'Give more compensation to tribals'

After farmers, the Central government is looking for a higher compensation regime for forestland acquired from tribals and forest dwellers for various projects.

Updated on: Aug 1, 2011, 02:17:27 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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After farmers, the Central government is looking for a higher compensation regime for forestland acquired from tribals and forest dwellers for various projects.

The move comes after the rural development ministry issued a draft land acquisition bill providing for market-linked compensation to farmers and the demand by tribal groups for a national policy on the rehabilitation of tribals displaced by large-scale mining across India to end lop-sided growth. Over 1.64 lakh hectares of forestland has been lost due to mining affecting lakhs of tribals.

Tribal affairs minister Kishore Chandra Deo, who took charge this month, wants a clear policy on higher compensation to people displaced because of the increasing number of private projects on forestland.

"The compensation should be based on the rights of the tribals settled under the Forest Rights Act. No clearance to projects should be given until all rights of the people living in forest were settled and adequate compensation is decided," Deo told HT.

A government committee headed by the National Advisory Council member N C Saxena had found that a large number of claims of individual rights of forest dwellers under the the FRA, whose enforcement is job of Deo's ministry, has been wrongly rejected.

To ensure that FRA provisions are enforced before approving projects, Deo said no clearance to projects should be given until his ministry certifies that the rights of forest dwellers under the watershed law are settled.

"We have a definite role to play in the environment clearance process," he said, while adding that he will be meeting environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan soon. In addition, he sought a transparent formula for determining compensation for different type of projects.

Deo, a tribal from Andhra Pradesh, says his ministry will play a proactive role to enforcing FRA so that there is no repeat of violation of tribal rights as in the case of mining permission given to Orissa Mining Corporation for Vedanta Resources almunium factory in Lanjigarh district of Orissa. The environment ministry had cancelled the clearance after it found that rights of local tribals were not settled before allowing mining.

The 64-year-old minister agrees that the tribals have not gained economically and socially from huge private sector investment in the tribal areas. Half of India's rich mineral districts are in the tribal areas. Three districts in Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh account for 70% of India's coal reserves and 80 % of high quality iron-ore but are still among the poorest regions of the nation.

"We want to change how projects are executed in tribal areas. It should lead to empowerment rather than disenchantment," he said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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