Dr Aruna Basu Sarkar: Torchbearer of tribal justice
Dr Aruna Basu Sarkar, a retired Indian Forest Service officer, has been a rare voice persistently advocating for these marginalised communities. With over 30 years of service across various roles — from District Forest Officer to Principal Chief Conservator of Forests — she has witnessed firsthand the systemic negligence and exploitation faced by tribal people from middlemen, government departments, and even local politicians.
'When forests were declared reserve areas, the traditional rights of forest dwellers were never documented. The law aimed to correct this, but in Tamil Nadu, it has remained mostly on paper,' Aruna explained. What's worse, even now, neither the English nor the Tamil edition of the law has been made widely available by the nodal agency — the Tribal Welfare Department.
According to Dr Sarkar, the biggest misunderstanding among forest and revenue officials is equating forest rights with land ownership. 'Most of these forest-dependent communities are landless. What they need is community forest rights — like the right to collect forest produce, graze cattle, or pursue traditional forest-based occupations,' she emphasised.
She also raised concerns about how the Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme, introduced in 1997 as a participatory forest management initiative, ended up becoming a tool for exploitation. 'It turned into a system where forest officials and former contractors used tribal labour as bonded labour. These so-called Tribal Village Committees created under JFM have only made things worse,' she alleged.
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