The Forest Rights Act or FRA was enacted in 2006, following collective pressure from a massive social movement to correct the historical injustices imposed since the colonial takeover of India's forests. Community Forest Resource (CFR) Rights recognized under FRA transfers collective rights and responsibilities to forest dwelling communities for sustainable use of their customary forests.
However, just like any other decentralization reform that adopts a rights-based approach, the implementation of the FRA has been poor, as the rights and responsibilities are transferred without ensuring communities' capability to exercise those rights and carry out the responsibilities vested in them. Recognition is the first step, however, the actual claiming and recognition of community rights itself has been an onerous process.
A paper by Gupta et al ‘Promoting a responsive state: The role of NGOs in decentralized forest governance in India’ advocates that actualizing this rights-based approach, cannot happen without an adequate support mechanism, which is currently missing.
The paper examines the issue of ‘responsibilization’, which offers an interesting lens through which the activities in the post-rights recognition phase can be examined.
Responsibilization, as understood by some decentralization scholars, is viewed (critically) as imposing technocratic goals on local communities through administrative deconcentration (or its many variants) without the transfer of power.
Rights-based approaches are supposed to be different, as they transfer both rights and the authority to manage the forest to statutorily defined downwardly accountable institutions. However, in reality, the rights-based approach may also result in responsibilization if it does not include building the capability of communities to exercise their rights and carry out their responsibilities.
In many countries, the push for and shift to a rights-based approach happened due to pressure from civil society, including both informal social movements and NGOs. NGOs working on tribal or rural development issues, act as a bridge between the community and the state to enable the transition to responsive forest governance.
The study conducted in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra uses the example of the Forest Rights Act in India to examine the activities of such non-state actors to understand their role in enabling the communities to exercise their forest use and management-related rights and responsibilities. It also investigates the role played by non-state actors (NGOs) in serving as a bridge between the state and the communities and enabling responsive governance.
Maharashtra has seen the greatest initiative taken in the recognition of the CFR rights provisions and at least 18 NGOs have worked on it. Four NGOs that were actively involved in the social movement demanding rights for the forest-dwelling communities and in helping villages stake claims, and now aiding communities in asserting and exercising their rights in the post-rights recognition phase were selected for the study.
The questions asked were: What activities do NGOs perform within the community to help carry out its responsibilities? What activities are focused on agents or aspects external to the community, such as engagement with the state and markets? Finally, what difference do NGOs make in the villages in comparison with villages where NGO intervention is absent?
The study can be accessed here