Forest Rights Act in Chhattisgarh and Gujarat: Unfolding the Dynamics in Implementation

This paper, based on field observations in Chhattisgarh and Gujarat, attempts to critically examine the implementation process of the Forest Rights Act, especially focusing on the democratic aspects of decision-making and the transparency issues of the Act at the ground level under different situations. Further, it attempts to understand the awareness levels of the beneficiary community, i.e., the forestdependent people, while recording their concerns about their claims. The findings from a sample of 540 households spread across 18 Gram Panchayats in the two States reveal that the realisation of the objective of the Act to provide justice to the most underprivileged section in the society is far from complete. The reasons for this are multiple: while the abysmal level of awareness on the part of the tribals on all counts is one basic shortcoming, discrepancies in the attitude of the local forest department and the indifferent attitude of the local sarpanches were other contributors.