Give the Adivasis a New Deal and Change the Development Paradigm

TO FIGHT PSEUDO-MAOIST MENACE

Few, among the top political executives, realise that our own fate is inextricably linked up with the fate of the adivasis. If mankind is to survive, it has to imbibe the quintessence of communitarian spirit and conservation ethics of the tribals. Modernism’s accent on individualism has led to acute self-centredness of a rapacious civilisation that has reached its peak in assured mutual destruction. Redemption from the looming threat of self-destruction lies in embracing the nature-harmonic ethos of the tribals.

To a tribal, forest is the source of all good things. He recognises the primacy of Nature over men, the primacy of forest over villages. To him the centre of gravity lies in the non-human world of forests. He feels a mysterious bond and symbiotic relation with other animals. He instinctively knows the value of inter-species balance and has diligently sought to keep his community population stable over centuries by the use of herbal contraceptives—and abortifactants in dire cases.

If there are areas where climax vegetations and reservoirs of biological diversity still remain, these are due to tribal ethics which forbid interference with biota. It is their ethics that the harvest of certain wild plants be severely restricted to certain days of the year. The need for avoiding over-exploitation of any natural resource permeates their consciousness. Madhav Gadgil points out that there are tribal communities that “traditionally set free calves or pregnant does caught in their snares”.

A report from an African tribal environment shows how deeply ingrained is their social consciousness. Anthropologist Mary Douglas’ report, on the Lele tribe in the Kasai province in Zaire, says that “before a communal hunt, it is the duty of every man to declare any animosity he might have secretly harboured against a neighbour and to promise that it will not be allowed to rankle any more. If there is any insincerity in this on the part of anybody, the spirits would see that the expedition is in vain.” There are reasons to believe that such practices were in vogue till recently among many adivasis in India. This is the essence of true socialism, solace for mankind.

II

(A) Dispossession of Adivasis over Centuries—Beginnings of Dispossession by British Rulers

THE British rulers adopted various pretexts, made various rules and called these “laws” to deprive the adivasis of their traditional rights over forest lands, from the beginning of their colonial rule.

(i) Whereas in most parts of the non-colonial world, the historically accepted legal concept was “what is practisced in the place is the law of the place”, the Britishers developed a love for the Roman law “whatever has not been assigned by the sovereign belongs to the sovereign”. Thus, the usurpers of “sovereign’s rights” began to dispossess the indigenous people.

(ii) They also denied the recognition of the community as a legal person, knowing well that in tribal areas, individual rights were embedded in community rights.

(iii) On hills above 10 per cent slope in Orissa, they abolished even the occupancy rights of the adivasis and appropriated to the State the slopy hills. Possibly, they did this in several other states, too, Enquiries and information about those were promised but never pursued. This was a tendentious and most illogical step because the adivasis were known as the best preservers and developers of forests.

(iv) Next, the State took over vast forest tracts all over India, except in parts of North East India. This exception was made because of the long-time prevalence there of certain Hill Regulations whose violation could stir up violent tribal revolts.

(v) In certain areas, they adopted a kind of tricksterism by first vesting the ownership of entire tribal community lands in their respective chiefs and then taking over these lands from the chiefs’ hands by pampering them with certain privileges and paying them some paltry sums as compensation. Since this triggered widespread protests, this trick could not be continued or practicsed in other areas.

(B) Continuation of Dispossession Drive by “Swadeshi” Rulers

THE Swadeshi rulers did not hesitate to pursue the same heinous policy of dispossessing the adivasis. Maybe, this was due to their greater faith in the forest bureaucracy.

(i) In post-independence India, a law was enacted to categorise all community lands with tree cover as forests. Thereafter, all such forests were declared as properties of the state.

(ii) The state took over the forests owned by the Mundas as well as the Mundari and Khumkatti lands on the pretext that the state would nurture these better and bestow on the tribes greater profits. The promises were never kept by the state.

(iii) Deprivation and dispossession to the adivasis caused by the decimation of their forest habitats by the unscientific practices of commercially driven Forest Departments: One deplorable practice of the foresters was to give priorities to pines which killed the sal (shorea rubasta) trees. There were many other examples. Adivasis knew much better the symbiotic and allogeneic relations between tree species than the foresters but such ruinations had to be borne by the adivasis.

(v) Ouster of the Adivasis from their habitats by mining activities: Many forest areas were found to be repositories of mineral wealth. Since in today’s world, industries are valued most, governments become blind to the more fundamental values of ecology and life-support systems. Hence they invariably encourage mining activities, pollute the air and water of the forest dwellers and smear all their living resoueces with toxic substances.

In a word, the premise that the adivasis have equal rights and equal dignity with the vaunted “genteel” has never been heeded. The temporal benefits of the latter have always been sought at the cost of the former. The “growth economists” have become impervious to these ghastly realities.

The cruelties against the adivasis have been planned and steadfastly pursued by the elite political class irrespective of political affiliations under the false belief that if the nation has to prosper, some people have to be sacrificed. And the Scheduled Tribes appeared to be the most convenient sacrificial beings. Otherwise, how does one explain the deliberate, persistent subversion of the Supreme Court’s landmark judgment of 1997 on a special leave petition filed by Samata, an NGO in Andhra Pradesh, against the mining leases given by the Government of Andhra Pradesh on tribal lands. The judgment declared:

(i) That all lands leased to private mining companies in the Scheduled Areas (that is, in Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere) are null and void.

(ii) That transfers of land in the Scheduled Areas by way of lease to non-tribals, corporation aggregates etc. stand prohibited.

(iii) That every Gram Sabha has the power to prevent alienation of lands in the Scheduled Areas and to take appropriate action to restore to the Scheduled Tribe any land that has been unlawfully alienated.

(iv) That minerals are to be exploited by tribals themselves either individually or through cooperative societies with financial assistance of the state.

(v) That in an area where lease to non-tribals has not been totally prohibited, the lessee must pay at least 20 per cent of the profits as permanent fund for development needs, apart from reforestation and maintenance needs of ecology.

Governments of all hues at the Union level and in the Stales have sought to keep this judgment under wraps. In their biased, pro-elite thinking, they consider it a judgment inimical to national development. Enquiries need to be made how many times and in which cases this judgment has been violated.

III

Adivasis are between the Devil of “Pseudo-Maoists” and the Deep Sea of “Security Forces”

CENTURIES of deprivation depicted above drove the adivasis to the lowest rung of existence. They are now facing the gravest threat to their existence—squeezed between the once solace-giving, now extortionate and occasionally intimidating “pseudo-Maoists” one the hand and the Indian state’s mighty security forces on the other. True, the latter’s targets are the Maoists. But the Maoists are so entrenched that large numbers of adivasis are likely to be the casualties.

I have deliberately called them “pseudo-Maoists” because there is a world of difference between what Mao represented and what his supposed followers in India are doing. Though Mao enjoyed being deified—that was his weakness—he was a realist. He knew in which conditions guerilla warfare could be waged and in which conditions it would be suicidal. His one great contribution to ideology was that “power classes” could turn to be exploiters like propertied classes. Hence he felt the need for a pervasive cultural transformation so that power could not corrupt the power holders. Since he tried to force the pace and sought to challenge vested interests in the party, the government, the enterprises, the academia etc. all at once without creating mass-level ideological and cultural consciousness and spiritual elevation, he failed in this endeavour. He also correctly understood that in the modern technological civilisation, the countryside suffers from the adverse terms of trade vis-à-vis the urban conglomerates. He, therefore, sought to build a model egalitarian politico-economico-socio-cultural base at Yenan. Since he failed to fathom the deeper issues of ecology and the great differences caused by different genre of technology, it did not endure and yielded place to Deng Xiaoping’s seductive aberrations. Our Maoists do not bother about perspective-related issues. They know only the dictum “power flows from the barrel of the gun”. Hence they get isolated from the people as the state’s armed forces start driving in top gear. The nation reckons then as murderers.

If Mao had been alive now, he would have noticed that new reconnaissance and surveillance technologies in the hands of the military have rendered guerilla warfare obsolete. Guerilla warfare, even in dense forests and mountainous jungles, is not possible in an era when invisible spy planes from high altitudes are able not only to spot small guerilla groups but also to record their conversations and instantly relay the same to the troops on patrol. The Sri Lankan Government forces did not have such super-sophisticated technologies. Even then, the LTTE got decimated in the end. If the “Maoists”, flush with their initial victories—which advantage the initiators of armed offensives always get—tend to remain blind to this reality, it will result in a holocaust.

This does not mean that the oppressed and exploited classes have no means of salvation. Resistance against various forms of oppression is surging in every corner of the globe and is merging in one global stream of liberation. Irresistibly, this will be an oceanic tsunami of resistance. Despite the control that the neo-imperialists exercise over the communication media, oppressed people are now able to set up their own broadcasting media and garner mass support through global mobilisations. The Iranian Opposition leader, who was the runner-up to the Iranian presidency last year, was not far from the truth when he said that to control a website is to command an army. Besides, technologies for decentralised harnessing of renewable forms of energy have emerged, and are progressing well as a liberating force. These have great potential for freeing energy generation and other economic activities from the clutches of large owners of capital. Those who aspire for the adivasis’ and poor people’s liberation need to have a holistic perspective. Climate change, and humanity’s agenda for survival in that context, has placed the traditional forest dwellers’ ethos and knowledge systems on a high pedestal, which everybody will have to acknowledge sooner or later.

IV

Who are the Progenitors of India’s Maoists?

PRIME MINISTER Manmohan Singh has said that Maoists are the enemy number one to internal security. This assertion raised the question: who are the progenitors of these foremost enemies? Certainly, they “Maoists” are, wittingly or unwittingly, the greatest menace. All those who have traced the growth of Maoists, have pointed out two factors. One, out of the union of the People’s War Group with the Maoist Communist Centre, the Communist Party of India (Maoist) was born. And their growth got a big boost when the Union and the State governments invited the MNCs “to develop these areas” and a large number of MOUs were signed by the State governments of Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh with the MNCs in violation of the Supreme Court’s famous Samata judgment. In order to implement these projects, large-scale acquisitions of land from cultivators and forest dwellers were started. The scare of displacements, the threat of loss of community life, the spectre of unemployment, food insecurity and drinking water scarcity (drinking water being heavily polluted with mineral particles) haunted the farming communities and the forest-dwelling adivasis. These MOUs were the direct outcomes of pro-MNC liberalisation, pro-finance capital globalisation, and pro-business privatisation policies. This regimen throws up billionaires at one end and legions of malnourished people at the other. Who were its architects? Who catapulted India into this orbit? Everyone in India knows that the architects were no other than yourself, Mr Prime Minister, and your deputy, Montek Singh Ahluwaliah, with the initial backing of P.V. Narasimha Rao and the later acquiescence of India’s dominant political class of many hues. Hence, can you escape the charge of being the creator of India’s number one enemy to internal security, Mr Prime Minister? In the same manner as the US settlers eliminated the indigenous people there and the settlers in Australia eliminated the “aborigines”, the concept of progress which is driving India now is eliminating the adivasis and the real farmers. This is throwing up some billionaires from India’s business class and promoting Indian and foreign agribusiness on Indian soil while ruining the weaker classes which no sops can compensate.

A revealing commentary on—in fact, a mockery of—our approach to development appeared in the newspapers of June 23 last. On June 21-22, our Union Finance Minister was telling his American audience that India would need one trillion dollars over the next five years to attain “9 plus” per cent growth but expects a funding gap of 30 per cent, which he would like the US investors to fill. The aim is “raising the growth percentage” even by inordinately raising our external debts. The hollowness of this approach was revealed the same day by the UN report: “Hunger is back in South Asia to the 1990 level”. It said that in South Asia, including India, the percentage of malnourished people was 21 in 1990-92; it dipped by only one per cent (that is, to 20 per cent) by 2000-02; and was back to 21 per cent by 2006-07. It was shocking though this portrayal was less grim than the reality.

It is common knowledge that statistics about the indices of “life below – poverty” level have been heavily manipulated for a show of progress. Anybody with experience about this country’s rural life will say that the percentage of malnourished people today is much higher than 21. The recent report of the Tendulkar Panel put it at 37 per cent. Mani Shankar Aiyar is very correct when he says that 900 million Indians are living on less than the minimum recommended wage under the MGNREGA. (The minimum of Rs 100 for a day’s wage for a family of five comes to Rs 20 per head.) Outward symbols of development—extensions of metalled roads, multiplication of post offices and phone call booths, blares from radio and television sets from the houses of traders, contractors and sarpanches (the beneficiaries of leaked moneys from multiplying projects)—cannot hide hunger and the increasing numbers of diseased people. This is not the way to inclusive growth.

At the cost of a little digression, we need to say that the trumpeting by the capital-dominated world that China and India are the new powerhouses of global economy is a cover-up for the void below. China is now the country with the largest income disparities between its own people. India’s path from the 1980s—steadfastly since the 1990s—has been no different. The only difference is that the Chinese leaders are aggressive nationalists, prone to incursions on other nations’ rights, dictatorial and intolerant of dissent. In contrast, India’s political leaders are self-centric, easy compromisers of national self-respect, eager to get pats on the back from foreigners, derisive of India’s own nationals but tolerant of protests from middle classes. The challenge from the Maoists hidden behind the adivasis is the bitter fruit of the current model of development.

This paradigm of development puts a premium on building infrastructure. But have we ever carried a national discourse on what kind of infrastructure we need for inclusive growth? A little introspection will show that infrastructure for business interests almost always destroys the infrastructure for common people’s life-support system—namely, the forests, the riverine flows, the quality of surface and groundwater, the fertility of the soil, the quality of air. The roads become the vehicle for draining away the food grains, fish and milk from the low-income villagers to the higher-income urbanites. This paradigm of vikas means vinash for most people. Sustainable pro-people development demands a reversal of this paradigm. To think that the only alternative to “command economy” of the Soviet model was “the market economy” of the capitalist model was sheer brain-mortgager’s inertia.

Unlike many of our Ministers and Opposition leaders whose brains are stuffed with theories dished out from the Western centres of learning, Bhutan’s Prime Minister, serving under a constitutional monarchy, has brushed aside the half-baked ideal of “high GNP and high growth percentage”, and has installed as the nation’s motto “Maximum Happiness of the People”, which puts a premium on the people’s level of nourishment, robustness of health, harmony in life, freedom of thought and expression, and sublimity of spiritual life. It is time we learnt lessons from this small-size neighbour and replace our goal of development. The soil for “Maoism” will then disappear.

V

Pillars of the Suggested “New Deal” to Adivasis

GIVING a “New Deal” to the adivasis should mean:

(i) Assurance to the adivasis that there would be no displacements and dispossessions hence-forward, except in cases approved by the Tribes Advisory Council (three-fourths of which are to be manned by elected representatives of the Scheduled Tribes of the State), the State legislature, and Parliament. Approval of each of these three bodies would be mandatory.

(ii) Restoration of tribal communities’ property rights over the forest lands and their right to grow and nurture the forests for their common benefits and humanity’s survival.

There should be no difficulty in making these declarations in view of the findings of successive groups led by Prof B.K. Roy Burman who has possibly done the most extensive surveys in adivasi-inhabited regions of the country. These findings reveal that it is only in the adivasi-controlled areas that the actual forests are larger than the extent of declared forests. In the Forest Department-managed forests, the actual forests are always less than the extent of declared forests. This proves that the adivasis impulsively grow and protect the forests. It is only in recent years that due to the economy’s over-arching commercial pulls and the consequential survival crises in tribal life, they are tending to get diverted from their traditional mores. Environmentalist groups rather than official foresters would be more effective in counselling them.

Now, we would need to address ourselves to an intricate question: to what extent can this country afford to restrict mining in forest areas?

According to an Expert Group appointed by the Ministry of Rural Development,

The areas inhabited by the tribals are also the storehouse of mineral wealth of the country…… The bulk of the coal deposit (92 per cent); bauxite (92 per cent); iron are (78 per cent); uranium (100 per cent); copper (85 per cent) and dolomite (65 per cent) and the list goes on.

About limestone and dolomite, one can definitely recommend that their mining, except in infinitesimal quantities in certain very special cases, should be prohibited. These formations are holders of water. Wherever these have been mined, water bodies below have dried up. Their industrial use is mainly in the making of cement. Water is far more important for life’s survival than cement. Moreover, there are many alternative routes for cement manufacturing processes.

Uranium mining also needs to be banned. Mankind has no need for nuclear power (uranium-generated electricity). It can safely be said that twenty years hence (that is, by 2030 AD) none will talk of commercial energy from uranium. It can only aggravate energy crisis, bring economic ruin and breed radio-active disasters. Wherever uranium mining takes place, cancer takes a heavy toll of life of all species; still-birth and other deformities become endemic. Deposits of uranium should be buried under thick over-burdens.

Bauxite mining needs to be minimised. Its use is for making aluminum, which is used for making bodies of aeroplanes, for making utensils, and for aluminum foils for food packaging. Anthropologists say that cooking foods in aluminum vessels had been one major cause for mass level degeneration of people’s health and the decline of the Mayan civilisation. In these days of climate change, when we are heading towards a catastrophe (life’s extinction), the use of jets which deplete oxygen and increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, should be heavily restricted in the interest of life’s survival. For food packaging, aluminum foil can be replaced by biodegradable plastics which can be manufactured out of food wastes.

As regards iron ore mining, our Swadeshi rulers, in the manner of foreign colonisers, have been exporting iron ores at throwaway prices, jeopardising India’s future. These exports should be prohibited and iron ore mining should be tailored to India’s own requirements. Indian the steel industry’s product-mix, too, needs to be redesigned, more so when there is a glut in the world market. Instead of giving priority to demands for steel structures for skyscrapers, luxury limousines and mega-industrial plants, the steel industry’s product pattern should be geared more towards smaller industry constructions, railways, and common people’s needs. The steel industry has come to be highly integrated in the name of utmost economy of resources and maximum profit to capital. This process has resulted in high concentration of pollutants in the centres of steel production and large displacements of people from their habitats. Scientists and steel technologists should, therefore, be challenged to develop technologies for decentralisation of various wings of steel production. If varieties of steel mills can be dispersed in economical ways, hardships to people caused by relocation will be minimised and absorption of pollutants in an ecological way will be possible. Adivasis and other sections of people would, then, agree to share in the financial gains from such mining operations.

In this era of global warming, when carbon dioxide emission needs to be minimised, stoppage of coal mining could have been the best. But our natural gas resource position and our present level of harnessing of renewable forms of energy do not permit this right now. But displacements and air pollution level can both be minimised by adoption of coal-slurry pipelines from mines to power plants, installation of efficient electro-static precipitators and scrubbers, injection of sequestered carbon into un-mineable coal seams, adoption of fluidised combustion technology (which makes possible better chemical reaction and heat transfer, hence reduced consumption of coal or biomass), installation of a number of cogeneration plants instead of any mega-power plant etc. Partnerships with adivasis, small farmers and common people in the first place can fulfill the demands of ecology, flourishing national economy, social justice and human rights.

Epilogue

IN part III, we have mentioned that Mao failed to understand the great differences caused by different genre of technology. Technologies have their inherent inclinations. Certain kinds are inherently centralising. You can never achieve people’s power with such technologies. Nature-harmonic technologies are prone to decentralisation and amenable to people’s control. Mao failed to perceive this.

Those who feel that portraying a gloomy picture for guerilla warfare will mean discouraging the adivasis’ struggle should note that international NGOs are emerging in defence of the tribals’ and poor people’s causes. Thanks to websites, these will keep increasing. International mobilisations will be tidal waves and sweep away the protagonists of elite power.

In part V, we have pleaded for minimising the carbon emitting jets. As solar-powered planes come into existence, these will have to be permitted for international travels, though with higher tariffs. The amount of bauxite mining needed therefor will have to be such as can persuade the adivasis to undertake mining.

[Acknowledgements: Most facts in part II are culled from the reports of study teams led by Prof B.K. Roy Burman. The judgment on Samata’s SLP is summarised from law reports.]

The author, who in the fifties was the Secretary of the Economic Unit attached to the Central Committee of the undivided Communist Party of India, is one of the country’s earliest environmentalists and a social philosopher. He can be contacted at sailendra nathghosh@yahoo.com and sailendranathg@ gmail.com