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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | New edge to agrarian distress: Why demands are more than loan waiver -Kavitha Iyer

New edge to agrarian distress: Why demands are more than loan waiver -Kavitha Iyer

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published Published on Mar 13, 2018   modified Modified on Mar 13, 2018
-The Indian Express

Large numbers of the tribals who have gathered in the Mumbai are not seeking a loan waiver, but the implementation of the vision envisaged in Forest Rights Act, a legislation enacted by Parliament in 2006.

The nearly 40,000 sunburnt and dusty men and women waiting patiently in an open ground in Mumbai on Sunday night tell the story of the continuing gloom in Maharashtra’s farmlands more succinctly than the statistics in the just-released state Economic Survey Report for 2017-18. Maharashtra has projected a double-digit negative growth in the farm sector, but it is the composition of farmers marching in Mumbai on Sunday that explains just how agrarian distress hits individual homes.

More than half of those gathered in Mumbai armed with a list of demands ranging from a complete loan waiver to an overhaul of a river linking plan belong to the tribal belts such as Kalwan, Sargana and Dindori in Nashik; Talasari, Mokhada and Jawhar in Palghar; Shahapur and Murbad in Thane; and parts of Jalgaon. Large numbers of these tribals are landless and, therefore, loan-free at least as far as institutional credit is concerned. They are in Mumbai seeking, not a loan waiver, but the implementation of the Forest Rights Act, 2006. Their participation in the agitation in such large numbers suggests a new edge in the countryside’s despair — while successive drought years, inequitable water management and pricing policies have seen a slow impoverishment of the farmer community everywhere in Maharashtra, the circumstances for the landless are ever more exacting.

As farm incomes stagnate or shrink, labourers and those traditionally tilling forest lands or dependent on forest produce are in grave economic distress. Thousands of those spending Sunday night waiting to gherao the state legislature on Monday have never got a bank loan, have little or no access to credit, and have their hopes pinned on the government transferring to their names the small forest or community plots they till.

The Forest Rights Act seeks to accord rights to forest-dwelling communities including Individual Forest Rights’ and Community Forest Rights, and through the forest resources, a livelihood. While Maharashtra has actually shown the best performance on implementation of the FRA, a long way ahead of the other states that have fared moderately well including Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha, according to a November 2017 report by the Community Forest Rights- Learning and Advocacy Group Maharashtra, disparities in the implementation are wide. According to the report, 21 districts have near-zero recognition of Community Forest Rights, while there is over 60% implementation in districts such as Gadchiroli, where the approach has been different owing to traditional movements for land, the law and order situation and due to the efforts of select district collectors.

Dr Geetanjoy Sahu, one of the authors of the report and assistant professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, told The Indian Express that in several districts, the performance of the Maharashtra government on implementation of the FRA has been disappointing. Calling them “political challenges and bottlenecks in implementation”, Sahu says there are areas where titles were given, perhaps when elections were around the corner, and then withdrawn owing to errors in procedure. Not only is the problem of title recognition on applications under the FRA serious, but other conflicting policies have slowed down spirit of the FRA, for example, the concept of Joint Forest Management keeping resources in the control of the forest department or other policies through which the Gram Sabha does not have complete control over management of forest resources as originally envisaged by the FRA. The demand for better implementation of the FRA will be among the top agenda items as a delegation of leaders meets Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today.

Also indicative of the intensifying distress, the march to the state legislature in South Mumbai, a distance of 180 km covered over six days of walking in blazing sunlight after nights spent on threadbare sheets on open grounds, is the culmination of a swirl of agrarian movements across the state over the past two years. Pockets, where the Left continues to command strength, have been at the centre of some of these movements too, or have supported stirs called by other farmer leaders.

In March 2016, the CPI(M)-affiliated All India Kisan Sabha gathered almost as many protestors as this week, also when the state legislature was in session as it is now. Nearly 40,000 protestors spent two days at the CBS Square in Nashik city, some of them briefly blocking the highway. As on Sunday night, the government invited a delegation for talks after the March 2016 protest as well. Then in October 2016, over 15,000 tribals from Palghar district attempted to gherao the home of Maharashtra’s Tribal Development Minister Vishnu Savara in Wada taluka, also guardian minister for the district. Hundreds of those tribals from Palghar marched to Mumbai this week.

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The Indian Express, 12 March, 2018, http://indianexpress.com/article/explained/maharashtra-farmers-protests-new-edge-to-agrarian-distress-why-demands-are-more-than-loan-waiver-5094399/


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