The State Can't See the Tribals for the Land and the Trees The Bhil Tribals'

; Search for Justice in Alirajpur District of Madhya Pradesh Rahul Banerjee Introduction Tribal Development in India has been problematical from the time of independence. This has been due to a conflicting situation arising from the opposition between the traditional community based subsistence economy of the tribals and the modern market based growth oriented thrust of the mainstream economy. The challenge has been to integrate the tribals into the modern economy in a manner that was beneficial to them. This has generally not been possible because the tribals have lacked the requisite skills for this and the government system for equipping them with these skills has malfunctioned. Moreover, in order to save on the costs associated with modern development the tribals have often not been recompensed and rehabilitated properly for the displacement that they have had to face as resources have been extracted from their traditional habitats. Not surprisingly this has led to dissatisfaction on the part of the tribals. This in turn has given rise to outright political revolt, rights based New Social Movements (NSM) of tribals and also an emergence of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO) for bringing about better tribal development. Decentralised and local community controlled development has been acknowledged as a major desideratum for tackling tribal deprivation (Sharma 142). With the award of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences to Elinor Ostrom in 2009, even mainstream economics has come to acknowledge the importance of collective action for the management of common pool resources (Ostrom "Governing the Commons" 21). This has also gained in importance because of the benefits in terms of mitigation of climate change that such communitarian natural resource management can achieve (International Institute of Sustainable Development et al. 1). The present paper details the collective action undertaken by the Bhil and Bhilala tribals in Alirajpur district to secure their rights and entitlements under various provisions of the Constitution of India and other legal statutes. 2. Traditional Bhil Society The Bhil tribals in West-Central India have traditionally had a communitarian culture based on a subsistence livelihood pattern that ensured sustainable use of their natural resource bases (Deliege 25). The important characteristics of traditional Bhil society are as follows 1. Habitations of small communities linked together by strong kinship ties 2. Customs of labour pooling in all social and economic activities 3. System of interest free loans in cash and kind 4. Minimal interaction with the external centralised trade based economy 5. High dependence on forests for daily as well as agricultural needs 6. Social customs that ensured the redistribution of the surplus of individual families among the community There was thus a minimal role in this society for accumulation, trade and monetary profits and so it continued for ages at a low level resource use equilibrium.

3. Colonial Dispossession The Maratha invasion of the region in the late eighteenth century and later the advent of the British colonialists in the early eighteenth century the situation changed drastically. The penetration of the modern market economy and the settling of non-tribal peasant farmers began in the Bhil areas. This put the Bhils in a precarious situation with the beginning of a process of alienation from their natural resource bases and their integration as ill paid debt ridden labourers in the centralised market economy (Hardiman 32). The British enacted the Indian Forest Act in 1865 and took vast areas of community forests out of the control of forest dweller communities and handed over their management to the Forest Department created by it and this was the single most debilitating development for the tribals in India. Even though this act was implemented only in the provinces directly controlled by the British it nevertheless provided the new direction of commercial exploitation of forests to forest management in the Princely States that largely ruled over the Bhil areas and so they too were adversely affected. 4. Post Colonial Situation Ironically, the coming of independence aggravated the livelihood situation of the Bhils instead of improving it. Most of the Bhil areas that were under the governance of Princely States prior to independence were assimilated into the states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan and the Indian Forest Act (1927) (IFA) was implemented. Vast areas of forests which were earlier still being managed by the Bhils with the Princely States only nominally in control, were converted into Reserved Forests. The Bhils mostly were illiterate and so did not understand the legal procedures for conversion of their habitats into Reserved Forests and so lost most of their lands (Varma 22). Under the IFA, the government can constitute any forest land or waste land which is the property of Government or over which the Government has proprietary rights, a reserved forest, by issuing a notification of this effect. Settlement of rights was not carried out and large areas remain unsurveyed even today. The history of forest management thereafter has been one of continuous deprivation of the tribals and is briefly described below followed by a description of the failure of economic and social development schemes in Tribal areas. 4.1 History of Forest Management in Post-Independence Period A brief history of the post independence period detailing the major happenings concerned with the relationship between forests and tribals is given below (Thayyil 268). The first independent Indian forest legislation was the Wildlife Protection Act 1972 that provided for creation of inviolate Protected areas and Wildlife habitats whereby Adivasis and forest dwelling communities lost access to their lands and livelihoods based on forests. Yet again settlement of rights not carried out properly in most Protected areas. Forest Conservation Act (FCA) is passed in 1980 and simultaneously the 42nd Constitutional Amendment shifts forests from the State List to the Concurrent List. The FCA prohibits non-forest use of forest land without approval of central government. Also advocates sustainable forest management through participatory approach, with due regard to the traditional rights of the tribal people on forest land.

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4.1.1 The Decade of the 1990s - The National Forest Policy of 1988 is formulated and it recognizes the need for participatory governance of natural resources and forests as against the earlier model of exclusion of communities. The Ministry of Environment and Forests issues six sets of guidelines in 1990 in pursuance of the National Forest Policy. These deal with encroachment on forest land, disputed claims, leases/pattas and conversion of forest villages and settlement of old habitations. A Committee is constituted in 1991 by the Supreme Court to investigate claims of adivasis for Regularisation of Encroachments and it files its report concerning the evidence to be examined and the criteria for regularization. In its order the court expressly directed that the competent authority, even in cases where claims are not accompanied by documentary evidence, must inquire into the claim. State governments thereafter failed to implement the 1990 guidelines. There was a lack of clarity about the guidelines and verification procedures and the issues of encroachments and disputed claims remain unresolved. The encroachments issue dominates MoEF attention while the question of disputed claims and related matters are lost sight of. In 1995 T Godavarman filed a case in Supreme Court (Writ Petition No 202 of 1995) urging the Court to regulate the forest management. 4.1.2 The First Decade of the 21st Century - In 2001 the Amicus Curiae in this case filed an interim application no IA 703 which sought to restrain regularization of any encroachments as well as further encroachments and asks for steps to clear the encroachments in forests which have taken place after 1980. The Supreme Court registered IA 703 and stated that there will be an interim order in terms of the above prayer. However, there was no Supreme Court order directing the States or Government of India to evict encroachers from forest land. Nevertheless a letter of the Inspector General of Forests (IGF) instructed state governments to evict the ineligible encroachers and all post 1980 encroachers from forest lands in a time bound manner. This letter referred to the Supreme Court order of 23rd Nov 2001 in IA 703 and falsely created an impression that the Supreme Court had ordered the States to evict encroachers from forest land. This triggered a wave of brutal evictions around the country. This was met with widespread resistance from tribal mass organisations and pressure was built up for a legislative solution to the problem. This campaign finally resulted in 2004 in a decision by the Prime Minister's Office that the Ministry of Tribal Affairs with the help of the Technical Support Group of the Ministry of Environment and Forests would draft a Bill for recognition of Forest Rights. Eventually in 2006 the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forestdwellers (Recognition of Rights) Act was passed and the rules framed in 2008. Generally the implementation has been anti-tribal leading to problems in tribal areas. The specific situation of the Bhils is detailed next. 4.2 Disempowerment and Maldevelopment of Bhil Tribals The situation of the Bhils was made worse by the fact that government services like education, development extension and health have not functioned properly and so the tribals have been deprived of the welfare benefits that they were entitled to under various schemes (Aurora 206). Finally the patriarchal nature of Bhil society led to the burden of increasing poverty due to wrong development policies falling disproportionately on the women. The

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necessity of bearing more children to get male progeny has also led to a population explosion, increasing pressure on the natural resource base. 4.2.1 Decline of Local Self Governance - The most debilitating phenomenon immediately after independence was the marginalisation of the customary community based local self governance systems of the Bhils (Banerjee "Decline and Fall" 332). The third tier of Panchayati Raj was not set up and instead the power in rural areas was transferred to the bureaucracy and especially the Forest Department and Police. The Forest Department staff took undue advantage of the restrictive provisions of the Indian Forest Act to demand bribes from the Bhils to allow them access to the forests without which they could not survive but which had become legally proscribed. The Police interfered with the traditional communitarian dispute resolution mechanisms of the Bhils and instead forced them to report their problems to the Police leading to unnecessary arrests and litigation. Even though the Bhils elected their own representatives to the state and national legislatures due to the policy of reservation this did not translate into power for the Bhils at large as the elected representatives went along with the overall policy of marginalisation of the tribals. As a result, the general Bhil population was completely disempowered and left at the mercy of the bureaucracy. This disempowerment is the root cause of the mal-development of the Bhil areas. The specific micro level needs and aspirations of the Bhils have not been articulated and so macro level development policies that have been pursued have been inimical to them. Thus, the actual state policy that evolved for Bhil tribal areas was as follows - top priority has been given to a programme of rapid industrialisation and extension of means of communication to the most interior regions. Our firm view is that the development of land and agriculture alone will not be adequate for the rehabilitation of the tribal communities. Agricultural land is insufficient and cannot serve the needs of even half the tribal population. The tribal areas are rich in industrial and power potential. There is no reason why in the wider interest of the nation and in the long-term interest of the tribals themselves, industries should not be developed and localised in tribal areas (National Council of Applied Economic Research vi). 4.2.2 Industrial Development versus Tribal Development - The assumption that industrial development in tribal areas is in the long-term beneficial to them has been proved to be totally fallacious (Mahapatra 56). Invariably tribals are not rehabilitated and compensated properly for the loss of their traditional livelihoods and neither they are trained to gain employment in the new industries that are set up. The industrial estate set up on tribal lands in Pithampur in Dhar district in Madhya Pradesh in the 1980s is an example of this injustice. The government provided cheap land and other subsidised infrastructure to the industrialists along with tax-holidays but the displaced tribals were given only pittances as compensation. Not being educated or skilled they did not get any of the permanent jobs that were created and are even today working as casual labourers. Pithampur, Indore, Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Surat and Kota, which are the main industrial centres in West-Central India in fact draw in Bhils from the whole region as casual labourers.

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The other fallacious assumption in the above NCAER policy statement is that agricultural land was insufficient to provide suitable livelihoods to the tribals. Inadequate attention was paid to developing the productivity of dryland agriculture on sub-optimal soils in upper watersheds on which the Bhils are dependent. Instead stress was put on developing green revolution agriculture on the plain lands with irrigation and chemical inputs. This was totally unsuitable to the hilly dry land farms of the Bhils. Today the green revolution technologies are proving to be unsuitable for the areas where they were started off with in the 1960s in Punjab and Haryana primarily due to soil quality degradation and lesser and costlier avialability of water and chemical inputs (Shiva 25). A resource conservation policy for land, water and forests, a research and development policy for the traditional organic agriculture of the tribals and appropriate technology for processing agricultural and forest produce combined with a vibrant local government system with a clear gender focus to counter the internal patriarchy of Bhil society would have worked wonders if it had been implemented (Shah et al. 196). Appropriate education and health systems incorporating tribal knowledge would have been a bonus that would have produced a new generation of tribals able and ready to take on the development challenges faced by their community. This was not done and so the human development indices in the Bhil tribal areas have remained the poorest in the country (Madhya Pradesh Human Development Report 138). It will be relevant to study here the special legal provisions made in favour of the tribals and their implementation to see how they have impacted on tribal development. 5. Special Legal Provisions for the Tribals The Constitution has special provisions for the tribals in India. Those in the states of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram are covered by the provisions of the Sixth Schedule while those in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan are covered by the provisions of the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution. The basic philosophy behind these provisions was that the tribals had a unique communitarian culture based on a subsistence non-accumulative lifestyle that was at odds with the consumerism spawned by modern industrial development. Thus, it was necessary to conserve this culture by secluding it from the aggressive thrust of modern development. The British administrator, anthropologist and social worker Verrier Elwin was the foremost proponent of this view and it was he who influenced Nehru in this matter and was the brain behind his "Panchsheel" for tribal areas which spoke of their development keeping in mind their uniqueness recommending both a seclusion and a gradual assimilation (Bose 32). However, given the tremendous powers of the centralised state system as compared to the tribal communities these noble ideas remained a pipe dream in reality. The imperatives of resource extraction at a low cost invariably prevailed over the affirmative sentiments of the Panchsheel and the tribals were summarily displaced. Especially so in the central Indian region where the level of education and awareness was much less than in the North East. No attention was paid for the upgradation of the skills of the tribals to help them to adjust to the new economic and political system. Neither were social development services like education and health provided extensively. Nevertheless the special legal provisions remain a strong instrument that can be used to ensure justice for the tribals.

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5.1 Fifth Schedule of the Constitution of India - Section 5 of the Fifth Schedule reads (1). Notwithstanding anything in this Constitution, The Governor may by public notification direct that any particular Act of Parliament or of the Legislature of the State shall not apply to a Scheduled Areas or any part thereof in the State or shall apply to a Scheduled Area or any part thereof in the State subject to such exceptions and modifications as he may specify in the notification and any direction given under this sub-paragraph may be given so as to have retrospective effect. (2).The Governor may make regulations for the peace and good government of any area in a State which is for the time being a Scheduled Area. In particular and without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing power, such regulations may a) Prohibit or restrict the transfer of land by or among members of the Scheduled Tribes in such area; b) Regulate the allotment of land to members of the Scheduled Tribes in such area; c) Regulate the carrying on of business as money-lender by persons who lend money to members of the Scheduled Tribes in such area. (3). In making any such regulation as is referred to in sub-paragraph (2) of this paragraph, the Governor may repeal or amend any Act of Parliament or of the Legislature of the State or any existing law which for the time being applicable to the area in question. Thus, theoretically it is possible for the Governor of a state, on the advice of the Tribes Advisory Council consisting of the tribal MLAs of the state, to prevent the application of or repeal the Indian Forest Act and the Land Acquisition Act. The most important aspect of these provisions is that the Governor may implement them so as to ensure "peace and good government" in tribal areas as the framers of the Constitution felt that this could be possible only if the tribals were allowed to develop according to their own laws and customs. However, this has never happened because it is not a binding provision and only a suggestion like the Directive Principles of State Policy, which finally has to depend on the executive for its implementation. So the situation for the tribals has been bad. Only in one instance an NGO in Andhra Pradesh, Samatha, fought all the way to the Supreme Court and got a mining lease to a company in a scheduled tribal area cancelled and this has proved to be a landmark victory in the struggles of the tribals (Supreme Court Cases 191). 5.2 Other Legal Provisions - Over the years there have been some other legal provisions in favour of the tribals. Section 170 B of the Madhya Pradesh Land Revenue Code which provides for reversion of the land of tribals which was transferred to a non-tribal by fraud. Section 165 of the same code prevents transfer of the land of a tribal to a non-tribal. The most powerful legislation is the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act 1996. This provides for the Tribal Gram Sabha in Fifth Schedule areas, defined as a small hamlet in which the tribals customarily live, to be the deciding body for all matters concerned with the development and governance of the hamlet. Especially powerful is the provision that the consent of the Gram Sabha must be taken for any displacement that is to be caused by a development project. Finally there is the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forestdwellers (Recognition of Rights) Act (FRA). Rahul Banerjee (www.anar-kali.blogspot.com) 6

Thus, in tandem with the provisions of the Fifth Schedule and the other laws in their favour this legislation can allow the tribals to decide on their own path of development and methods of governance. Finally there are various laws for the stringent control of moneylending in tribal areas which puts the onus on the administration to take pro-active action against moneylenders practising usury and. However, all these provisions too have not been implemented leading to the emergence of alternative approaches to development. 6. Mobilisation of Tribals in Alirajpur District A few tribal and non-tribal social workers began mobilising the Bhil tribals of Alirajpur district in Madhya Pradesh from 1982 onwards primarily for their basic constitutional rights. Later this movement spread to include the integration of the Bhils into the modern market system without exploitation by moneylenders and corrupt government officials. The movement gained a formal identity by 1987 when it was registered as a trade union named Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath (KMCS). After this the organisation took up the promotion of the Bhils' traditional community development systems and natural resource conservation techniques. Seeing that agitations alone were not yielding enough results an NGO was also registered as a public trust named Dhas Gramin Vikas Kendra (DGVK) to access grant funds for initiating development projects. Thus, a mix of rights based mass mobilisation and grant funded development initiatives were used to improve the situation of the tribals. The introduction of the special Panchayat Raj for Scheduled Tribal areas under the provisions of the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act 1996 (PESA) gave a boost to the work of the KMCS. This act was enacted keeping in mind the provisions of the Fifth Schedule. The KMCS was part of the national campaign to get this law enacted. The provision in PESA Act that the tribal Gram Sabha is to be the final arbiter on all issues of local development and that this Gram Sabha could be as small as a hamlet of a village made it easier for KMCS to implement development programmes. Often it is not possible to carry the whole village together on some development programme because the tribal hamlets of a village are situated at a distance from each other. Another law that promises to have far reaching consequences is the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forestdwellers (Recognition of Rights) Act 2006 (FRA) which gives rights to the land that the tribals have been cultivating and also community rights to the forests in which they have been residing. The KMCS was part of the national campaign for the passing of this Act also and has taken active steps in getting it implemented. Finally there is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme which if properly implemented can in addition to providing employment to the tribals also improve the natural resource base of their habitats. The specific mobilisational strategies adopted by the KMCS that have got the people to act collectively for getting their entitlements and the conservation of natural resources are 1. Problem analysis workshops in which the people have participated in open discussions to pinpoint the problems they were facing. 2. Legal and rights training workshops in which the people were taught the basics of the liberal democratic framework. 3. Collective Action for assertive rights through public demonstrations and sitins.

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4. Revival of traditional labour and resource pooling customs. 5. Special women's meetings to get them involved in resource conservation work and also public demonstrations. 6. Legal and policy advocacy to change the laws and rules in favour of the tribals. 7. Gaining Access to Forests and then Conserving them The KMCS organisation began with the problem of ensuring access to the encroached farms of the tribals in the reserved forest. As a solution to this problem it was decided to protect the remaining forest area and prevent it from degradation. This was done to counter the claim of the forest department that the tribals were destroying the forest. Consequently in all the hamlets of the study watershed social protection of the forests to ensure their regeneration was undertaken. Small groups patrolled the forests by turns through a labour pooling system. This protection is taking place in more than fifty villages affiliated to the KMCS covering more than 10,000 hectares. The fodder generated from such protection is cut and bought by the members at the end of the monsoon season and the money thus generated is kept in a fund for carrying out plantation work. This forest protection has considerably increased the availability of fodder, fireweood and non-timber forest produce in the study watershed and this has especially benefited the women and children who are the main collectors of forest products. It may be mentioned here that tribal children treat the collection of forest produce as a playful activity and it is not labour for them. This is how they come to know their natural environment. Greater fodder availability has facilitated goat and buffalo rearing and so increased the supplementary incomes from animal husbandry which provides an insurance against livelihood shocks to the tribal households. It is not possible to quantify the increase in forest product availability because of a lack of records but people say that they now enjoy much greater forest product availability and have bigger herds of goats and cattle than earlier. Contrastingly the landscape in villages which are not part of the KMCS is barren and the forest product availability is low because no cooperative effort has been made for forest protection. This indicates the importance of community forest conservation and the crucial catalytic influence of a people's organisation in bringing this about. The picture of a patch of regenerated forest in Alirajpur is shown in Fig 1 alongside.

Fig. 1: Regenerated Forest in Alirajpur

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8. Soil and Water Conservation The KMCS organised the villagers in the study watershed into small groups of ten to twelve farmers each who then pooled their labour and cooperated with each other to perform their agricultural operations together and also undertake soil and water conservation activities. This was a revival of the traditional labour pooling custom of the Bhils called Dhas from which the name of the NGO is derived. In this system people used to work together to do agricultural operations on each others' fields, build each others' houses, and improve the quality of the farm fields through soil conservation work. However, this traditional labour pooling custom is dying out because of their integration into the mainstream money economy and the exploitation by the forest department staff. Thus, this was a crucial intervention on the part of the social workers that has over the years resulted in huge investments being made in the form of labour in natural resource conservation in the watershed. Apart from this external funding was also sourced on two occasions for soil and water conservation work through the sister NGO, DGVK . A major feature of this cooperative soil and water conservation work is the participation of women in it. As has been well documented the ravages of natural devastation caused by bad development are mostly borne by women (Shiva 1). Consequently it is not surprising, that when offered an opportunity to cooperate to reduce their drudgery, women come forward enthusiastically. The social workers of the KMCS have pro-actively sought the participation of women to ensure gender justice. This has not only ensured that women have participated in the community actions and improved their status in society but they have also as a result, changed the gender relations at home. A picture of women working on a gully plug to create a new farm out of the deep gully in a village in Alirajpur is shown in Fig 2 below.

Fig 2: Women working on a Gully Plug

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The intensive soil and water conservation work and the forest conservation have together ensured that both natural and artificial recharge in the watersheds have increased considerably and as a result the streams are flowing throughout the year. The farmers have used this enhanced water availability to cultivate dryland varieties of wheat which require less water. The greater availability of animal manure has resulted in the farmers using treated organic manure in larger quantities and improving the quality of the soil. The soil and water conservation work has also ensured the greater availability of soil moisture and so double cropping has become possible even without irrigation in some of the upper fields where a crop of gram is taken. In some cases the kharif jowar crop after being harvested, regenerates to give a small rabi yield from the soil moisture. 9. Implementation of the FRA The FRA has been plagued with problems right from the beginning. Even though the Act was passed in 2006 it took another year for the Rules to be framed and passed by parliament. Even after that the Madhya Pradesh government was very tardy in setting in motion the process for application and verification of the rights of the tribals. The KMCS has had to organise many demonstrations to first get the process started and then for it to continue. Even now the implementation is faulty and tardy and the KMCS has filed a complaint with the State Level Forest Rights Monitoring Committee regarding the non-implementation of the Act. The KMCS is also preparing a detailed list of eligible applicants and lease right awardees as part of a petition to be filed in the High Court of Madhya Pradesh. Nevertheless compared to the rest of Madhya Pradesh, due to the pressure created by KMCS, the implementation is far better in Alirajpur where over 8000 claims have been accepted and the rejection percentage is only 5% as compared to 50% for other tribal areas as a whole. As many as 62 claims of Community Forest Rights have been accepted. What is most heartening is that the process is still under way. The KMCS has also pro-actively used the MGNREGS to carry out soil and water conservation works on the lands for which the tribals have gained lease rights under the FRA. A recent review report of the implementation of the FRA by a committee appointed by the Ministry of Environment and Forests and the Ministry of Tribal Affairs of the Government of India has also severely indicted the state governments and especially the forest department staff for very poor implementation (Manthan 1). The major criticisms are as follows 1. Most states have concentrated almost entirely on implementing the provisions for individual forest rights (IFRs). About 83% of these claims have been disposed of, and 35% claims have been approved, with titles issued for most of them. There are, however, major errors of omission. Even in states where implementation began more than two years ago, many pockets have not yet been covered, and many potential claimants have not managed to submit their claims. 2. The biggest problem is with the many cases of faulty rejections. Rejections are being done without assigning reasons or simply for lack of evidence or absence of GPS survey (lacunae which only require the claim to be referred back to the lower-level body), or because the land is wrongly considered as not forest land, or because only forest offence receipts are considered as adequate evidence. Rahul Banerjee (www.anar-kali.blogspot.com) 10

3. In an overwhelming number of cases, the rejections are not being communicated to the claimants and their right to appeal is not being explained to them and its exercise facilitated. 4. Community forest rights have not been recognised in most places and the lack of awareness about this among the tribals is even higher than for IFRs. An associated achievement of the KMCS is its success in getting the proposal by the Government to set up a Wild Life Sanctuary in the Katthivada Forest Range of Alirajpur cancelled. Under the provisions of the PESA Act and also the Wild Life Protection Act any displacement of people in a scheduled tribal area has to be sanctioned by the Gram Sabha. Hard mobilisation by KMCS forced the Government to implement this provision and the Gram Sabhas unanimously rejected the proposal because of its many infirmities and it had to be shelved. This is the first time that a proposal for a Wild Life Sanctuary in this country has had to be shelved due to strong legal and mass action by the tribals. 10. Conclusions The KMCS and DGVK have together used the favourable legal provisions to ensure that the Bhils of Alirajpur are able to secure their rights and entitlements and gain justice from the modern economic and political systems that govern this country. In conclusion a critical assessment of this process of community mobilisation will be undertaken within the evaluation framework for institution building for successful common pool resource management proposed by Ostrom ("Governing the Commons" 90) as follows 1. 2.

Group boundaries are clearly defined. Rules governing the use of collective goods are well matched to local needs and conditions. Most individuals affected by these rules can participate in modifying the rules. The rights of community members to devise their own rules is respected by external authorities. A system for monitoring member's behavior exists; the community members themselves undertake this monitoring. A graduated system of sanctions is used. Community members have access to low-cost conflict resolution mechanisms. For CPRs that are parts of larger systems: appropriation, provision, monitoring, enforcement, conflict resolution, and governance activities are organized in multiple layers of nested enterprises.

3. 4.

5.

6. 7. 8.

The first principle is very important and the KMCS was able to inspire the tribals to assert their identity and clearly demarcate their sovereignty over their habitats. The laws and rules for utilisation of the forests were that laid down by the government and administered by the Forest Department and were not matched to the local needs and conditions in violation of the second principle above. The KMCS succeeded in mobilising the people through regular meetings and trainings to stand up for their rights against the forest department staff and Rahul Banerjee (www.anar-kali.blogspot.com) 11

design their own rules for governing the use of the collective natural resources. A section of the people initially braved the opposition of the traditional Patels who were agents of the Forest Department and even went to jail fighting for their rights and established the organisation. Once the organisation was established and natural resource conservation work began, the benefits began to flow and this acted as a reinforcing factor in the continuation of the process and so later even the Patels, who were initially opposed to the process, later became a part of it. The mobilisation process resulted in a fairly strong people's organisation spread over a large area of fifty villages and hence the KMCS members were able to ensure that the Forest Department was forced to allow the villagers to manage their common resources according to their own rules. The monitoring of the forests as well as the soil and water conservation work is done by the members themselves and that is why the system has worked very well for over two decades. The members of the KMCS have developed a system of sanctions beginning with fines for small infringements of the rules and going upto ostracism for more serious violations and this is administered by the people themselves. The traditional community conflict resolution mechanisms of the Bhil tribals have also been revived and these are also working very well. The final principle is the most important as far as community mobilisation on a large scale is concerned. Unless the government ensures a participatory framework of rule making and monitoring at several levels it is difficult for a small organisation to build up a larger movement of conservation. Since the government through the forest department and police has actively opposed the people's mobilisation it has taken place only in about fifty villages in Alirajpur district and it is difficult to expand its reach. The laws and policies that favour tribals discussed in detail in the beginning are not implemented primarily because they are not aware of these provisions and the Government is not serious about them. The KMCS and the DGVK by raising the awareness of the tribals in this regard have brought about a positive transformation in Alirajpur. This unique combination of an NGO and Trade Union, by synthesising social activism and development intervention, has improved the situation of the Bhil tribals by creatively using the favourable legal provisions for tribals. The PESA Act was a first step in the direction of preserving and promoting tribal culture and thus ensuring a saner world involving more sustainable resource use and equitable interpersonal relations than the one we are living in (Rahul 87). The KMCS has relied on the inherent tribal culture and synergised it with developmental efforts to improve the lives of the tribals who are its members. The passage of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forestdwellers (Recognition of Rights) Act and the Right to Information Act in 2006 has considerably enhanced the effectiveness of the PESA Act. Many tribal mass organisations have conducted long drawn campaigns which have resulted in the enactment of the FRA which complements the Fifth Schedule and nullifies the historical injustice done to the tribals through the implementation of the Indian Forest Act. The KMCS has leveraged the provisions of this Act too. Thus, despite its limitations, the mobilisation process described above has ensured justice for the Bhil tribals of Alirajpur and provided them with a better livelihood situation.

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