ABSTRACT
The colonial regime of land and resource governance manifested most viciously in the forest areas in the form of denial of rights and justice to forest dwellers and systematic transfer of forest lands to corporate and development interests in the pursuit of ‘national growth’. With the adoption of the neoliberal economic regime, the whole range of resource conflicts for ‘infrastructure’, ‘development’, and ‘conservation’ intensified, culminating in a national crisis; a nationwide struggle of forest dwellers culminated in the enactment of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006. This law pertinently pioneered the introduction of a non-centralised democratic land and natural resource governance, by the transfer of power directly to the communities at the level of habitation, perhaps an unprecedented model attempted nowhere else in the world. However, the administrative arms continue to resist the law through blatant acts of commissions and omissions, secure in the belief that political connivance, corporate backing, and judicial ineptitude will soon restore their dominant position, which is well documented through impact studies after a decade. The chapter attempts to unfold this fascinating narrative that could inspire and draw lessons for the emergence of another paradigm of land and resource governance as if people matter.
