Most of the time, Adivasis are obscured from "mainstream" India.
  They come into focus momentarily when they organise, resist and
  assert their rights. Kalpana Sharma on their plight.
 

 
   The brutal might of the state was in full display at Muthanga.

 TWO HOURS outside Mumbai, India's burgeoning and prosperous
 commercial capital, there are people who have no electricity, running
 water, health care or education. Here children die of malaria, measles
 and diarrhoea, women die during childbirth. In 55 years, they have seen
 little progress even as Mumbai strives to become a global city.

 The lives of the Adivasis living in the megalopolis' shadow is a stark
 illustration of the continuing neglect of tribal communities in most parts
 of India. If anything illustrates unequal development, it is the way the
 Governments, at the Centre and in the States, have dealt with these
 islands of neglect.

 Most of the time, Adivasis are obscured from "mainstream" India. They
 come into focus momentarily when they organise, resist and assert their
 rights, as they have done most recently in Kerala. The rest of the
 country suddenly wakes up and looks at them. But the look is no more
 than a glance, and soon they become invisible again.

 Whether in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Maharashtra, Madhya
 Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka or Kerala, the struggle of tribal
 communities for their rights is inextricably linked to land and forests.

 And their story dates back to the colonial times when the British either
 handed over their land to zamindars or declared it as forestland.

 People who had survived for generations without the need to document
 "ownership" of land - or indeed, without even the concept of
 "ownership" - found they had no tools to combat this new twist to
 "development".

 Most of the earlier laws relating to forests were designed to exploit
 forest resources for urban and other markets even as they allowed the
 Adivasis to continue to live within them.

 The Forest Act of 1865, later amended in 1878, divided forests into
 Revenue, Protected and Village forests, each with their set of rules. But
 for the people who lived in the forest, these laws essentially overturned
 their unstructured, undocumented and "symbiotic", in the words of B. K.
 Roy Burman, relationship with the land, the rivers and the forests.

 Inevitably, in the post-Independence period, what began as minor
 skirmishes between groups of forest dwellers and those assigned the
 task of "protecting" forests escalated into mini-wars in different parts
 of India.

 The issues remain the same: do people who have lived in and tended
 forests and the land on which they stand, have a right to continue living
 there or not? They do not, holds the Government, because this is "forest
 land" which must be conserved for larger ecological reasons. They do,
 hold the forest dwellers, because they have no other source of livelihood
 apart from the subsistence agriculture and sale of minor forest produce.

 Although forest policies over time have been modified and amended to
 concede the rights of the forest dwellers, in practice the Adivasis have
 to struggle to establish even the rights they have been granted under the
 law. Thus, many of the conflicts that have arisen between the Adivasis
 and the Forest Department centre around the issue of access to
 "protected" forests. Where the Adivasis are organised, they have
 successfully negotiated these rights and guaranteed their access to
 forests.

 Where they remain isolated, as they still do in many parts of the country,
 they have no means to battle the forest bureaucracy.

 The people versus forests saga has been extended with the creation of
 national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, areas that are considered
 essential if we are to conserve our biodiversity in flora and fauna.

 Yet, these are the very areas where Adivasis have lived for
 generations. According to one estimate, of the 600,000 people displaced
 by 421 sanctuaries and 75 national parks, 500,000 are Adivasis.

 In States such as Karnataka and Kerala, much of the tension between
 the Government and groups of Adivasis has revolved around the
 question of displacement caused by these sanctuaries and parks.

 Apart from forests, the other development aspect that has been a huge
 blow to the ability of the Adivasis to continue living in their own
 environment has been the construction of large dams. Inevitably, the
 largest number of those displaced are Adivasis because dams are built
 on rivers that run through the forest areas where they live.

 In the case of the Sardar Sarovar dam, this has been amply documented
 but the story is not very different for a number of other dams around
 which there have been struggles of resistance.

 In the last two years in Bihar and Jharkhand there have been clashes
 between the police and groups of Adivasis resisting dams and the
 inevitable submergence of their villages and the forests on which they
 depend. In all these confrontations, people have been killed and injured
 and locked up for days. During the struggle against the Koel Karo dam,
 the police fired on an assembly of Adivasis in February 2001, killing
 eight persons. In Jharkhand, ironically a State carved out of Bihar to
 meet the aspirations of tribal communities, there has been a
 long-standing non-violent protest against the dam on the
 Subarnarekha river in west Singhbhum district. An estimated 5,000
 families were to be displaced and 52 villages partially or wholly
 submerged. The Adivasis are agitating against further raising the height
 of the dam.

 The latest manifestation of such resistance is the occupation by 150
 Adivasis of the Narmada Valley Development Authority in Alirajpur,
 Jhabua district, Madhya Pradesh.

 According to the Narmada Bachao Andolan, "the Adivasis have been
 facing submergence since 1994, with last year's submergence being the
 most severe. More than 220 acres of standing crops were submerged
 by the submergence caused by raising the height of the dam from 90m
 to 95m in May. While they face such illegal submergence year after
 year, the Narmada Valley Development Authority and the Government
 have claimed all along that they have been rehabilitated! In fact, on
 paper these villages do not exist nor do the Adivasis".

 Another arena for struggle is over the land being taken over for mining.
 In Rayagada, Orissa, on December 16, 2000, four persons were killed
 and 50 injured in police firing when Adivasis raised an objection to the
 extraction of bauxite from the Bapilimali hills by the Utkal Aluminium
 Industries.

 In all such instances, land is acquired by the Government for mining
 operations but the Adivasis living on it are not adequately compensated.
 Inevitably, the inability of most Adivasis to establish ownership through
 the documentation demanded by the Government results in their
 becoming landless labourers.

 Similarly, in Chhattisgarh in May 2001, the National Mineral
 Development Corporation sought to establish a steel mill at Nagarnar.
 When the Adivasis living on the land acquired by the Government for
 this purpose objected and resisted, the state responded with force.
 Hundreds of Adivasis were arrested and many were injured.

 A landmark judgment on the question of mining in Scheduled Areas
 was delivered by the Supreme Court in 1997 in the Samatha v State of
 Andhra Pradesh case.

 The Court held that the Government had no power to grant mining
 leases for tribal lands in Scheduled Areas. It also ordered the State
 Government to grant pattas to people living on the land which was to be
 mined. This was an important precedent as under the law, all minerals
 under the land belong to the Government, but the rights of the Adivasis
 living on the land was a grey area.

 Despite the ruling, however, the Andhra Pradesh Government did not
 issue the pattas on the pretext that the particular panchayat was part of
 a border dispute with neighbouring Orissa.

 However, when the Adivasis once again went to court and asked why
 pattas could not be issued when elections could be held in their villages
 despite the border dispute, the Andhra Pradesh High Court gave a
 ruling on January 9, 2003, "directing the respondents to entertain the
 applications made by the petitioners and other members belonging to
 Scheduled Tribes for grant of pattas and consider those applications
 with utmost expedience for grant of pattas in the revenue enclosures
 which are identified by the Revenue Department within four months
 from today".

 These are but a few recent instances of the clash between the Adivasis
 and various State Governments. They illustrate the conflict over rights
 and resources that lies at the root of the confrontation.

 Such clashes are bound to escalate as "development" reaches out to
 remoter areas, places which are inevitably the home of Adivasi groups
 that have lived undisturbed, and ignored, for generations.

 Finding a way to resolve these differences is urgent, not just for the
 sake of the Adivasis, but also because a model of development that
 pays no heed to the most vulnerable, and forces them into penury,
 cannot be sustained in the long run.