Tribal women's empowerment through the Forest Rights Act, 2006 in southern Rajasthan

ABSTRACT

The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, or the Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006, recognizes tribal women’s rights to own land equal to those of men. In exploring whether women’s rights to forest land and resources has led to their improved socio-economic status, this paper examines two key facets of the process of empowerment—“access to resources” and “women’s agency.” As access to resources required to meet household and other needs, such as water, cooking fuel, or health facilities have remained poor, access to land under the Act has been able to make only a marginal difference to the economic status of the women who have received plots. But the new found confidence of women for no longer being considered asset-less was clearly evident; this was especially true for widowed women. By gaining land ownership, women have begun questioning entrenched social practices such as polygyny. While the Act has failed to encourage women to participate in the public domain actively, the improvement in their social engagements and mobility has been attributed to training and access to information, facilitated by community based organizations.

ABSTRACT IN HINDI

KEYWORDS:

• Tribal women
• tribal forest rights
• women’s economic empowerment
• Forest Rights Act 2006

KEYWORDS:

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Astha Sansthan, Udaipur for approaching the Institute of Social Studies Trust (ISST) for such an important study. It was instrumental in organizing the field work and collecting the quantitative data. I would like to acknowledge Ayesha Datta for helping me in data collection and contributing to the background research. I am also thankful to Jaydev Dubey for the tabulation of quantitative data collected through surveys. I am most thankful to all the participants who took part in this study; I greatly appreciate their honesty, trust and contribution.

Notes on contributor

Mubashira ZAIDI is a researcher at the ISST and has contributed to policy research and analysis as well as evaluation of external and internal projects. A couple of recent research projects she has been part of include “When and Why Do States Respond to Women’s Claims Making: Understanding the Processes of Gender Egalitarian Policy Change” and “Balancing unpaid care work and paid work: Successes, Challenges and Lessons for Women’s Economic Empowerment Programmes and Policies,” a cross regional study. Before ISST, Mubashira worked with women survivors of violence in the slums of Dharavi, Mumbai, through counselling, legal aid and building community support structures to reduce violence against women. She has also worked with human rights and advocacy organizations.

ORCID

Mubashira Zaidi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9580-9405

Notes

1. The Constitution of India identifies certain communities in the country that suffer from “extreme social, educational and economic backwardness on account of the primitive agricultural practices, lack of infrastructure facilities and geographical isolation. Such communities as per the Article 366 (25) and Article 342 of the Constitution are prescribed as the Scheduled Tribes” (National Commission for Scheduled Tribes, 2018).

2. The Fifth Schedule of the Constitution of India deals with administration and control of scheduled areas and scheduled tribes and guarantees indigenous people rights over the land they live on.

3. Aadhaar is a 12-digit unique identity number the residents of India require now, based on the biometric details of the individual. Access to many social security schemes such as the Public Distribution System (PDS) requires the Aadhaar card.

4. Gaun sabha meetings were held every month on a particular date at the village or hamlet level under the Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (PESA), Act. The gaun sabha meetings under PESA were different from the gram sabha (village assembly), as the former were hamlet level meetings of the forest dwellers, and latter were organized for the revenue village residents, at the gram panchayat office. While the gaun sabha meetings were held every month, the gram sabhas had to be undertaken twice a year.

5. The village is divided into wards for administrative purposes, hence the ward panch is the elected representative at the ward level of the village and is a member of the gram panchayat.