Forests at Crossroads of Bureaucracy and Indigeneity: A Post Colonial Critique of the Contemporary Developments in Forest Governance in India

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-255-2_21How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Forest dwellers; Forest rights; Indigenous; Post-colonialism

Abstract

Forest dwellers in India have been known to serve as the primary stakeholder in forest governance with their livelihoods and subsistence depending on it. Forest landscapes have shaped the identity and traditions of numerous forest-dwelling communities, especially in India. Yet, forest governance in India has been defined by prolonged bureaucratic intercession into the land and livelihoods of these communities. Contemporary forest regimes in India have been grafted through disclaiming the identities of forest-dwelling communities, both during and after colonial rule. Nevertheless, the Forest Rights Act 2006, to some extent diluted this trend, being enacted to address the ‘historical injustice’ to forest dwellers. However, yet again, the Act failed to provide any momentum to the rights of forest dwellers and was criticized on many fronts for glaring inconsistencies, ultimately failing to achieve its stated goals. This paper seeks to deconstruct India’s forest governance regime, locating the identities of forest-dwelling communities within the existing regime. The paper adopts a post-colonial lens and seeks to provide some pointers in charting out the future trajectory of the governance of forests in the country.

Copyright

© 2024 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Shreyasi Bhattacharya
AU  - Ujal Kumar Mookherjee
AU  - Akshra Mehla
PY  - 2024
DA  - 2024/06/13
TI  - Forests at Crossroads of Bureaucracy and Indigeneity: A Post Colonial Critique of the Contemporary Developments in Forest Governance in India
BT  - Proceedings of the NDIEAS-2024 International Symposium on New Dimensions and Ideas in Environmental Anthropology-2024 (NDIEAS 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 249
EP  - 259
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-255-2_21
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-255-2_21
ID  - Bhattacharya2024
ER  -