Odisha’s ‘zero villages’ continue to struggle for benefits of welfare schemes

Odisha’s forest villages have been engaged in a struggle with the government for over two years to be recognised as revenue villages.

Residents of Gunduribadi in Odisha’s Nayagarh district roam the nearby forests as they map the traditional boundary of their village in 2022.  | Photo Credit:  Special arrangement/ BISWARANJAN ROUT

In a good crop season, Rami Soren, 42, from Gangamunda village in Kankadahad block of Odisha’s Dhenkanal district, travels 35 kilometres twice a week to sell his agricultural produce in the town market. When the harvest is poor, because of erratic rainfall or drought, he has a different set of problems. Since he does not have a State-issued identity card, he cannot claim crop insurance benefits or sell his produce locally at government-specified prices. So, Soren is thinking of migrating to a city to join the contractual labour force.

Hardly 10 km from Gangamunda is Devgana, a village of 50 households. It has been waiting for pucca houses under Central and State housing schemes for three years now. Its applications have been rejected repeatedly by the gram sabha of the neighbouring village, Kerjuli. Devgana and Gangamunda are “forest villages”, which cannot have gram sabhas of their own.

Marked as “zero villages” in census reports, forest villages do not feature in revenue records. Hence, welfare schemes, which are routed through the Revenue Department, are not available to their residents. There are now 458 such villages in Odisha, located in Dhenkanal, Angul, and Ganjam districts. In Dhenkanal district, 12 of them, including Devgana and Gangamunda, were notified as revenue villages along with 40 others in July 2020 under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, or Forest Rights Act (FRA).

Unchanged condition

The administration, however, has not yet initiated the bureaucratic process that must follow the notification. Until it does so, the villagers cannot realise their rights.

Ironically, the 12 Dhenkanal villages—Gangamunda, Khajurinali, Chalujharan, Bhalutangar, Khuribhanga, Kalaspur, Balisahi, Devgana (in Kankadahad tehsil) and Karadabani, Barabharania, and Kenchudi (in Parjang tehsil) and Deulisahi (in Kamakhyanagar tehsil)—are known for their communities’ involvement in the movement for granting tribal rights, which led to the passing of the FRA in 2006. Members of the Adivasi Kranti Sangathan, a Dhenkanal-based community-centred organisation, participated in rallies in Delhi from 2003 to 2005 demanding the enactment of the law. The law became a reality, but the condition of the villagers has remained the same.

A woman from Sahajabahal forest village in Naktideul block of Sambalpur district explains the boundaries of her village to the Chairperson of the Sub-Divisional Level Committee of Rairakhol subdivision in 2022 | Photo Credit: Special arrangement/ BISWARANJAN ROUT

Despite this, Odisha is one of the leading States when it comes to implementation of the FRA: it has distributed the highest number of individual forest rights titles among all States and has the lowest rate of claim rejection. Odisha is pushing to ensure 100 per cent land rights for its forest-dependent communities. In 2022, the State launched a mission to recognise the rights of all its potential FRA claimants by 2024.

The government even set aside Rs.26 crore for the effective implementation of the law in the Budget passed in February 2023. Converting all forest villages, inhabited by nearly 3,000 people, into revenue villages is part of the mission.

A story of migration

Forest villages date back to pre-Independence times and were identified and categorised in district gazetteers then. Shweta Mishra, an independent researcher and expert on Adivasi communities of Odisha, gives the historical context to the situation as it exists today:

“As part of forest management, people were moved into remote and inaccessible parts of forests wherever there were specific, labour-intensive tasks to be performed. These people eventually settled down there and formed habitations. These habitations were identified as forest villages. Residents of such villages were denied land rights and kept outside the purview of developmental schemes as they did not come under any revenue jurisdiction.

“Odisha had 22 forest villages. The Forest Rights Act allowed the inclusion of hamlets and habitations located in remote, inaccessible forest areas, which were not defined as villages under the law. Thus, the definition of forest villages was widened to include all unsurveyed settlements, taking the total number of these villages to 458 in Odisha.”

People living in the forest villages of Dhenkanal narrate a story of migration dating back several decades. Most of them are descendants of Munda and Santhal tribes, which inhabit the Chota Nagpur Plateau region. Krushna Tudu, 93, was a toddler when he accompanied his parents and grandparents to Dhenkanal from what are now parts of the State of Jharkhand.

“Our family came here before Independence with Rani Ratna Prova Devi, when she married the king of the Dhenkanal princely state, Shankar Pratap Singh Dev Mahindra Bahadur Vidyasagar. My family had then walked for over six days to reach this place. My father and grandfather were involved in capturing and managing elephants. Many families returned to their villages later, but some stayed back,” Tudu said.

Those who stayed back started farming on small patches of forest land after Independence. The practice survives to this day as the taungya system. Unlike shifting cultivation, taungya is a system of forest management in which land is cleared only once in the beginning and planted with food crops. “We clear a patch of land and start cultivating various crops. But there is continuous interference from the Forest Department, which wants to stop us. Cases have been filed and people jailed for undertaking farming activity on forestland,” Tudu said.

People living in the forest villages have to depend on gram sabhas of neighbouring villages to pass important resolutions on their behalf. | Photo Credit: BISWARANJANROUT

This changed after the villagers received Individual Forest Rights in 2010 under the FRA. With the right to self-cultivation and habitation ensured, they could undertake agricultural practices on these lands. In 2017, the State issued its own guidelines for the conversion of unsurveyed forest villages into revenue villages.

The Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA), 1996, mandates that every village should have a gram sabha. As the forest villages are not on revenue records, they have no elected representatives or gram sabhas.

This makes them dependent on gram sabhas of neighbouring villages, which pass important resolutions on their behalf. “For any important developmental project in the village, we have to plead with the neighbouring village’s gram sabha. There are still no roads in our villages. There was a school but it was shut down during the pandemic,” said Rami Soren.

“For generations we have been dependent on agriculture, but none of us has a farmer ID card. We cannot sell our produce at MSP [government-set minimum support price] and there is no provision for getting crop insurance during calamities,” he added.

Since the dwellers have no individual land pattas for their homestead and cultivable land, they are deprived of tribe/caste and resident certificates as well. Besides, they have no access to government-sponsored social benefits such as the public distribution system, housing schemes like the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna, the State’s KALIA (Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation) Yojana for farmers, pucca roads, right to purchase and sell land, or old-age pension.

Highlights

• Marked as “zero villages” in census reports, Odisha’s forest villages do not feature in revenue records. Hence, welfare schemes, which are routed through the Revenue Department, are not available to their residents.
• They have to depend on gram sabhas of neighbouring villages, which pass important resolutions on their behalf.
• Since the dwellers have no individual land pattas for their homestead and cultivable land, they are deprived of tribe/caste and resident certificates.
• The administration has not yet initiated the bureaucratic process that must follow the notification marking the villages as revenue villages. Until it does so, the villagers cannot realise their rights.

Lack of coordination

“It is a hassle to acquire tribal certificates [SC/ST certificate] and resident certificates. This hinders our children’s higher education. Until we get revenue pattas, the situation will not improve,” said Chandni Munda, 37, of Devgana village.

Forest rights activists say the issue can be resolved with better coordination among departments. “FRA titles empower communities. The panchayati raj and revenue departments must step in to ensure that these villages are able to exercise their rights,” said Y. Giri Rao, executive director of Vasundhara, an action research and policy advocacy organisation. Rao suggested that a deadline for getting the final record on rights correction and land settlement should be put in the guidelines.

Most of the people living in the forest villages of Dhenkanal were brought there in pre-Independence time by the erstwhile king of Dhenkanal. They cleared forest land and started agricultural practices.  | Photo Credit: Aishwarya Mohanty

The claim applications to convert the 12 forest villages of Dhenkanal into revenue villages were submitted on September 10, 2018. Two years later, on July 10, 2020, the Board of Revenue declared the villages as revenue villages through a notification.

In 2017, the Revenue Department had issued guidelines for the conversion of unsurveyed forest villages. As per the guidelines, when the Board of Revenue issues a notification with respect to the conversion, the process of survey, the preparation of record of rights, and the publication of the final record of rights under the provisions of the Odisha Special Survey & Settlement Act, 2012, have to be carried out to settle the land rights of the residents of the new revenue village.

The Act provides for survey and settlement operations using GPS mapping, aerial photographs, digitised cadastral maps, and satellite imagery supported by “ground truthing”.

In vain

It is the last part—including the preparation and publication of the final record of rights—that is yet to be completed. When contacted, Rajkishore Das, the officer on special duty, FRA cell, Odisha, said that while he was aware of the status of the villages, the process of conversion had to be done by the Revenue Department.

In 2021, the Dhenkanal District Collector issued a letter to the Director of Land Records Survey and Consolidation, Board of Revenue, for a hi-tech survey of the villages. The survey is yet to begin. Such a survey involves preparing digital maps with high levels of accuracy, which can then be preserved and updated.

The current Collector, Saroj Kumar Sethi, took charge in 2022 and is unaware of the developments. Rabindra Samal, the tehsildar of Kankadahad block, said: “We had written to the State to carry out a hi-tech survey but we aren’t equipped to undertake it. There is a lack of manpower and expertise to undertake such an operation. No one is trained.”

Meanwhile, villagers and activists are trying to follow up on the process, but it appears to be in vain. “After the 2021 letter, we met the Collector, but by then there had been a change in the administration. Processes get delayed whenever there is such a change. We have received no update at all about these villages, and they continue to wait for revenue pattas,” said Akshay Pani, convener of Adivasi Kranti Sangathan.

Aishwarya Mohanty is a journalist covering gender, social justice, and environment issues. She is also a researcher at Land Conflict Watch, which studies land conflicts, climate change, and natural resource governance in India.