; however, they did not act on it. Neither were we called to depose our testimonies. We only heard later that they rejected our claim and went forward with the transaction,” said Rajman Dugga, the gram patel.

Later in June, the gram panchayat was coerced – with threats of violence – by the security forces and government officers to issue a no-objection certificate for this transaction. “The SDO threatened to put us in jail for obstructing government work. She intimidated us and forced us to sign. We were scared for our lives and signed the document,” said Rajman Dugga. “The gram sabha was cunningly bypassed to take the permission of the representative body – the panchayat – only. It was clear that the villagers did not want to comply to this illegal transaction of lands, they knew it.”

The no-objection certificate, then, on June 3 this year, travelled from the tehsildar of Antagarh, through the SDO and the collector of Kanker to reach the State Secretariat in just one day, after which the order to secure the land for the BSP was passed. “This remarkable administrative efficiency is indicative of the intentions of acquiring the land at the earliest, in a hurry,” Dugga said. The Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension To The Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996, 4(m)(iii) states: “While endowing Panchayats in the Scheduled Areas with such powers and authority as may be necessary to enable them to function as institutions of self-government, a State Legislature shall ensure that the Panchayats at the appropriate level and the Gram Sabha are endowed specifically with the power to prevent alienation of land in the Scheduled Areas and to take appropriate action to restore any unlawfully alienated land of a Scheduled Tribe.” This, in principle, makes clear the importance of the power that rests on the community to decide on the uses of their land. In practice, though, the role of the gram panchayat is sorely neglected.

An FIR was lodged against the SDO by the villagers later, for her threats and use of force. She was quoted in the local media denying the charges.

Explaining the illegality of the adla-badli scheme, Archit Krishna, a lawyer working with Maati, a legal aid group in the area, says, “This is a process deployed here to facilitate the BSP to take over land in this Schedule V area. It is aimed at circumventing the existing constitutional protections, and other laws like FRA and PESA, for the Adivasis.” He added, “Jageshwar and the likes of him who are affected across four districts have become ‘encroachers’ in their own land, and are being evicted without any due compensation or rehabilitation. Apart from the mala fide illegalities, the brazen threat and violence against them reveal the truth of development in these areas.”

Living in uncertainty

Moreover, there is palpable fear in the region due to the presence of the BSF and the SSB, often leading to conditions where any resistance is clamped down with severe repercussion. The People’s Union for Civil Liberties, in 2012, stated that the armed personnel-to-civilian ratio in Antagarh is extremely disproportionate. “If one considers the entire population of Antagarh block, which is 64,820 as per 2001 census data, this amounts to a ratio of one soldier per sixteen civilians,” the report said.

Jageshwar is alarmed by the possibility of losing his agricultural field and income from forest produce. “I will fight it until I live, I might have to go to jail, but I shall fight them to save my land which belongs to us for our next generation.” For people like him who are far away from the cash-economy, the only way to live is farming. This is being disturbed by forced and violent state intervention.

Also read: Does Raising Questions on the Rights of Adivasis Make Me a ‘Deshdrohi'?

Rajman Dugga is worried about the unnerving clampdown on them. “The comfort of our village shall be affected, it is already withering away. Our way of living is being attacked slowly. The Adivasi way of life is being wiped away to make us hanker for money for everything,” he said. “They will come again, take more land. Today it is a few families, tomorrow it can be us, and all of us. We will fight it out.”

What is alarming is that these rampant violations are the norm rather than the exception. Such mala fide transactions have been executed in several districts of Chhattisgarh. Such a denial of constitutionally guaranteed rights to a massive Adivasi population shows the sorry state of implementation of the FRA and the violations of everyday freedom in 'police states'. The failure to recognise the legitimate ownership of land by the Adivasis and the erasure of their history in an administrative system which is creaking and ruthless is indicative of the inequalities constitutive in the society. That the government and its machinery treat them as people with no justiciable rights ensures that they are pushed further into the margins. The only way forward, as even the villagers believe today, is the intervention of the judiciary. Until then, Jageshwar Oraon and many others like him can only wait in hope.

Abinash Dash Choudhury is an independent writer and activist.

The author would like to thank Archit Krishna, Rajman Dugga, Jageshwar Oraon and villagers of Lamkanhar for their insightful inputs.

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