Less than 5% of tribals' forest rights "recognized" in India, no mechanism to ensure land ownership to women

By Asavari Sharma and Gaurav Madan
A new report, “Promise and Performance – Ten Years of the Forest Rights Act (FRA)”, released at a recent national convention in Delhi, has revealed that less than 5% of rights out of a total of over 200 million tribals and other traditional forest dwellers for about 34.6 million hectares (ha) in India has been so far recognized.
The report, released as part of the Community Forest Rights Learning and Advocacy (CFR-LA) process of the convention, highlights that empowering provisions of FRA for ensuring forest rights of women are being ignored by implementing agencies.
The report recommends creating a dedicated mechanism for effective implementation of FRA provisions to ensure ownership rights for women and equal participation in the decision making process for management of community forest resource (CFR) areas.
The convention was held to mark the the tenth anniversary of FRA on December 14 in order to focus on failure of state institutions to recognise the rights of tribal and other traditional forest dwellers – particularly women – and examine the ongoing challenges in the implementation of FRA.
Speaking on the report, KP Soma, head of the gender subgroup of CFR-LA, said, “Only 3% of the potential for rights recognition through FRA has so far been actually achieved. Unfortunately, there is no disaggregated data for women’s forest rights.”
Pointing out that “women have taken an active role in the FRA process”, Soma added, “We demand that women should have a rightful say on how resources for forest development, protection, and conservation are spent through gender budgeting.”
Present on the occasion, Lalitha Kumaramangalam, the Chairperson of the National Commission of Women (NCW), heard testimonies on the violation of forest rights of women across states.
“Without water, forests and land, we cannot survive. Women have been protecting forests for generations, and with FRA, we were hopeful that our rights would be recognised,” a community leader from Badkagaon in Jharkhand, Lakshmi, said. “But instead, today, when we try to assert our right to access our own forests, we are beaten up and arrested.”
Such stories of violence against women were echoed by other community members from across India. Testimonies from Uttarakhand revealed instances of violence by forest department officials, resulting in the hospitalisation of women and destruction of homes of villagers claiming titles under FRA.
Testimonies also highlighted threats to food security posed by commercial plantations on cultivation land through compensatory afforestation and other plantation programmes.
“Plantation of teak and eucalyptus by the forest department has reduced our area for cultivation. Previously we would grow 70-80 different types of millets. Now this variety has been reduced, causing a crisis in food security and nutrition,” said Basanti Majhi, a member of the Kutia Kondh community, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group.
Reacting to the testimonies, Kumaramangalam stressed on the need for joint titling and recognition of land and forest rights for women under FRA, while calling for systemic change in patriarchal attitudes prevailing in society.
“We should be empowering women as equal partners over forests and land to ensure not only their participation but also decision making,” she said, even as ensuring the meet that NCW would investigate any cases brought forward related to the violation of women’s rights, including violation of FRA.
The convention identified the Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAF) Act, 2016 as a potential cause of violation of FRA. While FRA mandates Gram Sabha consent for the use of community forest land, the CAF Act returns to a more centralised governance framework, allowing the Central and state governments to control over Rs 42,000 crore crore, collected from industries to compensate for forest diversions.
“All funds for development, reforestation, or conservation purposes should be given to Gram Sabhas. The FRA was enacted to address historical injustices against tribal and forest dwelling communities. Communities must recognize their own rights and assert these rights,” said legal scholar Usha Ramanathan.

Comments

Was Netaji forced to alter face, die in obscurity in USSR in 1975? Was he so meek?

By Rajiv Shah This should sound almost hilarious. Not only did Subhas Chandra Bose not die in a plane crash in Taipei, nor was he the mysterious Gumnami Baba who reportedly passed away on 16 September 1985 in Ayodhya, but we are now told that he actually died in 1975—date unknown—“in oblivion” somewhere in the former Soviet Union. Which city? Moscow? No one seems to know.

Love letters in a lifelong war: Babusha Kohli’s resistance in verse

By Ravi Ranjan* “War does not determine who is right—only who is left.” Bertrand Russell’s words echo hauntingly in our times, and few contemporary Hindi poets embody this truth as profoundly as Babusha Kohli. Emerging from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, Kohli has carved a unique space in literature by weaving together tenderness, protest, and philosophy across poetry, prose, and cinema. Her work is not merely artistic expression—it is resistance, refuge, and a call for peace.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Asbestos contamination in children’s products highlights global oversight gaps

By A Representative A commentary published by the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat (IBAS) has drawn attention to the challenges governments face in responding effectively to global public-health risks. In an article written by Laurie Kazan-Allen and published on March 5, 2026, the author examines how the discovery of asbestos contamination in children’s play products has raised questions about regulatory oversight and international product safety. The article opens by reflecting on lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that governments in several countries were slow to respond to early warning signs of the crisis. Referring to the experience of the United Kingdom, the author writes that delays in implementing protective measures contributed to “232,112 recorded deaths and over a million people suffering from long Covid.” The commentary uses this example to illustrate what it describes as the dangers of underestimating emerging threats. Attention then turns...

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Rajiv Shah Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

Authoritarian destruction of the public sphere in Ecuador: Trumpism in action?

By Pilar Troya Fernández The situation in Ecuador under Daniel Noboa's government is one of authoritarianism advancing on several fronts simultaneously to consolidate neoliberalism and total submission to the US international agenda. These are not isolated measures, but rather a coordinated strategy that combines job insecurity, the dismantling of the welfare state, unrestricted access to mining, the continuation of oil exploitation without environmental considerations, the centralization of power through the financial suffocation of local governments, and the systematic criminalization of all forms of opposition and popular organization.

Echoes of Vietnam and Chile: The devastating cost of the I-A Axis in Iran

By Ram Puniyani The recent joint military actions by Israel and the United States against Iran have been devastating. Like all wars, this conflict is brutal to its core, leaving a trail of human suffering in its wake. The stated pretext for this aggression—the brutality of the Ayatollah Khamenei regime and its nuclear ambitions—clashes sharply with the reality of the diplomatic landscape. Iran had expressed a willingness to remain at the negotiating table, signaling a readiness to concede points emerging from dialogue.

The kitchen as prison: A feminist elegy for domestic slavery

By Garima Srivastava* Kumar Ambuj stands as one of the most incisive voices in contemporary Hindi poetry. His work, stripped of ornamentation, speaks directly to the lived realities of India’s marginalized—women, the rural poor, and those crushed under invisible forms of violence. His celebrated poem “Women Who Cook” (Khānā Banātī Striyāṃ) is not merely about food preparation; it is a searing indictment of patriarchal domestic structures that reduce women’s existence to endless, unpaid labour.

The price of silence: Why Modi won’t follow Shastri, appeal for sacrifice

By Arundhati Dhuru, Sandeep Pandey* In 1965, as India grappled with war and a crippling food crisis, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri faced a United States that used wheat shipments under the PL-480 agreement as a lever to dictate Indian foreign policy. Shastri’s response remains legendary: he appealed to the nation to skip one meal a day. Millions of middle-class households complied, choosing temporary hunger over the sacrifice of national dignity. Today, India faces a modern equivalent in the energy sector, yet the leadership’s response stands in stark contrast to that era of self-reliance.

Search This Blog