Bengaluru: The union ministry of tribal affairs (MoTA) has effectively scrapped guidelines that were meant to enable the recognition of rights over forest land for purposes of habitation, livelihood and socio-cultural needs of two communities—pastoralists and particularly vulnerable tribal groups (PVTGs).
More than four years since an expert committee submitted the draft guidelines, the ministry has kept its members in the dark about progress on notifying them.
Scrapping the guidelines renders these communities vulnerable to loss of access to forest land and resources such as medicinal plants, roots and tubers, bamboo and honey.
At present, there are about 70 pastoral communities in India comprising around 13 million people. Indian pastoral communities own very small land holdings or none, and practise a wide variety of herding systems, including grazing in forests or on uncultivated land. Many of them are also semi-nomadic.
There are 75 PVTGs whose population estimates range between 2.8 to 4.4 million. The PVTGs are indigenous communities identified by the State for their ‘pre-agricultural’ lifestyles, hunting-gathering practices, decreasing or stagnant population growth, economic backwardness and lower levels of literacy than other tribal groups.
These millions are now more vulnerable to projects such as mines, solar parks, roads and railways, and conservation-related projects such as the creation of national parks and sanctuaries, all of which take away their access to forest land and forest resources.
The Scheduled Tribes And Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition Of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, commonly referred to as the Forest Rights Act (FRA), was enacted in 2006, to set right a “historical injustice” committed on account of not adequately recognising these and forest-dwelling communities’ rights over ancestral lands and forest habitats during pre- and post-Independence exercises to consolidate state forests.
While the FRA guaranteed legal land titles for those who have lived in the forests for generations, it also expressly granted ‘habitat rights’ to recognise forest-dependent communities’ rights over the forests to continue their socio-cultural practices and economic or livelihood practices.
Eight years after the FRA was enacted, a study commissioned by the UNDP, at the behest of the MOTA, found that the process of filing claims for habitat rights and granting these rights had been marred by a lack of clarity including among government officials about the concept and meaning of ‘habitat’.
‘No Progress’
In February 2020 the MoTA issued an order conceding that there had been “no progress” on the recognition of PVTGs’ habitat rights over forest land and resources or on pastoralists’ rights to access forest resources.
It constituted an expert committee to draft guidelines to enable the recognition of these rights, under the chairmanship of Hrusikesh Panda, former secretary for tribal affairs.
The expert committee submitted its final report with the draft guidelines to the MoTA in January 2021. This reporter obtained copies of the draft guidelines through a request via the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005. These guidelines have never been released publicly before.
The guidelines for pastoralists recommend how to recognise forest rights in complex situations. In the case of nomadic or semi-nomadic communities who travel long distances to graze their animals, the guidelines say they can participate in the gram sabhas (general body meetings of all adult residents of a village) of the villages where they use forests for grazing. This means a nomadic pastoralist community’s forest rights are not restricted to their village of origin.
Similarly, the guidelines for PVTGs recognises the unique relationship these communities hold with their land and forests, not limited to habitation and livelihood but including “a bundle of rights” that comprise social and cultural rights as well.
The committee recommended that the draft guidelines be examined by the ministry and that steps be taken for formal notification of these guidelines and implementation. This was in January, 2021.
Since then, however, there has been a lull.
“The ministry has kept me completely in the dark. I have no idea what they are doing,” Panda told Article 14. “It has been so long. We had worked very hard for this report.”
‘Govt Is Not Interested’
The guidelines were meant to be formalised under section 12 of the Forest Rights Act 2006, which allows the union government to issue directions for the implementation of the Act.
Ramesh Bhatti, another member of the expert committee and programme manager at the non-profit organisation Centre for Pastoralism, said that effectively, as of today, both the guidelines should be considered scrapped.
“What else does it mean if [the tribal affairs ministry] has not acted on it for four years?” he asked.
He said members received no response to three or four emails they sent to the ministry about implementing the draft guidelines. “It seems like the new secretary is not interested in these guidelines,” Bhatti said.
Other ministry sources too said that senior officials in the MoTA are “completely against” issuing any guidelines, particularly on pastoral communities’ rights over forest resources.
The main reason: fears of FRA implementation for pastoralists coming in the way of infrastructure projects, in particular renewable energy projects in states such as Gujarat and Rajasthan where community lands in arid regions overlap with land parcels that have a high potential for large-scale solar parks.
On 9 March 2025, Article 14 sent queries to Vibhu Nayar, MoTA secretary who took charge in November 2023; to union minister for tribal affairs Jual Oram and to the latter’s personal secretary Gavali Parag Harshad about action taken on the expert committee’s draft guidelines. A follow-up email was sent on 24 March. No response was received.
Land & Resource Alienation
At present, there are numerous hurdles in recognising PVTGs’ and pastoralists’ rights over forest land and resources.
For instance, for communities such as the Rabari, Gujjar and Raika who migrate seasonally, an administrative question that arises for the purposes of the FRA is about which gram sabha these communities should file their claims with, whether their original villages of residence or the villages in the forests that they visit seasonally to graze their herds.
As for PVTGs, land and resource rights are a complex subject because their lives are often intrinsically linked to forests in terms of cultural and spiritual beliefs, and tracts of forest and resources may be shared among multiple communities. In many cases, PVTGs are also nomadic or semi-nomadic and do not belong to any gram sabha in particular.
Section 3 of the FRA includes special provisions for pastoralists and PVTGs.
It states that forest rights includes “other community rights of uses or entitlements such as fish and other products of water bodies, grazing (both settled or transhumant) and traditional seasonal resource access of nomadic or pastoralist communities” and “rights including community tenures of habitat and habitation for primitive tribal groups and pre-agricultural communities”.
Unrecognised Rights
These rights of pastoralists and PVTGs have remained largely unrecognised due to administrative confusion and lack of awareness. Only recently, states like Chhattisgarh and Odisha have granted habitat rights to some PVTGs.
Now, with the MoTA effectively scrapping the draft guidelines, pastoralists and PVTGs are vulnerable to land and resource alienation, especially from mining and energy projects.
In response to a right to information request filed by this reporter seeking details of action taken on the expert committee report and all relevant documents, the MoTA said on 8 January 2025 that recommendations by the expert committee members were being deliberated upon.
Panda, chairman of the expert committee, interpreted this response to mean that no action had been taken on the guidelines’ implementation. He said ministers and officers in charge of the “so-called ‘development departments’ like roads, power, industry and mines often blame the Forest Rights Act for lack of progress on projects.”
Some opposition may stem from the forest department as well. “The forest department is not in favour of recognising the rights of communities in areas like Banni and Gir forests (both in Gujarat) which are currently under [the forest department’s] control,” Bhatti said.
In general, not with specific reference to pastoralists and PVTGs, the union ministry of environment and forest (its erstwhile name before it was renamed the ministry of environment, forest and climate change) has on multiple occasions in the past attempted to bypass mandatory provisions of the FRA while granting permissions for forest clearance (see here, here and here).
Training For Officials, Communities
The draft guidelines note that the traditional rights of nomadic and other pastoralists who have been moving across the states and across districts of a single state “has remained, largely, an informal arrangement.” In fact, the report adds, the rights of some communities have become “egregiously eroded”.
The guidelines attempt to find a way for restoration of grazing rights.
In order to facilitate FRA implementation for such communities, the guidelines state, among other things, that in case of pastoral communities who are nomadic and semi-nomadic and spend considerable time outside their original place of residence, they can participate in the gram sabhas of the villages where they are accessing forest land.
“The district-level and sub-divisional level officers [who are in charge of processing FRA claims] are not aware that pastoralists can also claim forest rights,” said Bhatti, “and that they can claim rights along their migratory path.”
About PVTGs, the draft guidelines recognise that the “remoteness of PVTGs has aggravated the ignorance of government servants” and that such communities may often be “reticent in gram sabha meetings attended by people from other villages”, leading them to make few demands.
The guidelines also state that many PVTG habitats fall within the area of proposed mines or sanctuaries. Habitat rights over such forest lands may not be seen as worth recognising, the guidelines say, because the demand for mining projects or sanctuaries may be considerably louder.
No Guidelines, No Implementation
The draft guidelines were meant to ameliorate some of the conditions which deter the vesting of rights.
The guidelines also provides a larger understanding of such rights by adding that these rights are not necessarily exclusive to one community and are often shared with other communities living in the habitat area based on traditions of mutuality and reciprocity.
The guidelines also suggest training for local officers in charge of processing FRA claims for PVTGs at the sub-divisional and district level, in order to improve awareness about the concept of a habitat, the communities who live in and use such habitats, and also the administrative processing of such claims.
“Rights of pastoral communities and PVTGs exist regardless of whether these guidelines are made official or not,” said Bhatti. “This is inherent in the FRA.”
He said if the draft guidelines were to be implemented, officials will be able to easily recognise such claims. States could be directed to take up the issue while communities mobilise themselves to file claims seeking such rights. “But now, without these guidelines, nothing will be implemented on the ground,” said Bhatti.
(Rishika Pardikar is a freelance reporter who writes on science, law and policy.)
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