Tribal (Land) Rights and Industry Accountability: A Case of Mining in Jharkhand 1 , India (original) (raw)
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Recent decades witness growing number of legislations and instruments world over and in India that guarantee protection of tribal lands and their rights from alienation. Yet, the incidences of land alienation have increasingly become common in Third World including India. The state, as patron of state-industry confluence, unlike previously, began to come back from all accountabilities and mandatory obligations towards the people as enshrined in the Constitution and laws. Based on an empirical study covering 57 stone mines and associated stone factories in 3 villages of Dumka district, present paper examines the tribal lands alienation by mining industry (small scale) in Santal Pargana of Jharkhand1 and the violation of rights of tribes over land and livelihood by the combine of state and industry. When the state patronized and promoted the land alienation and turned blind eye to the tribal rights, the people individually and collectively responded through petty struggles in order to address the intrusion of industry till their doorstep. Process of the manipulation of tribal land rights and the physiology of people’s struggles is of special interests.
Tribal Land: Development vs. Traditional Rights of Adivasis
The issues considered in this paper represent the intersection of state and privately owned developmental programmes, and the people who often end up with the shorter end of the stick at the cost of this development. Since liberalization in the 90's, the socioeconomic paradigm of neo-liberal development in India has had unavoidable implications for tribals, farmers and other communities of socioeconomically underprivileged sections of Indian society. The 1994 rehabilitation policy draft of the Government of India begins by stating that with the 1991 economic policy Indian as well as foreign private investment would require more land than in the past and that much of it would be in the resource rich tribal areas 1. The intrusion of the said paradigm into the lives of these communities has led to a quagmire of both conceptual and real biases, based on the myopic understanding of 'development' within the centrally enforced paradigm. It has often been the case that underprivileged communities become underprivileged due to this intrusion in the first place. As a result, legislative frameworks safeguarding their interests end up being reactive, rather than proactive. The matter's complexity arises from the fact that it is very often state policies that inflict the most damage and at the same time, we look to state legislation to protect the rights of underprivileged communities in the face of unprecedented industrial and economic growth. Specifically, this paper will compare legislative and constitutional provisions, state initiatives with cases that reveal the impact of these provisions. The scope of the issues discussed in this paper will pertain to a broad range of tribal issues. The common feature amongst them in the scope of this paper is the centrality of land, whether it is displacement or peoples, acquisition of forest and agricultural land or the labelling of tribals as 'encroachers' upon state property. Quintessentially, these considerations will reflect on the idea of 'public space' for tribals and poor peasants.
Land As An Important Factor In The Governance Of Tribals
2016
Government and tribals have always been at loggerheads with respect to land. During the British era, there was a diminished sense of ownership among tribals since there was no law to protect their ownership title. After independence, our Government aimed at replacing the British policies of exclusion with those of integration. Our Constitution provides for certain provisions which are aimed at safeguarding the interest of the tribals. These provisions ensure that tribals are not deprived of their land ownership titles. This paper seeks to examine the efficacy of some of these provisions as well as other measures undertaken by the legislature and the judiciary for tribal welfare.
Government Acquisition of Tribal Land for Development Purposes-A Legal Critique
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Earth's resources are limited, and when one faction of society obtains resources for itself, it only logically follows that another faction is simultaneously deprived of those resources. In the case of indigenous and tribal people, every resource stems from the land that they live on. Without that land, they have no life. And yet, the demands of our ever-growing modern world ignore this fact and continue to deprive them of their livelihood. In such a situation where the actions of society jeopardize the life of others, one would expect the law to intervene and ensure justice. In the following paper, we seek to answer this very basic question: What has the law done to protect indigenous land rights? To answer this question, we take a look at Indian legislations designed to protect land rights, and then move on to scrutinising how the higher judiciary has applied these statutes. To contrast the stance taken by the Indian judiciary, this paper then takes the example of a few judgements delivered outside India. The central argument through the bulk of this paper is that the Indian Judiciary has been inconsistent in protecting tribal land right and needs to change its outlook on the issue in order to make progress.
Indigenous people's right to land in Odisha: A study
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Land and resource-related rights are of fundamental importance to indigenous peoples for a number of reasons, including religious significance, self-determination, identity, and economic factors. Land is a prime economic asset of indigenous peoples. The majority of indigenous peoples live in forest areas, depend on agriculture for living and collect minor forest produces to fulfill their subsistence needs. Land and it's systems attain much importance in their life, which is a network of human relationship, pertaining to the ownership and harmonious relationship with land. This has everywhere been major factor determining the socioeconomic and political order. Ownership of land in case of Scheduled Tribe enhances their social status. Tribals use their land for three purposes, firstly it is used as the source of food gathering and hunting, secondly it is used as a place to reside and lastly to cultivate. In the year 1920, firstly The Indian Forest Act was passed thereby turning all Adivasi forest land as government owned. This delegitimised the traditional community ownership systems in Adivasi (tribal) societies. This paper attempts to analyse the different aspects of land rights among the Adivasis of Odisha. Despite elaborate provisions in the Indian constitution and other laws more than 15 percent of Adivasis have been displaced without any comprehensive rehabilitation efforts.
Struggle for Land: Tribal Land Issue and Debate
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The reader does not need to have copious concepts to grasp the tribal problems. It is about the land issue and the debate over how it arose and persisted; it exposes the problems in tribal societies.The central and state governments have the actual power to ensure tribal development. Furthermore, the land rights and protection problems are under the government's commitment to provide legal safeguards. However, neither the federal government nor state or local governments have exhibited much interest in the land troubles that tribal communities face. The paper focuses on tribal land issues and debates in the Bodoland Territorial Region of Assam. In the region, 97.88 per cent of the tribal people live in rural households and face uncertainty. The findings show that tribal people consider the government process insecure and intended to safeguard tribal members while ensuring the secure use of land in the region.
Tribal Dispossession through Land Acquisition: A Study of Open Cast Mines in West Bengal
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Since Independence the State-led development strategies like hydroelectric projects, dam constructions, mining projects have displaced and dispossessed a large number of tribals and economically marginalised rural population through the dreadful Land Acquisition Act. This gained a further momentum in the neo-liberal period. The anecdotes of tribal victimisation, continuous erosion of their rights and how they are coping in the market economy are repeatedly studied. The Raniganj coal mining region of West Bengal where few large-scale open cast mines are operational is not an exception in this regard and needs to be contextualised in a deeper socioeconomic -politico context. However, this paper seeks to understand how far the deprivation of the tribals belonging to the project affected villages is integral to land acquisition.