THE GRAM SABHA AS A LEGAL FORUM FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: THE CASE OF COMMUNITY FOREST RIGHTS

Abstract

Decentralization through the Gram Sabha (village assembly) has been legalized on the basis of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA), creating community control over Community Forest Resources (CFR). The current report suggests that although the FRA is a well-developed legal framework to right the historical injustice of Victorian-era forest management, its transformative possibilities are harshly limited due to a structural and long-standing gap in implementation.

This study offers an overview of the de facto performance of the Gram Sabha through the quantitative review of data on national implementation of the FRA program and qualitative case studies within Maharashtra, Odisha and Chhattisgarh based on a mixed-methods analysis. There is evidence that CFR governance approaches that have worked in states such as Maharashtra and Odisha, on the one hand, guarantee valuable socio-ecological and economic gains, which confirms the risk philosophy underlying the Act that rights-based conservation would result in sustainable livelihoods and enhanced local government. Conversely, these successes are an exception in a terrain that is characterised by large-scale obstacles.[1]

The institutionally entrenched bureaucratic resistance, especially of the state Forest Departments, dilutes the mandated executive (legal) authority of the Gram Sabha by circumventing the delegated legislative body by procedural sabotage and bureaucratic inertia. On the inside, issues of elite bourgeoisie and gender inequalities undermine the democratic and deliberative operation of the Gram Sabha. To achieve the envision of environmental justice as embodied in the FRA, it is not only necessary to incorporate the vision into legal frameworks but also to integrate a political will to eliminate the legacies of colonial power and, instead, implement community-based governance of the forests in India as the new dominant paradigm of forestry management.[2]

[1]Report of the Fact-Finding Committee on Implementation of the Forest Rights Act, 2006 (Ministry of Tribal Affairs, March 2024).

[2]Sharachchandra Lele,‘An Uphill Struggle to Grow the Forest Rights Act’The Hindu (18 December 2023) (discussing political, bureaucratic resistance to FRA)