The UN declaration on the rights of peasants, national policies, and forestland rights of India’s Adivasis

ABSTRACT

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) is one of the most ambitious UN declarations. We analyse the policy and legal challenges of protecting these rights vis-à-vis India's indigenous Adivasi peasants. Longstanding social and political mobilizations have enabled Adivasis to secure significant statutory and legal rights, which address the goals of land rights and food sovereignty, sustainable development, and socially just climate action. However, powerful actors and agencies opposed to these rights hold considerable sway over India's political and judicial institutions. For example, contrary to its reputation as an activist court, India's Supreme Court has failed to protect Adivasi rights. Such countermobilization against Adivasi rights, especially by some environmental groups advocating for the enclosure of Adivasi lands for the sake of wildlife and biodiversity conservation, underscores the difficulty of enforcing economic and social rights. This article offers five key insights to inform future human rights advocacy and praxis to protect the rights enshrined within UNDROP. Our analysis identifies synergies between international human rights activism and the national and subnational struggles to protect peasant rights.

KEYWORDS:

• Economic and social rights
• United Nations Declaration the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas
• indigenous peoples

Acknowledgements

Prakash Kashwan gratefully acknowledges meaningful comments on this project by the participants at the research seminar held on September 17, 2020 at the University of Connecticut's Economic and Social Rights Research Program. We also thank the two IJHR reviewers for their constructive suggestions, and Ms. Elizabeth McCulloch for her thoughtful and excellent editing of the text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

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4 Abregú (See note 3).

5 Catherine Corson and Kenneth Iain MacDonald, ‘Enclosing the Global Commons: The Convention on Biological Diversity and Green Grabbing’, Journal of Peasant Studies 39, no. 2 (2012): 263–83. George Holmes, ‘What Is a Land Grab? Exploring Green Grabs, Conservation, and Private Protected Areas in Southern Chile’, The Journal of Peasant Studies 41, no. 4 (2014).

6 Adivasi is the marker of identity used most by India’s indigenous people in central, western, and parts of eastern India. This is the focus of analysis in this article. However, indigenous peoples in north-eastern India, who constitute approximately 12% of the total population of India’s indigenous peoples, often use the identity of different tribes. For an analysis of the entanglement of cultural factors in shaping the articulation of Adivasi rights and their political mobilisation, see, Ranjan R. ‘Politics of Symbolism: The Making of Birsa Munda’s Statue in Post-colonial Jharkhand, India’, Bandung 7, no. 1 (2020): 130–61.

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9 For results of the survey research, see, P. Kashwan, ‘What Explains the Demand for Collective Forest Rights Amidst Land Use Conflicts?’ Journal of Environmental Management 183 (2016): 657–66.

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11 The usage here are in solidarity with a new movement in Argentina, Chile, and other parts of Latin America to use gender neutral terminology for social movements. Campesine is being used as a gender-neutral term for a joint reference to movements of campesinos and campesinas. We thank Thomas DeGolier for drawing our attention to this via Twitter.

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48 UN General Assembly (See note 34).

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62 Noticeably, Schedule VI areas, which are a similar category of administrative designation, apply to regions dominated by tribal communities in the north-eastern states of India.

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67 Kundan Kumar and John M. Kerr, ‘Democratic Assertions: The Making of India's Recognition of Forest Rights Act’, Development and Change 43, no. 3 (2012).

68 Prakash Kashwan, ‘The Politics of Rights-Based Approaches in Conservation’, Land Use Policy 31 (2013): 613–26.

69 Kashwan (See note 68).

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72 Das (See note 70).

73 Forrest D. Fleischman, ‘Why Do Foresters Plant Trees? Testing Theories of Bureaucratic Decision-Making in Central India’, World Development 62 (2014). Kashwan (See note 13).

74 Each conceptual category such as the Adivasi, peasant, and farmer are rooted in specific dimension of the historical origin and mobilisation (as shown above in citation 7). The paper advocates for and demonstrates the strength on drawing on the basic formulation – the access to land and forest rights. The paper shows the overlapping interest, use and function of land – and by extension the impact of their livelihoods.

75 Interviews with villagers in Chandarpur, Gadchiroli and Kalahandi districts, Delhi, November, 2017

76 PTI, Bamboo not a Tree: Parliament passes Bill amending Forest Act, December 27, 2017 https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/bamboo-not-a-tree-parliament-passes-bill-amending-forest-act/articleshow/62270040.cms

77 Nitin Sethi, Chhattisgarh govt cancels tribal rights over forest lands (Business Standard), February 18, 2016, https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/chhattisgarh-govt-cancels-tribal-rights-over-forest-lands-116021601327_1.html

78 Prakash Kashwan, ‘What Explains the Demand for Collective Forest Rights Amidst Land Use Conflicts?’, Journal of Environmental Management 183 (2016, 664): 657–66.

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80 Rights and Resources Initiative, Evicting Millions of Indigenous and Local Peoples from Their Forest Homes—as Ordered by Indian Supreme Court—Is Condemned by Global Experts, March 19, 2019. https://rightsandresources.org/en/blog/evicting-millions-of-indigenous-and-local-peoples-from-their-forest-homes-as-ordered-by-indian-supreme-court-is-condemned-by-global-experts/; Sabrangindia, UN to India: Implement FRA 2006, Stop forced evictions of Adivasis & Forest dwellers, August 20, 2019, https://www.sabrangindia.in/article/un-india-implement-fra-2006-stop-forced-evictions-adivasis-forest-dwellers; Anon, Open Letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Gram Sabha’s voice in forest clearance needs to be strengthened, not diluted, January 24, 2013, https://www.fra.org.in/document/Open%20Letter%20to%20Dr.%20Manmohan%20Singh,%20for%20fax,%20hard%20copy%20mail.pdf accessed May 3, 2020.

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83 Kukreti, the second author on this article, has been regularly attending the hearings at the Supreme Court.

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89 In this special issue, for instance, Shaunna Rodriguez shows the arrangement of sixth schedule, different processes and the ways in which it shapes the administrative pursuit of restoring the rights of the Indigenous Peoples.

90 Alston (See note 14).

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102 For a discussion of Dalit land rights in the context of the FRA, See, A. Kodiveri, Narratives of Dalit Inclusion and Exclusion in Formulating and Implementing the Forest Rights Act, 2006 (Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy, 2016).

103 M. Desai, Subaltern Movements in India: Gendered Geographies of Struggle against Neoliberal Development (Routledge, 2015).

104 Kashwan (See note 13).

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Prakash Kashwan

Prakash Kashwan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and Co-Director of the Research Program on Economic and Social Rights, Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. He is the author of Democracy in the Woods: Environmental Conservation and Social Justice in India, Tanzania, and Mexico (Oxford University Press, 2017).

Ishan Kukreti

Ishan Kukreti is a New Delhi based journalist who writes on Forest Rights Act and other questions related to natural resource governance for India's leading environment and science magazine, Down to Earth. He has reported on issues related to Forest Rights Act from countless number of villages, in more than 300 districts across 15 Indian states. His stories have been cited in journals and used as references in courts.

Rahul Ranjan

Rahul Ranjan is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo (Norway). His project at Oslo is funded the Research Council of Norway and, is entitled: “Riverine Rights: Currents and Consequences of the Legal Innovations on the Rights of the Rivers”. He was awarded a PhD as the Louise Arbour fellow from the School of Advanced Study, University of London.