The uncounted tribal villages of India: A 20-year-old promise still unfulfilled

By Dr. Manohar Chauhan 

Every village tells a story. Every individual carries its identity. Yet, thousands of forest and un-surveyed villages across India remain invisible to the state, their stories unheard, their people undocumented. Even after 20 years of the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, we still do not have a clear answer to a basic question: how many such villages actually exist?

Consider Dutelguda in Odisha’s Malkangiri district, settled in the 1960s inside a reserve forest, or Kumarikunta and Sonapur in Telangana’s Kawal Tiger Reserve. These hamlets do not appear in Census 2001 or 2011. They are neither revenue villages nor recognised forest villages—they simply do not exist on paper. Their residents live without roads, schools, healthcare, electricity, or secure land rights. They face constant harassment from forest officials and sometimes even from neighbouring revenue villages. They are citizens in name only.

The FRA was enacted to change this. It explicitly provides for the recognition of such habitations as independent villages, the constitution of Gram Sabhas, and eventually their conversion into revenue villages. Rule 2A, inserted in 2012, mandates a fresh Gram Panchayat-wise survey to identify all such forest hamlets. The Ministry of Tribal Affairs has issued detailed guidelines. But almost no state has carried out this survey.

The numbers we have are fragmentary and unreliable. In 2017, the Rajya Sabha was told there were 4,526 forest and un-surveyed villages across the country, with a population of over 22 lakh. The Ministry of Environment and Forest reported 2,447 such villages. Census 2011 counted 2,382. But these are not definitive counts—they are what the government has chosen to record. When the state assembly of Jharkhand was asked about just 10 such villages in West Singhbhum, it turned out they were not even part of the Census list. Odisha’s official count of 375 forest villages in 2011 hides the fact that dozens of hamlets like Dutelguda were never enumerated. More than 50 un-surveyed hamlets exist in Bolangir’s Tikhari reserve forest, though Census 2001 recorded only one.

This failure of enumeration is not a bureaucratic oversight; it is a denial of rights. Without recognition as a village, there can be no Gram Sabha. Without a Gram Sabha, forest-dwelling communities cannot exercise their rights under the FRA—whether to individual land titles, community forest rights, or rights over forest resources. Even where Individual Forest Rights titles have been granted, they are often incomplete because habitations were never properly mapped. Community Forest Rights and Community Forest Resource Rights remain marginal at best.

Some states have taken steps, but often in a flawed manner. Chhattisgarh claimed to have converted 424 forest villages into revenue villages, but reportedly without following the procedures prescribed under the FRA or the guidelines of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs. Madhya Pradesh has faced similar criticism for irregularities. Odisha has made progress in Ganjam, but the final notification from the Board of Revenue is still pending. Such half-measures only perpetuate the uncertainty faced by these communities.

The Ministry of Tribal Affairs, under the PM-JANMAN mission, recently conducted a comprehensive mobile-based survey of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups, covering 12.5 lakh households across 22,000 villages. That was a herculean effort. Why can we not do the same for all forest and un-surveyed villages? Why can we not map every habitation, recognise every settlement, and extend every basic facility—roads, schools, drinking water, electricity—that is the right of every citizen?

Twenty years is too long to wait. The historical injustice faced by forest-dependent communities cannot be undone overnight, but we can begin by counting them, by naming them, by recognising their existence. A nationwide survey must be conducted urgently. Every forest hamlet must be converted into a revenue village. Gram Sabhas must be formed. Only then can the promise of the Forest Rights Act be fulfilled—and only then can we say that every village, every person, truly matters.

---

The writer is a practitioner and researcher on the Forest Rights Act, 2006, and is associated with the Campaign for Survival and Dignity. Photo: Dutelguda village, clicked by the author