Concept note
Founding Conference of
All India Union of Forest Working People (AIUFWP)
All India Union of Forest Working People (AIUFWP)
Town Hall,
Puri, Odisha, India
3-4 June
2013
The forests of the
country are inhabited by a sizeable section of forest working people who number
about 15 crores, (150 million) dependent on the forests in some way or the
other for their self-employed livelihood – procurement and sale of Minor Forest
Produce (MFP), agriculture on forest land, plantation work, rearing cattle, extraction
of minor minerals, fishing, making articles from forest produce, construction
work, extinguishing forest fires, etc. A very small section of the forest people
work as wage labourers in various Forest Department work, like plantation, construction
work, putting out fires etc.
Forest based working
people may be classified into two broad categories – one, who for centuries
have been traditionally deriving livelihood from the forests and who are referred to as forest
people (Adivasis or moolnivasis
-original inhabitants) and the other being those, who were settled by the
Forest Department ,since the colonial period ,for plantation and other related
forest work, from outside the traditional forest boundaries, into the forest,
and those who are referred to as forest workers(Van Taungyas). About 60 % of forest dependent
communities are adivasis including those who are not Scheduled tribes.
Pastoralist/nomadic tribes have sizeable sections who are muslims. Women
constitute the biggest percentage of the working force in the forests.
Paradoxically, even though constituting such sizeable numbers, the forest
working people lack visibility and are not even considered part of the larger recognized
working class as such. However, from time immemorial, this community has been
engaged in primary production and has played an important role in creating
and preserving the country’s resources. From the beginning of primitive
accumulation of capital which started in the colonial era in the
capitalist development process, their labour has been wantonly exploited. This
phase was marked by raw exploitation of a large section of the forest working
people especially those constituting the Taungya community, who were subjected
to primeval slave like treatment with bonded labour/ captive labour status.
The onset of the
British presence on Indian shores saw the beginning of severe attacks on the
forest based communities in the name of “development”, unleashed by
the imperialist/capitalists for exploitation and appropriation of the forest
and natural resources of the country. This resulted in the rapid and tragic
displacement of the forest based communities from the very lifeline and
socio-ecological bases of their existence. These attacks on the very
foundations of their existence was opposed and many instances of heroic
uncompromising resistances- sometimes long drawn out, on issues of their self rule
and preservation of forest and natural resources- dot the period of
establishment of colonial ownership of the forests. These struggles were led by
icons like Tilka Majhi, Sidhu Kanu, Birsa Munda, Sitaramaya Raju, Lakhsman
Nayak and leadership of multitudes of adivasis. But all these resistances
remained local or regional at best and were suppressed with ruthless superior
armed power. However the fury of these strong indigenous revolts made it amply
clear to the colonialist rulers that such blatantly oppressive techniques of
governance would not work out too long and that such struggles could take on a
national character in no time. So after one hundred years of blinding loot of
our forests, the British rulers brought in Forest Policies and Rules towards
the later half of the 19th century, thereby legalizing the loot
through such oppressive legislations. All forest policies and rules made by the
British had only one underlying objective – loot of forest resources.
In 1947 India became politically independent and in
1950, with the adoption of a new Constitution, India became a republic. Like the
flood of democratic liberating expectations sweeping the multitudes of the
country, the forest based communities were also hopeful of betterment in their
lives. Nothing actually happened and worst, the Indian forests continued to be
administered in the same colonially exploitative vein by the Indian government
where people continued to be deprived of their basic rights. Article 21 of the
Indian Constitution guaranteed “Right to Life” – implying that all Indian
citizens had the right to live an honorable life by getting full opportunity
for income generation and livelihood options. But the Indian ruling class
through the colonial institution of the Forest Department went on a public land
usurpation spree, and the boundaries of “forest land” expanded with the illegal
occupation of village land and at the same time the rapid destruction of the
forest continued and forest based communities kept getting displaced from
traditional forest based habitats. As the pillars of “development” –
industries, power plants, mines, big dams appeared, the forest cover depleted,
people got displaced, millions of lives were torn asunder, unemployment
grew....and when people opposed, the governments relied and believed only in
increased state violence. The forest regions gradually became a terrain of
violence. Neither people survived nor did the forests or the bio diversity of
the forests. In the name of Wild Life or Environment protection stricter rules
of controlling the forests were passed with more powers to repress any dissent.
In three decades after independence it had become clear to the forest based
communities that they continued to be slaves of the Forest Department and only a
second war of independence could liberate them from this slavery. From the 90s
the “neo-liberal” package of capitalist responses to counter the apparent
deepening structural crisis of Capital, saw multi and translational companies
arriving in hordes in the forests resulting in rampant exploitation of forest, land, water, hills. People had to
organise themselves in to protests against such ruthless exploitation. Post
80s, some sections of social movements and peoples movements started
interacting closely with such movements of forest based communities and
gradually a regional and national coordination began and grew, and within such
co-ordinations and co-operations a process of forming a national platform began
to take shape from 1993-94, resulting in the formation of Nation Forum of
Forest People and Forest Workers (NFFPFW) in 1998. Some more processes also existed at a
regional level. This proved to be a critical moment in the Forest Rights
movement in the country. An interesting aspect in the very formation of the
Forum was a decision to, in future, transform itself in to a national
federation of forest working people. It was clear such a transformation would be
necessary to counter and replace the anti-people forest administration with a
community based self rule of the forest people which would run on democratic
republican principles. The forum from its formative days kept in touch
with national, international workers movements with labour rights,
environmental justice and right to livelihood as key common denominators.
Simultaneously two other processes were seen in the forests – (a)the environmental process - which questioned the very functioning of the
Forest Department and talked of
protection of natural resources, but did not give primacy to the question of right to livelihood or the question
of changing the colonial forest
governance structures. They kept searching for alternatives within the given structure
– joint forest management, eco-development, social forestry etc (b) the political process - from the 80s onwards
extreme left political ideologies engendered some political processes in the
forested regions of the country and also established themselves within some
forest based communities, these “processes” are currently broadly termed as “Maoist”.
They also talked about dismantling the colonial governance structure but never
based on the self rule of the communities; the only alternative they envision
is capture and creation of a new state power by the Party. In the midst of the
tussle of these different trends, the Forum concentrated on building a
democratic movement for the creation of a new legislation replacing the
government and the “eminent domain” of the state and their ruling classes over
the forest and replacing current anti-people forest governance with a
democratic community centric governance structure.
In
formation of Forum women force played a very important role. They also played a
very important role in all the struggles against the colonial legacy of State
inside the forest area and in some key tensed areas such as Kaimur, Bundelkhand
played instrumental role in creating a democratic space. They contributed
immensely in forming, strengthening and widening the local organization. They
could very well imagine that in order to take back their rights they have to
fight the repressive and exploitative state that is present in the form of
police, forest department, contractors, mafias, companies, feudals,
capitalists, dominant sections etc. Simultaneously they launched multilayer
struggles against these forces. The driving force for them was security and
good life for their future generation. They were clear in their mind that they
are fighting for generations to come and not for a short span of life. Hence
they were more vigor, energetic, active to develop the strategy to fight these
forces in a collective manner. In many areas such as MP, Bihar,
UP, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand they were instrumental in implementing the Act in
their own way by reclaiming thousands of hectare of forest land and sustaining
it in a collective manner. It was through these initiatives that they felt very
strongly that they need to unionize in order to sustain these lands and forest
for their future generation, build economic activities based on the natural
resources, build their own infrastructure of development, education , health
etc and form new institution like cooperatives to strengthen these economic
activities. Eventually union will help them to protect their rights and
dignity.
It is noteworthy that in the all the issues
about environmental crisis and forest governance, the community never
participated and were never in fact included in these debates. These debates
were confined within the “expert” middle class and elites. It may be recalled
that English education system and the professional/expert middle class were
given birth to strengthen the bases of colonial rule, so that colonial
governance could function smoothly. That is why this class has always been
against people’s movements and the reason why the management of forest, land,
water has continued to be dominated by official administrative thoughts,
principles and actions and democratic processes have never been allowed to
surface. This also resulted in the fact that democratic republican content was
mostly absent in legislations on land, water or forests. To keep constricting
the development of democratic spaces, such critical legislations like the Zamindari
Abolition Act were passed with escape routes and loopholes were kept
consciously so that manipulations could be done. The landless and the deprived
thus could not derive any benefit out of such legislations. In this context the
struggle for a democratisation of forest governance, the fight for forest
rights was an important political struggle. Significantly, left political
parties in UPA-1forced the inclusion of this issue in the common minimum
programme and raised their voices in the Parliament. A new political climate
emerged and Forest Rights Act was passed by the Parliament of India in 2006 and
this was a victory of the strength of peoples’ movements across the country.
This was the beginning of a new phase in the
Forest Rights movement – for the first time the issue of democratic rights of
the forest based communities came up on the national political plane. Almost
simultaneously two other important legislations were passed by Parliament – (i)
National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 and (ii) Unorganised Workers
Social Security Act,2008. The rural and forest regions of the country are
seeing a new dimension being added to the
communities ongoing struggles ,resulting in an unprecedented upsurge in mass peoples
consciousness – which is now in the forefront of challenging the neo-liberal policies and
onslaughts. Interestingly, other social and political forces are receding from
the battle grounds. It is now necessary to unite the scattered pockets of
forest based community resistances dotting the forests of the country and to establish
it as a national political force. This
was unanimously decided in the 4th National Conference of the Forum
in 2012 at Dehra Dun
which felt that to establish a democratic community based governance of the
forests, a national union of the forest based communities needed to be formed
which would be able to establish the community leadership on a national plane.
This national Union would struggle for the implementation of labour laws,
social security laws and forest rights laws in the forest regions and accepting
the many diversities across the forested regions of the country would build up
the Union on federative principles. The Union would rely on militant mass struggles as the means
to achieve its goals where members at all layers and levels would actively
participate in such struggles. The Union would aim to develop and project women
leadership; to assist members to organise cooperatives of the members to
conduct economic activities to generate employment and enhance livelihood; to
establish community control of the primary producers on the forest resources to
ensure protection of forest resources, environment and livelihood of forest
working people; to recognise women’s work, both paid and unpaid in the economy
and the family.
In this Conference
delegates from different regions would deliberate on various political, legal
and organisational aspects of the Forest
rights movement and arrive at conclusive positions and draw up the future
strategies of struggle. The key issues to be debated would be :
1. Right
to livelihood in the context of environmental justice.
2. The
relevance of labour rights laws in forest rights movement.
3. Social
and political protection of forest
working people.
4. Development
of women community leadership
Organisational issues
and new organisational structure and forms would be debated and discussed
around the draft constitution.
Today we see the direct
attack for control on the natural resources of the forested regions of the country
from the capitalist forces. There is today a direct conflict between Capital and the Community and progressive
sections. The government is siding unabashedly with the forces of Capital. It
is extremely important for us to understand as to who are on our side and who
are on the Other side – this will help determine our strategy.
All India Union of
Forest Working People would try to unite as many friendly forces as possible in
this decisive fight against capitalism, feudalism and forest mafia , keeping
its firm belief in collectivity and
justice as underlying structures of
a new society it envisions.
With an outlook of protracted, long drawn mass peoples movement
as the guiding strategy, the Union formation conference has been convened from 3-5th
June 2013, at Town Hall, Puri, Odisha. At this time Odisha is witnessing many
important struggles on issues of
safeguarding forests and natural resources like anti- POSCO, Niyamagiri,
Kalinga Nagar, Gandhamardan Hills,anti Vedanta University,anti Samuka Beach Tourism
project (Puri) etc and it is important to build up strong co-ordination between
struggling communities of other states and regions. Communities are expected to
send their elected representatives to this inaugural conference, establish a strong
organisation to ensure the protection of livelihood of forest based communities
and forest resources.
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