View source for Commons, Communities and State Appropriation

(from [[Vocabulary of Commons]], article 22)

''by'' '''Ashok Choudhary and Roma''' 

=Commons, communities and state appropriation=

<blockquote>
“Our ancestors protected this forest and land and this is our heritage.
To protect the forest and land for our future generations.
Then howcome the British ruler has become the owner of our heritage? We cannot accept that.”
* Tilka Majhi from the Jabra Pahadiya Tribe of the Santhal Paraganas, to the collector of Bhagalpur during a trial when the government tried to reallocate land. Baba Tilka Majhi was first Santal leader who took up the arms against the British in the 1789. He was killed by the British.
</blockquote>

In India the majority of the rural population has been dependent on natural resources for their livelihood.
Traditionally, most of these natural resources—land, forest and water—were commons.
But in the historical process, and especially during the colonial rule, many of these commons came under private and state ownership.
The colonial powers’ quest to grab land for increasing agricultural revenue, supply of timber<ref>Fernandes, Walter. 2008. “Sixty Years of Development–Induced Displacement in India: Impacts and the Search for Alternatives,” in Hari Mohan Mathus (ed). India : Social Development Report 2008. New Delhi. Council for Social Development and Oxford University Press, pp. 89–102.</ref> and other forest produce, for industrialisation and for accumulation of capital necessitated a total change in the pattern of social ownership to private and state ownership.
In this process, the symbiotic relationship between society and common resources almost got destroyed.

Since then the ownership of forest resources has remained a critical issue, resulting in a series of conflicts between Adivasis and other forest dwellers on the one side and the Indian state and corporations on the other.
It has become an important political issue now with the enactment of the Schedule Tribes and Other Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Rights) Act 2006, popularly known as the Forest Rights Act (FRA).
With the growing awareness about the political rights, there is a class struggle now in many forest areas especially in the central, eastern and Himalayan regions.

It is pertinent to look into the history of these areas in the context of appropriation of forest land by the Indian state, against the basic principlesof Indian Constitution.
Forest people had fought tooth and nail against the concept of eminent domain established by the colonial powers and forced the then colonial state to enact progressive laws in certain areas such as the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act (CTA) 1908, Santhal Parganas Tenancy Act (SPTA) 1912 and Van Panchayat Rules 1930 in Uttarakhand.
Ironically, the government of independent India systematically accelerated the process of annexation of forest land.
Thus national independence came as a curse to the forest people and forest dwellers.

So the struggle for community control over the forest resources still continues in different regions in different forms.
Since the invasion on forest resource by the neo–liberal regime after 1991, the resistance by local people’s organisations have also intensified and spread in the last two decades.
In some places the resistance has taken militant forms.
Given the role played by the Indian state as a facilitator for profiteering rather than a protector of constitutional and human rights of the affected communities, all these resistance movements are fundamentally for the defence of their constitutional rights, leading towards the demand for community governance of natural resources.
The situation has compelled the ruling parties, and ‘mainstream’ politics in general, to formulate legislations which would recognise community rights fully or partly.
FRA is an important milestone in this process.

Though FRA recognises community rights over forest land, produce and forest management, it does not fit into the dominant political economy of the Indian state or the present form of governance, which continues to be based on eminent domain.
As a result, the conflict between the state and the people on the issue of forest governance is intensifying.
This creates political space for the peoples’ movements who are using FRA as a tool to empower themselves for decisive negotiations with the state, on a democratic premise.

Till now the state has not negotiated on these critical conflicting issues directly with the community representatives.
Rather, it is doing so through its own representatives by forming various committees, through the National Advisory Council (NAC) or with the committee appointed to review implementation of FRA.
But as the forest rights movements led by 
people’s organisations grow ever stronger the state will have to start the negotiation process with the community representatives.

==Defining the commons, its defenders and destroyers==

The commons, according to the provisions of the Constitution of India and the Panchayati Raj Act, are that every village had a place in its jurisdiction that was kept for the community usage.
They are called nistar, haqdari and bartandari rights—basically rights of villagers for grazing, fishing, collecting firewood, hunting, water and other necessities of life.
A majority of the commons were encroached by the landed sections, corporations, projects, state controlled cooperative societies and government departments for forests, irrigation, railways and public works.
Significantly, the commons appropriated by private citizens are not taken into consideration when accounting for alienation of the commons though they have taken away substantial areas of common resources.
Only direct state appropriation is referred to in most of the cases.

The state has played a major role in appropriation by the private parties.
The issue of commons is therefore directly related to the larger question of agrarian reforms in the country.
The commons or the land used by the village community for the public purposes such as grazing, pastures, collection of fuel–wood, rights over territorial waters, fishing rights in the ponds, rivers, seasonal rivers, collection of non–timber forest produce (NTFP) from the village forests etc are issues of power and control in the rural hinterland.
Perusal of the land records of any village from any state will show that the village today has very little commons or no commons at all.
The common lands have been appropriated by the rich or dominant caste sections.
In the case of forests, appropriation is by the forest department.

==History of state appropriation and resistance==

The colonial state initiated an economic process for accumulation of capital by encroaching upon natural resources such as forests, land and water, in the nineteenth century.
The imperial powers started annexing the forests in the eighteenth century.
A powerful section of the Indian merchant class joined with the British in accumulating capital and thus became a partner 
in the exploitation of natural resources, using Adivasis (first dwellers, indigenous people) and Moolnivasis (forest dwellers) as cheap labour to strengthen the colonial power.
Many Indian corporations have actually grown in this process and still maintain the culture of appropriation.

The government expanded its own forest lands by taking over private forests of the landed classes and village commons.
By doing so it came into direct conflict with those who worked in or lived in these forested areas.
The approximately 75 million hectares of forest area that remained in the eminent domain of the forest department, which is 23% of the total land area of the country, awaits effective agrarian reforms.
Forest dwelling communities have always had diverse dimensions in terms of population and activities.
Each community has its own history of struggle for their rights against the state.
But these struggles remained isolated from each other.
It was only in the 1980s, when some social movement activists started political mobilisation in different areas and began to establish a linkage among these struggles that regional and national level forums and networks were created.

The National Forum of Forest People and Forest Workers (NFFPFW) was formed in this process in 1998, with the primary objective of creating
a national level struggle by linking the regional and local struggles.
It was
a difficult task to formulate an appropriate definition of forest based working people who are dependent on the forest for their livelihood.
Finally it was decided that ''‘any worker who depends on forests for livelihood or is exploited in any manner by the forest department, forest corporation or contractors, or collects minor forest produce or cultivates the so–called forest land for a living, or is pastoralist depended on the forest, shall be called a forest worker’.''
This definition was enriched by the indigenous people’s concept of Adivasi society organised around labour.
It is also built around the concept of community and collectivism and is interested neither in the exploitation of labour nor in selling its own labour.

With the enactment of FRA, a new legislation has opened up a debate and intensified struggles in various forest areas on the issue of land reforms inside the forest areas.
This critical issue has not been addressed properly in the last six decades.
In enabling an understanding, one needs to be 
aware of the facts about the appropriation of common resources by the state for profiteering by feudalistic and capitalistic forces.
In this context it will be relevant to discuss the background and examine some important case studies of some crucial areas where conflict is intensifying.

==Land grab by the government==

Before an effective Land Reforms Act could be enacted in the country, vast tracts of forest vested with the erstwhile princely states, zamindars and talukdars were transferred to the forest department.
These included huge tracts of commons which were annexed by the forest department without any process for settlement of rights.
Those who lived in the forests were ignored and their activities and presence became ‘illegal’.

These included the forest and forest land in the boundary of the gram sabha or revenue village.
The example of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, which then included Uttarakhand and Jharkhand, is illustrative.
There the movement against Zamindari (landlord) system was very strong.
So just before the Zamindari Abolition and Land Reform Act could be enacted, the forests of both these states were vested with the forest department by bringing new legislations.
The Private Forest Act 1948 was enacted hurriedly in the respective legislative assemblies of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to legalise this appropriation retroactively.
This illegal invasion from the forest department on the village forest and commons continued in various forms even till recently.
Since forests are in the central list in the Constitution of India from 1975, state governments became passive accomplices in this appropriation.

According to the study conducted by NFFPFW in Uttar Pradesh, an estimated three million acres of gram sabha land has been appropriated by the forest department between 1950 and 2000, apart from the land under the Land Ceiling Act.
If estimates of the land appropriated by private people surpassing the land ceiling are included, it will be exorbitantly high.

In 1955 these lands were again notified as ‘protected forests’ according to Indian Forest Act 1927.
The Land Reform Act came into existence 
in 1952 but enforcement of this Act took another eight to ten years in these states.
It might be noted that protected forests are those government forests where rights are recorded but not settled.

Even before the land reform legislation came into force, the government strengthened the forest department.
It soon became a biggest landlord in the country, much against the spirit of the Constitution enshrined in Article 31–A, the object of which is to facilitate agrarian reforms providing for acquisition for any ''‘estate or any right therein, extinguishment or modification of any such rights, shall be deemed to be void on the ground that list is inconsistent with or takes away or abridges any of the rights conferred by Articles 14 to 19 of the Constitution.''
Hence these were all illegal transfers of land, as they were not acquired under the Land Acquisition Act and also none of the state revenue laws has any provision of transfer of lands under the jurisdiction of the gram sabha to the forest department.

A glaring example could be seen in Khunti district of Jharkhand which is ‘Khuttkatti’ area, where CTA is applicable since 1908.
Around 450 villages had the control of forest land and forest according to this Act at that time.
The land records, the khatiyan, are with the Munda tribe.
But in 1955, the forest department demarcated its own boundary in this very area without going for verification of rights and demarcation.

The Revenue Department notification dated 1 July 1955 reads that, 
<blockquote>
‘The forest and the waste lands comprised in this notification shall be called Protected Forests. The nature of extent of rights and government and of private person in and over the forest and waste lands comprised in this notification has not been enquired and recorded as laid down in sec 29 of the Indian Forest Act 1927, but as the State Government thinks that such enquiry and recording will occupy such length of time as in the mean time to endanger the rights of the government and as the enquiry and record–of–rights will hereafter be made, this notification is issued subject to all existing rights of individuals or communities’.
</blockquote>
This happened in the area where communities were already in possession of lands.
Despite the power of the CTA, the Indian Forest Act (IFA) 1927 was applied to acquire lands without settling the claims.
This fraud 
has been committed by Government of India in all the states where hundreds of thousands of hectares of land with the community and gram sabha and other common purposes were illegally transferred to the forest department after independence.

The similar process took place in Himachal Pradesh (HP).
All government lands are forest land in HP after the new state came into existence in 1971.
People of the state enjoyed rights from these forests well recorded in Wajib–ul–urz, which is a document of record of rights in Urdu that existed before the British period.
This record of rights mentions the rights such as timber for house construction, grazing rights, timber for making agricultural implements, grass for thatched roof, fodder, fuel–wood, lopping trees for cattle, Chirgoza and Kail dry leaves for bedding of cattle, wood for ceremonies, dry wood for dead etc.
These rights are known as ''‘Bartandari Rights’'' in the local language.

In the 1927 settlement, 24 rights were recorded according to the IFA.
Over the years these rights have been transformed into concessions.
While entering into the twenty–first century, all these concessions were eliminated too.
The landless and other poor communities who depended on forest and commons were termed as ‘encroachers’ in independent India.
The Government of HP states that the record of rights has already been compiled since 1921, and rights have already been settled under the IFA.
The state authorities say that the HP Land Revenue Act is also applicable.
Chapter IV of the HP Land Revenue Act envisages that if there is any change in the record of rights, ''there is a detailed procedure for making new entries'', variations, alterations, additions in the record of rights.
Thus there is a complete code, statutory enactment and rules and regulations pertaining to these rights especially in three tribal districts on HP.
The record of rights i.e.
individual and community which were earlier recorded in Wazib–ul–arj were finally reduced in the shape of Forest Settlement Report.

The Timber Distribution Rights (TDR) that people enjoyed from the commons, was taken over by the forest department who controlled the TDR of the villages.
The TDR policy made by the Government of HP 
on April 2010 has been widely criticised by the forest dwelling communities.
They have refused to accept the new TDR rules that have been formed under the colonial IFA, that is against the spirit and usufruct rights of the people, and despite the FRA being in existence since 2006 and the rules notified in December 2007.

Despite the FRA that strongly advocates community rights, the Act has not been implemented in non scheduled areas.
The land that belongs to community is being diverted to big multinational companies and mega hydro projects without the requisite forest and environmental clearance.
The cement factory in Majathal sanctuary in Mandi District, Renuka Dam in Sirmour District and hydropower projects in Kinnaur District, to name
a few, are proposed to be halted by the various committee reports due to their non viability.

Similarly, in Uttarakhand (previously Uttar Pradesh Hills) 65% of the total land is forest and in the hilly region it is 84%.
In the hilly regions, after historic struggles, two types of forest management were being practiced since the British Raj.
Van Panchayats in British Garhwal areas used to manage the forest adjacent to the villages which would provide fuel, fodder and other NTFPs for daily use.
Van Panchayats were under the revenue department and not under the forest department.
Over the years, various amendments were done in the Van Panchayats rules and they were gradually taken over by the forest department.
They became virtually non–functional except in some areas where women have taken some initiatives.
For the interior forest there used to be Village Reserve Forest (VRF), managed by the communities which would provide other requirements.
But in 1962 the forest department took control of these VRFs and made it reserve forests through a government order without any consultation with the communities or with the legislators.
The area acquired from VRF in three districts (Pauri Garhwal, Rudraprayag and Chamoli) was 3.75 lakh hectare and only 50,000 hectares were left for Van Panchayats.
This had a very adverse impact on the communities since large scale commercialisation of forest produces and commercial plantation was started.
The famous Chipko movement started in the 1970s in the tribal areas of Nanda Devi to stop commercialisation of forests.
The Van Panchayat rules were never converted into an Act despite a 
strong movement by local residents.
These rules still do not cover the reserve forests and national parks.
Both the forest department and the Government of Uttarakhand oppose the implementation of FRA in the hilly region saying that the Act is not needed since Uttarakhand has Van Panchayat regulation, which is not even an Act and under the domain of the forest department.

In the name of scientific forestry the forest department in its ten year working plan included the commons and treated them as ‘forest land’, hence encroaching on public land since 1947.
On the basis of the working plan, the forest department since then has been victimising the tribal and other poor sections who were already owners and dependent on these lands for centuries.
The forest department also generated revenue from these lands included in working plans by the senior forest officials.
A detailed study in Madhya Pradesh by Anil Garg reveals that the lands notified in the working plan under section 4(1) of IFA were treated as forest land without completing the procedure laid down from section 5 to 19 in IFA since 1960.
Private lands were also not spared and were notified under section 4(1), without any land acquisition process and without paying any compensation to the tribals in forest areas.

Another injustice done by the forest department was that, in the Raiyatwari villages, the lands notified under ''gair khata'' (unrecorded land) and non forest land comprising of commons were not only notified as protected forest but were also taken over by the forest department to include in the working plan by notifying those under section 4(1) and continued to generate revenue, logging and to produce false data of ‘forest land’ in its records, when in reality these were actually revenue land.

The forest under Zamindari villages and Malguzari villages were notified as protected forest land under section 29 of IFA, but the non forest land under these systems (that were not transferred to revenue department) were also notified under section 4(1) of IFA and gazette notification was done.
These lands were also included in working plan and the forest department took over its management without following the legal process.

In 1996 the declaration of ‘orange area’ by the forest department did another fraud on commons by appropriating around 9.8 million hectares 
of people’s land.
The notification of orange area comprised of already notified reserve forest, land notified under section 4(1), renewal of land under 27 and 34(a) of IFA.
All were notified as orange area, included in the working plan and false data were reproduced by the forest department in working plan.
These lands have been identified as the revenue land by the legislative assembly and the order to transfer all these lands back to the revenue department has been issued.
Yet the process has not been started till date.

In Madhya Pradesh, all lands for common purposes were acquired under section 29 of IFA and were notified as protected forests that extinguished the rights of the forest dwelling people.
The record of rights were fully documented in the land record Wajib–ul–arz, called nistar patrak in Madhya Pradesh.
In all such lands of the villages were acquired under section 4(1) of IFA, all rights recorded in the nistar patrak were extinguished.
Such fraud has been done in other states also by the forest department, in connivance with the revenue department, to expand its territory.

==Subverting the constitution in Sikkim==

The case of sixth schedule area is no different.
Before the merger of Sikkim to India in 1975, the land holdings were divided into two categories.
One was the land belonging to the Chogiyal state and other was individual land holdings.
Individual land holdings were less compared to the land belonging to the forest.
The reserve forest were brought under IFA after the merger by a presidential notification under 371(f)(n).
It is pertinent to note here that these lands were not surveyed and by a simple notification entire 80% of dense and cold dessert was transferred to forest department without any records of the land.
Sikkim has never had any record system for land.
The revenue records are still the same as those maintained during the King’s rule.
The records do not even have a column to record the area of the forests.

According to IFA it is essential to complete the land settlement procedure detailed from sections 4 to 20, IFA.
But no such process took place and in fact no rights (community rights, rights of the pastoralist community or any other stakeholder) were settled.
No settlement officer was appointed and no demarcation of the land has been done so far.
During the Chogiyal’s rule also the community rights of the tribal and other 
population were not recorded.
So these records are totally oral and not recorded in writing anywhere.
The chief secretary of the state has maintained that there has to be a settlement of the forest land between the Chogiyal estate and the GoI.
No such settlement has been done so far.
The common land is around 80% of the total land of which 40% is the cold dessert stretching across the Himalayan Kanchanjunga ranges.

Yet in various parts of the state various sanctuaries and national parks have been created where the rights of the people have been curtailed.
They enjoyed certain rights such as collection of fuel wood, NTFP, herbs, fruits and vegetables, passages and other grazing rights and pastures for nomadic tribes during the Chogiyal regime.
These rights have been restricted and many of the nomadic grazers have been evicted from their traditional seasonal makeshift houses.
This was admitted by a senior official of the east district in a private conversation.

The state was under the rule of the Crown till Sikkim merged with India in 1975.
The land and forest history of the state is very interesting.
It is still governed by its own customary laws rather than laws framed by the Crown.
Around 84% of the land is under the control of the forest department.
All land management and forest management took place during Chogiyal regime.
In 1909 the forest were declared as reserve forest by the Chogiyal regime and were vested with creation of the forest department by a Crown order.
In all zones of Sikkim, Kazi and Thekedars were the landlords and had many forests under their control.
In 1945 landlordism was abolished and the lands that were under the private ownership and occupied by the tribes and other inhabitants were regularised by the notification of the Crown and the rest of the forest areas were vested with the forest department by a notification.

During the Chogiyal regime three types of forests were recognised: the reserve forest, khasmal forest (in between villages to meet daily requirement of the village) and gocharan land (for grazing of the cattle of villagers).
There were some private forests which were under the control of monasteries were known as Monastic Forests.
Only reserve forests were under the control of the forest department.

The first cadastral survey took place in 1952.
Prior to that there was no survey done of the total land of the state.
It was during that time land titles were given to the people.
The second survey was started in 1978 and completed in 1983.
The irregularities in the previous survey were rectified in this survey and all have land.
There is no landless in the state but there is no ceiling of land also.
The holdings are continued according to the occupation of the land during the King’s rule.
The forest department argues that the community rights are not required to be recorded as the communities already enjoy certain rights without any restrictions.
Moreover all these rights are being enjoyed from gaucharan and khasmal lands.
Instead, the forest department is advocating joint forest management and other charity and welfare schemes to the communities rather than implementing FRA in its true spirit.
It was quite evident that the forest department is more afraid of loosing control of vast forest lands in the state and feels that FRA is not applicable in Sikkim as there are no forest dwellers.

Another crucial issue of conflict between the communities and the forest department is on the ownership of Minor Forest Produce (MFP).
While more than 60% of forest revenue comes from MFP, a large majority of forest dwellers are dependent on various items of MFP for their daily needs and also for livelihood support.
No forest law has quantified the list of produce specifically and the forest department arbitrarily used to decide which one was MFP and which one is not.
Bamboo and cane are considered as timber and not as MFPs.
Interestingly, in FRA the items of MFPs are specifically mentioned which includes bamboo, cane and tendu leaves.
Both PESA and FRA has ensured ownership rights on MFP as community rights.
But the forest department is not keen to loose the ownership of MFP since it is a profit making business for the department and its staff.
MFPs are being managed for commercial purposes by state forest corporations and by state sponsored marketing federations.

As late as November 2010, this is what Down To Earth has to say about the position of the forest department: 
<blockquote>
The MFP economy is fragile but supports close to 275 million people in rural India, according a World Bank estimate.
These people comprise the poorest, including 54 million tribals.

Jharkhand has 90,000 collectors of lac.
Agriculture takes care of their food while MFP is the main source of cash income.
The Planning Commission has put the annual trade of MFP at Rs 50,000 crore, but MoEF claims the trade is worth less at Rs 5,000 crore.

Very little of this money goes to forest communities.
Take bamboo.
It has about 1,500 documented uses.
But communities do not have access to bamboo.
Reason: the forest department treats it as timber; therefore, it cannot be felled.
Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, which are among the worst Naxalite– affected states, account for 47% of the total area under bamboo cultivation.
The forest departments of these states together earn up to Rs 82 crore a year from bamboo.
Despite FRA, which says bamboo is MFP, government, not people, continues to be the sole owner of the produce.

A Supreme Court verdict of 2002 and arguments that bamboo is a grass, not tree, have not changed the forest department’s thinking.<ref>Down to Earth, 15 November 2010, page 35. [http://www.downtoearth.org.in/node/2189 http://www.downtoearth.org.in/node/2189]</ref> 
</blockquote>
Other government departments like railways, irrigation and the public works department have also appropriated huge tracts of land in the name of national interest.
The Indian Railways has a land bank of 133,000 hectares of land according to the statement of the Minister for Railways in parliament.
Besides this there is a huge amount of land in possession of the Department of Railways on both sides of the 63,000 km long railway tracks.
All these lands have been appropriated from the village common land and forest land.

==Disputes==

This issue of forest land is the most critical dispute inside the forest areas between people and the state.
It is notable that in areas like Jharkhand, the forest department extended its control over land, forests and resources in new forest areas in the recent post–independence past.

After independence, non implementation of the constitutional provisions inside the forest areas has totally destroyed the community’s relationship with the forest and with the land.
All across the country, disputes arose between the village and the forest department, village and revenue department and the forest and revenue departments.
This conflict started 
right from the colonial times.
The crisis has deepened in such a way that the entire forest belt of India is under turmoil where forest people and tribals are being treated as anti–national and as enemies of the forest.

There are primarily three kinds of disputes.
* The revenue lands that were spared after Zamindari abolition were vested with the forest department and were termed as ‘forest land’. All the rights enjoyed by the people in these lands were extinguished by the forest department after independence.
* Both the forest and revenue departments have been doing separate actions in their respective land records relating to the same land (both common and private) for the last 50 years. As a result, the spirit of land reform in the country has been completely defeated.
* After independence serious disputes arose countrywide between the forest department and the village, revenue department and the village and the forest department and the revenue department.

==Displacement==

Displacement is the most visible effect of the encroachment of public space by the state and the private companies.
There has been direct and indirect displacement due to loss of livelihood.
All these displacements are made in the name of development projects, which actually have promoted accumulation of capital both by the state and by the private companies.
The types of projects which have caused major displacements, often involuntary, are
* Dams for irrigation, hydro energy and drinking water that create lakes on previously inhabited areas.
* Transportation corridors, railways, highways, airports, transmission lines, irrigation canals.
* New ports and towns.
* Urban infrastructure.
* New mines particularly open mines.
* Major industrial estates, Special Economic Zones.
* Forest reserves and national parks.
* Big farm houses.

The major cause of displacement, in intensity and extent, is due to dams and reservoirs which affects about 40 million people—62% of the total displaced.
According to D Bandopadhaya there is no official database of persons displaced and affected by these ‘development’ processes.
But
a study conducted by Dr Walter Fernandes 2 shows that approximately 60 million persons were forcibly evicted from their land, livelihood and habitat from 1947 to 2004.
It involved 25 million hectares of land, including seven million hectares of forests and six million hectares of commons.
Thus around 12 million hectares of farmland were lost to development projects.
The social impact is horrendous.
While the tribals constitute 8.08% of the country’s population (Census of India 2001) they are 40% of the displaced/affected persons.

==Conflict between the state and subalterns==

If it was the ‘Raj’ then, it is the ‘nation state’ now which is constantly impinging into the territory of human dignity by seizing the lives and livelihoods of the forest dwellers.
There is ruthless invasion of the natural resources by the state, state sponsored corporations and private corporations—both national and multinational.
It is very crucial to note that the concept of the ‘Modern Indian State’ was born and started growing in the colonial era and was highly influenced by the Raj.
A new class, educated and trained by the then rulers to become future rulers, was grown to protect the landed and financial interests against the subaltern groups who became a real threat to the Raj by the mid– nineteenth century.
A series of revolts by the indigenous groups which started in the eighteenth century against the colonial domination over natural resources forced the colonial rulers to take legal and political steps to: 
# Make certain rules and regulations to control the social process.
# Create an intermediary class who would function as a buffer between the Raj and the revolting groups.
# Enact some progressive laws on social and economic issues.

In this process, the idea of ‘mainstream’ was promoted and two major ‘nationalist’ parties were formed—the Indian National Congress in 1885 and Indian Muslim League at the dawn of the twentieth century.
Incidentally, both these political parties demanded economic concessions from the colonial rulers and not political freedom.
With the support of 
these parties the Indian merchant class, in collaboration with the colonial power, entered the industrialisation process, which was initiated by the British companies.
The Indian bourgeoisie became partners of these companies in looting the natural resources—mining, forests and water.
The inherent economic and political interest in this process was to oppress the indigenous groups who were dependent on these resources and on the land.
Such plunder of resources and oppression of indigenous groups continued after the transfer of political power from the Raj to Indian rulers.
This was continued in the name of ‘development’ and many new forces like progressive intelligentsia, industrial working class and technicians in the name of ‘nation building’ were drawn into this.
Indigenous groups remained isolated and more commons were lost.

In the era of capitalist globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation, the situation has become more critical as the trinity of international financial institutions, (the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Asian Development Bank etc), World Trade Organisation and multinationals have taken policymakers in their grip to gain control of these resources.
The Kyoto Convention on Climate Change has become a new tool for the northern countries and corporations to gain free access over large natural resources in developing countries.
In the neo–colonial era, global capital is applying a uniform policy for all the countries unlike the past where they had been pursuing policy separately for each colonised nation.

Steps towards establishing a capital regime even in forestry have not been accepted by the communities.
There is a history of opposition and resistance to all this and Adivasis across regions have braved it all.
The protests have not been merely a loud protest but a series of revolutionary movements and had defining results, which started as early as the eighteenth century and continued till the twentieth century.
In India, these revolutionary movements started from Jharkhand and spread up to South Central and Western India.
The central issue in all these movements was independence from the colonial rule.
In essence it was absolute sovereign rights over the natural resources, which had been the source and symbol of social and cultural heritage.
So the communities were involved totally in these struggles in their entirety.

==Resolving the conflict==

In this context, the struggle for a secure livelihood and protection of resources have not remained a simple process.
It is inevitably linked with the right to work, food, education, health and social security.
Therefore the challenges before the movements are to develop an inclusive understanding of this key issue in building up long term and short term strategies collectively.
In the given context, old forms of struggles need radical changes to face the aggression of powerful capital and its allies.
New alliances and new forms of struggles have to be built up which can ensure community ownership of the resources, collectivism, democratic space and leadership of all the deprived sections in the organisational process.
There is a need to promote alternative mechanisms that reverse the present trend and revalue land and its products so as to ensure an egalitarian society—and a new world order.

It is heartening to note that such a process has already being started by common and disempowered people in different regions in India and in other parts of South Asia—from north to south and from north–east to north–west.
The struggle to live with dignity is essentially a struggle to ‘reclaim the lost physical and political space’.
This is also a struggle between the subalterns and the elitist Indian state.
Indian societies are on the threshold of a radical transformation—from the captivity of eminent domain to independent and sovereign societies, which would lead to the formation of a true egalitarian nation state.
Intellectual and technical workers need to look at this transformation process objectively, so that they can find their appropriate and relevant role in this.
Ironically, the majority of this section have till now remained within the state premise and in its development paradigm rather than seeing the changing process from the people’s perspective.
They need to look forward towards the emerging situation, and creatively engage with the new world being created.

==Endnotes==
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