No control over the natural resources - Forests

Bir Singh Markam is native living in Bastar District of Chattisgarh. He was growing corn over a small piece of land in the forest. This was his way of providing for his   small family. In 1998 he was arrested along with seventy five other natives  of that area on the charges that he had occupied the land that he tilled unlawfully. He was jailed along with others.
When he was released he had to visit the court at least twenty times in next few years. The
court was thirty kilometers away. Travelling expenses coupled with the fine broke his back and he was forced to sell of his oxen to pay for the same.
 
There are crores of tribal spread all over the country on whom the freedom in 1947 played a
cruel joke. The natives had lived on their land for generations   and the English in pre 1947 era treated the tribal areas as “Excluded area”. The English had adopted a policy of non interference and kept the tribal areas outside the British rule. The laws that were in force throughout the country were not enforced in these areas. In other words tribal areas were outside the purview of the British Law. 

When the constitution was promulgated in 1950 after independence then all laws became
applicable throughout the length and breadth of the country, including the “Excluded areas”. The tribal people are basically people of backward areas, poor and uneducated. They had no
papers to prove the ownership of the land on which they had lived literally for centuries. The
outsiders took advantage of this fact and started to grab this land. The tribal survived on the
land and the forest and some even lived in the forest. But the forest was declared as national
property by the government and the tribal for whom  it had been a home for centuries were
declared criminals by a simple law.  

Officials and minions of the forest department come and harass the tribal of the villages. Since these people do not posses the documentary evidence of the ownership of land on which they live, their occupation of the land is treated as unlawful. The officials of the forest department stop them from tilling their land, collecting wood from the forest or collecting flowers and seeds and do not allow them to let their cattle graze on the land. Their fields are mowed down by elephants. The soil is spoilt by throwing thorny seeds of babool. These people are beaten up and their crop is destroyed and many times the police arrest them.
 It seems ironical but as long as the forests were home and natural habitat to the tribal it was a forest but as soon as it was declared a national treasure it has started shrinking and is on the verge of extinction. Forest officials, contractors and politicians all in connivance with each other are looting and plundering this national wealth, and all in the name of duty.   

• Every year the government gives out contract to take out “Tendu leaves” from the forest.Every contractor gets contract for 1500-5000 bags of “Tendu leaves”. But officials of forest department are given bribes and how much the contractor takes out no one knows. Even a small contractors earns upto rupees fifteen lac per year. But the adivasi is paid only thirty naya paisa for each bundle of tendu leaves. Under the pressure of Naxalites, now that rate has been increased to one rupee.
• The government gives out contracts to paper mills to cut several lac tones of bamboo from the forest at hugely cheap rates. However, the paper mills give contract to adivasis at a rate of ten to twenty naya paisa per bundle. This way paper mills corner huge profits. 

These are but a few of the methods being used to deplete the green cover and we have no control over this