If the greed of a handful of government officials who, according to Karat, determine the fate of our forests today can lead to so many illegal permits for mining and other mindless development projects inside forests, imagine the scenario when our forests comes into the custody of lakhs of equally corruptible men and women? Let’s face it. Tribals are not the natural custodians of our forests. Not anymore. Today they aspire to the so-called good things of life and understand money. Almost every poacher I know is a tribal who killed for profit. It doesn’t make them necessarily evil. It makes them just like you and me. Just like many of us take a bribe or fudge tax returns, many of them poach and, given a chance, will sell their forests.

To save the remaining pockets of old growth forests, villages must be rehabilitated with proper incentives. If there is not enough revenue land available, the government should petition the Supreme Court to allow conversion of some fringe forest land for development of villages shifted out of the best of our forests. Rehabilitation “fulfilling strict conditions” will be expensive but we cannot crib. We have destroyed our share of the green in the name of development. Now if we must stop tribals from exploiting their forests and still prosper, we have to share with them the profits we have already made by exploiting our forests. But Karat has already asked her cadres for “popular mobilisation to ensure” that the tribal bill is “not diluted by the government under pressure from different lobbies”.

... contd.