Institutional Architecture

Does the Indian 'Forest Rights Act' (2006) represent a pro-poor institutional reform?

Oliver Springate-Baginski, ODG; Purnamita Dasgupta, ICRIER; Gopinath Reddy, CESS; Ajit Banerjee and Madhu Sarin

Can tribal and other hitherto politically marginalised groups in India win significant institutional reform, in terms of forest-based tenure and livelihood security?

Forest-adjacent rural populations are amongst the poorest of the poor in India in terms of most socio-economic indicators. Their poverty reflects a history of disenfranchisement – having their customary forest land use negated by executive fiat (involving expropriation and criminalisation) by feudal states, by colonial states and subsequently by the independent Indian government. Controversy and conflict over forest control, management and use has intensified in recent decades, with the unresolved issue of recognition of local people's legal basis for the forest-based livelihoods reaching a crisis, and state-attempted mass evictions politicising large numbers. Concerted political mobilisation has finally led to the passing of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act in December 2006 (FRA). The FRA grants extensive rights and apparently represents a momentous institutional reform, although, as with several other recent legislative reforms in India, implementation is a further challenge.

This study seeks to understand whether this Act will help a major group of poor and marginalised, who have hitherto experienced extremely low and stagnant incomes, to reduce their marginal status, move out of poverty and to share in India's economic growth.

The question is whether the FRA spells a real victory in practice, a first triumph of many for the increasingly influential politicised poor (implying that they are becoming better able to defend and extend their autonomous spaces within India's political economy) or rather a tokenistic populist gesture which will amount to little of significance.

The study will focus on the political economic context of the Act's passage and particularly on its implementation on the ground – the local situations of forest land tenures and the implementation mechanisms which determine whether poverty is affected or not. If we seek to help the poor, livelihoods theory teaches is that we should increase their assets and options for remunerative activities; but poverty is an outcome of political-economic processes and reversing poverty involves political negotiation. We hope to better understand the link between poverty, institutions around land assets and the political economy of economic growth processes.