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In India, as in many countries of the Global South, reconciliation of livelihood and conservation goals in community-based forest governance is a key tension. This thesis shows that in the Indian forestry sector, the tension emanates from poor recognition of the forest community in the postcolonial Indian forest policies and laws as static entities. Such recognition is a colonial vestige, as the forest communities are viewed as homogenous groups, having subsistence-based livelihood needs. This has resulted in ignoring community dynamism and changes in terms of its livelihood needs and failed to facilitate reconciliation of livelihood and conservation goals through participatory institutional arrangements. Instead, it furthers essentialization, fragmentation, and de-politicization of the forest communities. It does so by giving precedence to the economic parameters over socio-cultural aspects and not recognizing the power differential within the forest communities, and between the state and the forest communities. I refer to this as a flaw in the state‟s reading of the dynamic forest community. To understand the implication of this formulation and unpack the nature of „forest community‟ and politics of recognition, the thesis uses a grounded theory approach with specific attention to the implementation of the Joint Forest Management, 1990, and the Forest Rights Act, 2006, in Hazaribagh, Jharkhand.
This thesis shows that unlike the current recognition in India‟s forest policies and laws, the forest communities are dynamic, differentiated, and aspirational entities, embedded in the sub-regional and regional networks of capital and power. The forest communities in Jharkhand have transformed from resisting the state and market to the ones aspiring for developmental benefits from institutional participation and diversification of livelihood practices. However, such a choice gets limited due to precarious livelihood opportunities in a region where the twin processes of primitive accumulation to fuel extractive capitalist development, along with increasing expenditure by the state on participatory development schemes persist. Such forest communities in Jharkhand are comprised of aspirational agents who demand development to fulfil their vision of better living standards in terms of education, employment, better housing, finer food practices, consumer durables, savings, and greater control over their natural resources. Further, the changes in the forest community made them reinterpret both the old and new institutions, to engender the community alternatives as much as possible, given the institutional limits both in terms of the local power dynamics and the institutional design. Instead of becoming an instrument of the state, the forest communities partially subverted the participatory institutions of JFM and FRA in practice for better service delivery and nullifying long-standing communitarian tussles. Thus, forest communities in Jharkhand are political articulations that negotiate with community forest institutions.
Therefore, this thesis suggests that any recognition of the forest communities in the forest policies should factor in regionally embedded networks of developmental aspirations to (i) provide scope for local contextual interpretation of „forest community‟ and „eligibility‟, (ii) facilitate the expansion of local livelihood needs, (iii) enable designing of participatory institutional arrangements as per the regional context, and (iv) facilitate engagement of new community leaders. Such a recognition of the forest community would help us in undoing the crisis of the forest community in India‟s forest governance and facilitate reconciliation of livelihood and conservation goals in community forest governance.
Keywords: Community Based Natural Resource Management; Community Forest Management; Environmentality; Jharkhand; Hazaribagh.
