THE SOCIAL BASE OF PROPOSED CHANGES IN LAND LAWS

With liberalisation, there is a move to change many laws that have a direct or indirect bearing on the livelihood of the poor. The Patents Act has been changed and a Bio-diversity Act has been drafterf,* Changes are proposed in the Indian Forest Act 1927, the Wild Life Protection Act, 1972, the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 and the Fifth Schedule that bans the transfer of tribal land to non-tribals. The Bio-Diversity Bill and the amendments to the Wildlife Protection and Forest Acts fall under environment protection. The amendments to the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 and the Fifth Schedule are meant to facilitate acquisition especially for the profit-oriented private sector.

Common to them is the fact that they will deprive the people of their livelihood or knowl-edge systems and will further impoverish them. The reason for it is that they not only do not take the people's livelihood into consideration, but also create an enmity between their communities and their livelihood. In either case, the livelihood of the poor is affected but the impact on them is rarely taken into consideration. This paper attempts to understand the basis of these laws and pleads for changes in the direction of combining people's livelihood with productivity and profit. That involves taking a new look at the State's "eminent domain" which is the basis of present land laws which view of land only as a locus of cultivation and construction i.e. as a commodity.. Land Laws and People

Whether the proposed legal changes are around the environment or concern revenue land, the thinking behind them needs to be analysed. To begin, there are at least two distinct views on the environment. The Indian urban middle class that is in the forefront of the demand for changes in the environmental laws by and large takes the western view that gives priority to nature over the communities whose sustenance it is. This view evolved in the colonial context. Aimed primarily at the economic exploitation of the colonies, it was legitimised in the name of the colonialist's "civilising mission". Its view of the natural world was domination and conquest oriented. It viewed the world as wilderness waiting to be controlled by human beings. Max Weber (1985: 25-26) summarised this worldview by presenting the Reformation as the basis of the northern Europe's achievement of conquering the world while the unreformed southern half remained stagnant.

This worldview became the basis of the conquest both of nature and of peoples. Often the colonial conquest was legitimised by pointing to the conquest of the wilderness, presented as the habitat of uncivilised peoples whom the colonialist "civilised" thus turning the conquest of nature into the basis of "civilising education" (Das 1998: 86-87). In this ethnocentric view of the world, the "civilised" western humans were the centre. The rest belonged to the periphery. In this approach land is only a commodity for cultivation and construction (NCHSE 1986). The other view is that the environment is an ecosystem with the local people's communities at its centre. For centuries their communities have treated the resources as renewable and have built a culture and economy of their sustainable use (lyer 1996: 375-377). So the two have an equal right to live together.

But the 19 century land and other laws ignored the latter view. They were made to suit the colonial need of exploiting the natural resources to the benefit of the British Industrial Revolution.

The colonialist needed to change the Indian economy in order to turn the colony into a supplier of capital and raw material and a captive market for its products. It required monopoly over land for schemes like coal mines, coffee and teaolantations, roads and railways. New land laws were enacted to facilitate the process of transfer land to British mine and plantation owners whose only objective was profit. Another crucial step in the effort to change Indian economy was its de-industrialisation in order to create a captive market for British finished products. The changes in the land laws were integral to it (Femandes and Roy Choudhury 1998).

The effort to turn the livelihood of the local communities into a commodity to the benefit of the capitalist began with the Permanent Settlement 1793. It continued in the Assam Land Act, 1834, the Calcutta law of 1824 and three others meant to make land available for purposes like salt pans. It culminated in the Land Acquisition Act 1894 (LAQ) that remains in force even today (Upadhyay and Raman 1998). The Forest Act supplemented the effort by turning tribal livelihood into State property. "By one stroke of the executive pen (they) attempted to obliterate centuries of customary use by rural populations all over India" (Guha and Gadgil 1995: 134).

In enacting these laws, the colonial Government also established the principle of eminent domain. In Australia this paradigm in land relations is called terra nullius (nobody's land). White colonisation of native land there and in the Americas is based on the principle that land without an individual title belongs to nobody, as such anyone can occupy it. In 1992 the Australian judiciary declared this colonial principle unconstitutional (Brennan 1995: 4-5). But it continues to be the basis of land laws in India, under its American version of eminent domain. Its first facet is that land without an individual patta is State property. The second is that the State alone has the right to decide what is a public purpose and deprive even individual owners of their livelihood. All authority emanates from the State. Its power is overriding (Singh 1989: 96-97).

The LAQ, based on this principle, accepts public purpose as the basis of displacement though it has not been defined even a century after its enactment. The same thinking conditions the proposed changes. In this perspective, the environment is only nature and the natural resources and bio-diversity belong to the State. Land is a commodity. The State rarely takes the people's livelihood into consideration while enacting new legislation. That is the basis of the land laws and of the forest and wildlife acts (Ramanathan 1999).

From Informal to the Formal System

History tells us that the legal changes in the colonial age resulted in impoverishment. The exact number affected by them is not known. According to Dadabhai Naoroji (1988), they de-prived 35 millions of their livelihood. It remains an estimate even today. What is known is that they initiated the process of turning the landless agricultural labourers, mostly Dalits (SC) and other service groups, into cheap labour. Thus deprived and impoverished, many of them were transported as indentured labour in slavelike conditions to plantations and mines in India and other British colonies (Sen 1979: 8-12). The disruption of their livelihood and impoverishment also led to struggles particularly tribal and Dalit. Some surrendered and others resisted their marginalisation. Among the struggles are some against displacement, the best known among them being the one of Mulshi-Peta near Pune in the 1920s (Bhuskute 1997: 170-172).

To understand the negative impact of these changes one should bear in mind that around 70 of India's population belong to the informal sector. But the legal, administrative and economic structures are based on the formal system. The two emanate from often contradictory foundations. The formal is based on the concept of property, the individual and the written word. Profit is the moving force of its economy. The informal, especially tribal, system is based on the resource, word of mouth and legitimacy by the community. Sharing and equity are its basis (Sharma 1978: 8-12).

Basic to the formal system is property depending on a written ownership document (patta) in the name of an individual or a moral person (e.g. a company). It gives to that person the right to use the property according to his/her will, with no obligation to anyone else unless it goes against the right of another individual. It is also the basis of the profit motive. So no obligation is put on the owner for its preservation for future generations. This system emanated form the eminent domain (Ramanathan 1999). Access to its administrative and legal structures requires literacy and the type of technical training that only a small minority belonging to the dominant classes can avail of. The subalterns do not have access to these inputs. For example, in 1991 against the national literacy average of around 52,literacy among the Dalits was a little over 20. Among tribal men it was below 30 and among women around 15 (Singh 1995: 295). So a written ownership document is a rarity among them. Till a generation or two ago, much of their economy depended on barter. Monetary economy is a recent phenomenon (Roy Burman 1993: 184-186).

The basis of the informal economy is the community controlled resource i.e. livelihood to be used according to its present needs and preserved for posterity. The tribal natural resource management system is a good example of the worldview on which its economic, social and cultural systems are based. For example in their forest management, most tribal societies accorded total protection to ecosystems symbolising the ancestors (e.g. the sasan or burial ground in the middle of a forest), the present (e.g. the sarna where young men were trained to become protectors of the community), and the future (e.g. the akhra, the dancing ground where young men and women met and chose their life partners). They also granted special protection to species like sal that were crucial to their economy, and partial protection to economically less important but useful ones like mango and jack fruit. The use of species not thus protected was regulated through social control mechanisms, to ensure equity and sustainability (Femandes, Menon and Viegas 1988: 159-170). Tribal dependence on the common property resources (CPRs) was great. For example, forests met around 50 of the food and most fodder, medicinal and other needs even of the Jharkhand tribes like the Munda, Ho and Oraon that had developed settled agriculture and did not depend exclusively on the CPRs (Hoffmann 1950: 179-187). From it resulted the need to evolve a community based equitable and sustainable culture and management system. ).

Though more visible among the middle India tribes, one can see such resource management systems in other regions too, for example in the Devaranya and other conservation methods on the West Coast. The principle behind them is that the resource belongs to the community that includes the present, past and the future. So the resource is renewable i.e. a livelihood that has come down from the ancestors, should be used according to present needs and preserved for posterity according to ecological imperatives. To ensure it, most Indian cultures evolved ecologically sound community based social and economic systems for natural resource management, particularly the CPRs. For example, the water sharing system in the Cauvery Basin required canals. So supervision included both the maintenance of the canals and distribution of water. But in the Gangetic plains, canals were less important. Only distribution had to be ensured. However, not every system ensured the type of equity that tribal management did. For example community based water distribution in caste societies was organised to the benefit of land owning castes. Drinking water that was the woman's domain, and the needs of the subaltern castes were given very little importance (Sen Gupta 1991).

Though around 70 per cent of the Indian population depends on the informal society, the eminent domain based formal political, administrative and legal system is imposed on them in the name of national development. For example the main laws governing the CPRs and land viz. the Indian Forest Act, 1927 and the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, are both based on eminent domain. The former declares all forests State property. The latter upholds the State's sole right to define public purpose and acquire even individual land for it. But the public purpose has not been defined a century after its enactment (Femandes and Paranjpye 1997: 18-20). These laws are used to acquire monopoly over people's livelihood, to the profit of the corporate sector.

As a result, to this model is intrinsic, the type of impoverishment that Dadabhai Naoroji refers to. It did not stop with independence but has got intensified because of alienation of the livelihood in the name of national development. Studies show that the encounter of the CPR and informal economy dependants like the tribal and other traditional communities with the formal economy that is termed modernisation, is one of unequals. They are forced to change over to a new lifestyle without preparation. Such modernisation, therefore, results in their socio-economic impoverishment and cultural degradation. Their natural resource management is among the first to be affected by it. For example, though more than two thirds of the tribal communities depend on forests for their sustenance, forest management in India is State centred. Till independence its basis was conservation and State revenue. With planned development, forests became sources of raw material for industry. With the formation of Forest Development Corporations in the 1970s, marketing of forest produce and profit attained priority. Conservation retained its importance at the policy level but was in practice relegated to the background (Anderson and Huber 1988: 51-61).

Legal Changes Contemplated

The legal changes contemplated result from liberalisation and have major implications for natural resource management as well as people's communities. If implemented, they will further deprive the people of their livelihood and in the process force them to destroy the environment for bare survival since they weaken the symbiotic relationship between their communities and their livelihood. For example, with the Bio-diversity Convention, 1992 coming into force, India which is one of the 12 mega-diversity zones of the world, has committed itself to protect its flora and fauna within a global perspective. As a part of this process, the World Bank sanctioned an "Eco-development Project" for the management of seven protected areas in India. In order to strengthen the mechanisms of protecting wildlife, the Ministry of Environment and Forests appointed a committee to suggest amendments to the Wild Life Protection Act, 1972. Already before that it was contemplating a new Indian Forest Act, to replace the one of 1927. The proposed legislative measures supplemented the World Bank Forestry Project that in practice attempts to turn India's forests into industrial plantation and wildlife sanctuaries and parks into recreation centres for the middle class (Sahgal 1998). According to reports, the tribals who resists the commercial interests are being arrested in MP (Bavadam 2001). Thus the legal changes are integral to liberalisation.

Similarly the proposed amendments to the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 are meant to make acquisition easier for industry. In the process the procedure is proposed to be short circuited and the people are to be deprived of the few rights that they had in the present legislation (Femandes 1998). The Patents Bill does not protect the traditional communities that have preserved bio-diversity for centuries and have developed a knowledge system around these resources. The TRIPS Agreement of WTO puts traditional knowledge in the public domain. So those who have developed it do not have any right over it. All rights belong to the biotechnology owning companies many of which pirate the knowledge that the local communities have developed over centuries (Asif 1998).

These laws needed to be changed in order to give them a pro-people orientation, not to further strengthen the eminent domain. But the thinking of lawmakers on land and other natural resources goes against this need. For example, in the Committee set up to review the Wild Life Protection Act, 1972 the dominant view was that wildlife should get priority over people though experience has shown that it is not possible to protect forests or wildlife without a partnership between the forest department and people. To achieve it one has to view the protected areas both from the point of view of nature and the forest dwellers, a majority of them tribals. Forests are the livelihood of many of their communities. But one sees in the thinking behind wildlife protection, a tendency to exclude people from their management (Kothari 1999).

This approach to land and the environment raises serious questions not merely about the people's livelihood but also about the sustainable management of the natural resources. Studies and experience show that when people's communities are deprived of their livelihood, they lose their vested interest in the renewability of the natural resources. Through centuries these communities and the natural resources have developed a symbiotic relationship. Laws on the environment should be tools in rebuilding this relationship. To achieve it one has to exclude laws and management systems that destroy this relationship and deprive the people of their livelihood. Studies have also shown that once deprived of their livelihood, be it forests or revenue land, the communities whose livelihood it was, are impoverished. In the context of the shortage of resources after their alienation from them through deforestation, land alienation or acquisition, the traditional communities often destroy the resource for sheer survival. They change over from a constructive to a destructive dependence on the resource that they had protected for centuries. That creates the vicious circle of their further impoverishment and more destruction of the resource. The same can be said about revenue land and other resources like water and their knowledge systems (Femandes and Raj 1992).

The proposed legislative changes around land and forests are bound to intensify this process of alienation and impoverishment. Thus they raise the question not about wildlife protection or industrial and other development but whether one should choose between the people and the natural environment. In other words, who controls land and other resources? This question has to raised about the legislation governing the environment, bio-diversity, land as well people's knowledge systems. To begin with, the environmental laws are based on the demands of the conservationist lobby or of industry. The dominant conservationist thinking is that the environment should be protected in isolation, often from the people who have a tradition of their sustainable management. Some consider the local people enemies of nature and want the rights of wildlife to prevail over their livelihood. For example, though a suggestion was made in the Committee set up to review the Wild Life Protection Act, 1972, that it should assert the right to life with dignity both of wildlife and of the forest dweller communities, the draft Bill begins by recognising only the right of wildlife.

In opposition to it are those to whom the environment is an ecosystem of which the local communities are an integral part. Many such communities, particularly tribal, have the non-timber forest produce (NTFP) of the protected areas as their sustenance. For centuries they have used them sustainably and have developed a symbiotic culture geared to keeping a balance between human needs and environmental imperatives. As such a choice cannot be made between wildlife and the forest dwellers. The natural environment cannot be protected without their communities being involved in it. The interests of both have to be safeguarded. To be effective, wildlife protection has to integrate the forest dwellers' traditional techniques and culture into joint protected area management. By itself the FD is unable to protect either forests or wildlife. Their protection can be effective only if the people develop once again the vested interest in their sustainable use that they had earlier. So a choice need not be made between wildlife and their communities.

But most lawmakers and the forest department (FD) work on the assumption of an inbuilt enmity between the two. The view that there should be co-operation between the two comes in conflict both with the conservation oriented environmentalists and the industrial interests. For forest and wildlife management to be effective, one has to decide which of these interests should get priority (Guha and Gadgil 1996: 35-40). The trend in most legislative changes contemplated is in the direction of monopoly by industry or the State. Field experience shows that the protective laws notwithstanding, most benefits from the forests as well as wildlife sanctuaries reach the commercial interests. The forest dwellers get relatively little out of them though they are their livelihood. For example, the Wild Life Protection Act 1972 forbids any human habitation inside the parks and limits the rights of the inhabitants of the sanctuaries. Thus the latter are rarely physically displaced. But they are often denied access to NTFP needed for their sustenance. In the process, their livelihood is destroyed and they are impoverished and forced into a destructive dependence on the same resource. So the very purpose for which the laws are enacted is defeated (Kothari 1999).

Similarly, the thinking behind the changes proposed in the land laws is that to safeguard industrial interests, the process of land acquisition should be expedited. So an effort is being made to shorten the time between the notification and acquisition and deprive the people of the few rights they had till now. Thus they strengthen the eminent domain that considers the State the owner of all non-patta land and bio-diversity. So the rights of the communities are extinguished according a public purpose which is yet to be defined a century after the LAQ was enacted. They re-assert the principle that the State alone has the right to define it. None can question its eminent domain i.e. its sovereign ownership of bio-diversity, of all assets without individual ownership and its right to define the public purpose and deprive even individual owners of their livelihood (Fenandes 1998).

The same principle governs the Patents Act. It is based on the thinking that anyone who privatises traditional knowledge (belonging to the public domain) through biotechnology or other research and stakes its claims with the State, can become its owner because the State appropriates to itself all rights over the CPRs and by implication over common knowledge. Those who have developed these knowledge systems for centuries have no right over them, exactly as communities that have inhabited the forests or other common lands for centuries before the present laws were enacted, have been deprived of their right over them (Asif 1998). In reality apart from it being their livelihood, these communities had built an identity around these knowledge systems. Alienation from them is thus a greater attack on their identity than deprival of the natural environment like forests and land. Such an attack on their identity is basic to their further alienation from the resource and strengthens the vicious circle of their destructive dependence on it In other words, it results in their marginalisation by which we mean not merely material impoverishment but also deprival of the psycho-social and cultural mechanisms that can free them (Femandes 2000: 212-214). A Search for Solutions.

It is obvious then that new criteria are needed to counteract people's impoverishment and environmental deterioration because of it. In other words, the starting point of land and other laws has to be the livelihood of people's communities and the need to protect nature through their involvement as equal partners in its management and benefit sharing. Their knowledge systems should be respected. To achieve it, the legal system has to free itself from eminent domain. The legal changes have to begin by giving equal importance to the natural environment, people's livelihood, the industrialist's profit and productivity. Thus the main question is not "should flora and fauna be protected or land put at the disposal of industry?" The starting point is: "in a country like India in which millions depend directly on these resources, should a choice be made between wildlife or industry on one side and the dependants of the natural resources on the other?" An equal partnership is the spirit of the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments meant to decentralise powers to the local bodies. Their spirit is not reflected in the environmental laws. What they reflect is the interests of industry and the urban environmentalists though experience shows that forest and other natural resource regeneration and protection is possible only through Joint Forest Management (JFM) based on a partnership of equals between the FD and the local communities (Kothari 1999).

One should be equally careful not to romanticise the local community. Merely handing the resource over to it will not protect them, as one can see from the experience of communities that own and manage forests in much of the north-east but destroy the tree cover in collusion with industrial-commercial interests (D'Souza 2001: 27-29). In other regions of India impoverishment forces the forest dwellers to destroy them for bare survival. They see no reason to protect the resource when they get no benefit from them and are in fact impoverished. So merely handing the resources over to the communities with no checks and balances may result in their destruction for commercial purposes or for the survival of communities impoverished by the alienation of their livelihood. One has to aim at genuine decentralised control, combined with joint responsibility be it in the case of forests, wildlife or other resources like land and knowledge systems. Neither the people nor the State can be effective by themselves. The two have to come together to protect and regenerate the resources in close co-operation. Checks and balances should be built into the law for this purpose. Focus in this management should be on the village or the community, not on individuals.

An implication of this stand is that public purpose should be redefined keeping in mind the people, the natural resources and industrial profit. It also involves revalorising people's knowledge systems. Through this knowledge, for centuries they ensured a sustainable use of the resource. This culture was based on mutual dependence between their communities and the environment. This sustainable culture and their knowledge systems have been weakened because of their alienation and impoverishment. They continue to be alive, but can disappear slowly since they have been weakened. However, their traditional knowledge alone is inadequate for today's needs and for sustainable development. To become the basis of joint management of the resources their systems as well as the official systems have to be modernised and updated. They have knowledge that the official organs like the FD lack. It should be revalorised and a management system of land, forests and other natural resources evolved based on it. In issues like forest, wildlife and other resource management, the local communities can be considered local experts and rewarded financially and in other ways, thus preventing their impoverishment and marginalisation. In other words, one should be wary of romanticising their knowledge. Their traditional systems cannot easily cope with the commercial values and the changed economy that are overtaking them. Ways have to be found of dealing with these changes and of ensuring sustainable use of the resources. This can be achieved by combining the traditional systems with the scientific knowledge developed by FD and other State bodies. Neither of these knowledge systems is absolute. They have to be combined in a sustainable manner. Conclusion

We have discussed in this paper the basis of most land and environmental laws. In this discussion we have included legislation concerning the environment, land and knowledge systems that have a bearing on the people's communities. They are people's livelihood, as such should be protected. That cannot be achieved unless the interests of the natural environment, the people and industrial profit are given equal importance in the law as well as in natural resource management. The basic condition to achieve it is that one has to free oneself from the principle of eminent domain and redefine the public purpose.

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