ABSTRACT
From the colonial period onward there has been an inclination toward centralized control of India’s forest resources. Interestingly, in the post-liberalization era, the role of private corporate capital has been immeasurably increased in the extraction of forest resources for “development,” which further dispossessed the tribal population in these areas. Since the 1970s, however, there has been a parallel process in these areas, too, and tribals have resisted the imposed and centralized development model. A large part of this resistance has been related to the struggle for “better” or “progressive” laws. In the post-1990 era, two such laws have been enacted for forest areas. One is the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act 1996 (PESA), and the other is Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights Act) 2006 (or Forest Rights Act or FRA).
This chapter probes how far this new legislation in the post-liberalization era has changed the structure and nature of forest governance in India and whether would it be right to claim that these laws have challenged the centralization in matters related to forests and give more powers to the gram sabha and local communities, and in this sense strengthen the third level of federal structure in the forest areas of India.
