MP's forest villages: land rights promise lost in bureaucratic maze

Despite 75 years of Indian independence and since the landmark Forest Rights Act was enacted, tribal communities in Madhya Pradesh and other states continue to face challenges in securing their rights. Many still live like nomads in their own settled villages, struggling for recognition and stability.

For the past twenty years, the Madhya Pradesh government has been working to integrate tribal communities into the mainstream of development. One effort has been to convert 925 forest villages into revenue villages.

Between 2002 and 2004, the state government submitted district-wise proposals to make forest villages into revenue villages. Of these, 310 forest villages were approved, but in 2004, the Supreme Court issued a stay on the process.

In 2022, Home Minister Amit Shah renewed hope for tribal communities during a program in Bhopal, but two years later, they are still waiting for change. The process to convert Vangram into a revenue village has not advanced beyond paperwork. This is particularly concerning given that the state government has already converted 792 out of 827 villages into revenue villages, with gazette notifications issued for 790 of them.

On 28 December last year, during an Executive Committee meeting of the Task Force for the Forest Rights Act and Paisa Law, Chief Minister Dr. Mohan Yadav urged district-level officers from the Forest, Revenue, and Tribal Affairs Departments to work together and quickly provide the villagers with their Record of Rights based on the government’s notification. 

Tribal rights activists have urged the state government to give individual and community forest resource rights to tribals under the Forest Rights Act of 2006 and fix any mistakes before converting forest villages into revenue villages. They all agree that if tribals don't get legal recognition for their land rights and are only listed in the revenue records based on maps from the forest department, most will be seen as encroachers. In that case, the state government will have no reason to convert forest villages into revenue villages. 

Forest and community rights

Activist Dr. Sharad Lele, who is also a member of the task force, explains that Vangrams are old forest villages established by the Forest Department, and the department maintains records of these settlements.

“This means the tribal communities living in Vangrams should be granted both individual and community rights. Only then can Vangrams be converted into revenue villages."

Dr. Lele adds, "Mistakes have been made in the leases issued to tribal communities, and many have not received any at all. Therefore, individual and community forest rights must be granted in every forest village. To achieve this, comprehensive measurements will need to be conducted again. Maps and documents will have to be prepared, and corrections made by filing both new and old claims offline."

For example, during the implementation of the Forest Rights Act in 20 forest villages of Dindori district in 2023, most villagers faced issues with their leases. While their claims were in acres, the leases were issued in decimals. In some cases, names were incorrect, land compartments (forest areas) were mismatched, and there were errors in the size and location of the land.

Timeline

Madhya Pradesh has 925 forest villages spread across 29 districts. Between January 2002 and 2004, district-wise proposals were sent to the Ministry of Environment and Forests under the Forest Conservation Act, 1980, to convert 827 of these into revenue villages. Of these, 310 villages received approval. However, in 2004, the Supreme Court, while hearing petition number 337/1995, issued a stay on deforestation and halted the Ministry's order to convert forest villages into revenue villages. As a result, the conversion of the remaining 517 villages remains pending.

Under the rules for converting forest villages into revenue villages, an opinion was sought from the Law Department on 12 December 2016. Based on this opinion and with the approval of the Government of India, guidelines were issued on 26 May 2022 to convert 827 forest villages into revenue villages. Following this, on 25 August 2022, the MP Tribal Affairs Department directed all collectors and forest division officers to complete the conversion process within a set timeframe.

To connect the tribals living in forest villages, who have been waiting for development for years, with the mainstream of development, the government decided to give revenue status to forest villages. 

This decision has raised hopes among the residents that they too can get their rights related to land and agriculture like normal villagers; public welfare works and community development works will also be done through the Panchayat, while they will also get rid of the sword of forest law that has been hanging over their heads for years, but this does not seem to be happening on the ground because, due to a combination of ignorance, indifference, and a forest department not letting go of the land, nothing has changed in these forest villages.

The government may make a million claims, but the truth is that the tribals have been living like nomads in their settled villages for years, and perhaps they will have to live like this in the future too. 

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