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Since 2011, I’ve traveled through tribal districts in Andhra, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Odisha. In these years, I’ve seen rooms full of forest rights claims gathering dust, some even in the constituency of Tribal Affairs Min @jualoram.
Hundreds of adivasis across states who I’ve interviewed had not even heard of the Forest Rights Act a decade after it was introduced. They didn’t believe they had a right to consent or to file individual or community claims, a belief that authorities would rather let persist.
It was an Act meant to empower gram sabhas, or village assemblies to verify rights. Where do most rejections come from? District level committees comprised of bureaucracy that still uses the words 'encroachers' to describe adivasis.
