The Forests We Forgot

Huge swathes of forestland have been declared reserve forests but never notified since the colonial era, leaving thousands of people encroachers on their own land for generations. For them, it is a perennial existence of uncertainty. ISHAN KUKRETI travels to several villages across JHARKHAND, ANDHRA PRADESH AND MADHYA PRADESH to find how government failure, both at the Centre and the states, is hurting the communities and forests alike

- Ishan Kukreti

ON A January night in 1967, Vanthala Ramanna became an encroacher on his own land. The Andhra Pradesh government literally snatched away his land when it decided to create a new reserve forest almost the size of Mumbai city. The news reached Panasalpadu village in Vishakhapatnam district almost two days later. By then, Ramanna and all others in the village had become de facto landless who had to prove their land ownership.

The notification was issued under Section 4 of the Indian Forest Act, 1927. It is the first step in the process of declaring any piece of land as a reserve forest. The next steps involve settling the land rights before the transfer is made to the new owners—the forest department. But that never happened. This is not the first time the village residents had to prove their rights over their ancestral land.

Some 150 years ago, the first Indian Forest Act in 1865, promulgated by the British government, had usurped the traditional ownership and management power of forest-dwelling communities. After over six decades of coaxing, the British government in 1932 issued pattas (legal ownership documents) to the forest dwellers. But the legal documents did not deter the Andhra Pradesh government from exploiting the same colonial law to snatch away their lands.