'Jungle is our Life': The Story of a Village Collective

India gives tribal villages rights over forest land and its produce but the laws have been poorly implemented. A union of villages in Maharashtra is now using them to guard their green cover and monetise the produce, which has arrested migration from villages

Roli Srivastava

Amita Madavi stands in the forest that her village is trying to protect from a mining project in Zendepar, Maharashtra. Roli Srivastava/The Migration Story

ZENDEPAR, Maharashtra: Amita Madavi, 38, doesn’t break a sweat as she briskly walks uphill into the forest in her central Indian village, expertly identifying the herb that can cure a cough, the pointy leaf that works wonders as a healing bandage for a sprain and the mushrooms that taste divine. The forest is the lifeline of villagers, who are now preparing for a court battle to protect it from a mining project.

Zendepar, a tiny hamlet of 300 residents, is the latest village in Korchi taluka (cluster) in the lushly wooded Gadchiroli district to exert its legal right on forest land. It has ventured to do this on the back of rare wins scored in recent years by neighbouring villages—victories that were extracted by tapping into decades-old Indian laws which enshrine these rights but have remained poorly understood and implemented.

In 2017, over 90 villages like Zendepar came together, forming a union of sorts called the Maha Gram Sabha or Federation of Villages. The collectivising has given them not just numerical strength but also awareness of their right to stake a claim on the trees and rocks they have co-existed with for generations but had no ownership of until the laws kicked in.

“We don’t have temples and idols. We are adivasis (tribals); we worship our trees and rocks. Our trees and animals live with us. Nature is our god,” said Madavi, as she paused at a landing where a rock sat under a canopy of dried leaves. This revered god of the small village is the spot where villagers congregate annually for a ‘yatra’ (pilgrimage) to the ‘devasthan’ (God’s place) on the top of the hill.

Madanlal Ghani Ram Porethi, head of the Padtiyal Job gram sabha sits in a community hall the village constructed from the compensation money it won for the land used for erecting electric transmission towers in Padtiyal Job village, Maharashtra. Roli Srivastava/The Migration Story

“The entire village depends on the jungle for its living. We get more produce from the forest than from our farms. We sell the produce and also eat it. Our air and water is clean because of our forest. Jungle hai toh hum hain (We owe our existence to the forest),” Madavi told The Migration Story.

‘Game-changer’ laws

Over 100 million people, or nearly eight percent of India’s population, are tribal, most of them marginalised, often cut off from public facilities and even connectivity. Government data shows that in many cases this is because of their location in forests and hills. Two pro-tribal legislations—the Forest Rights Act of 2006 and the earlier Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996, or PESA—were enacted with a view to “undoing the historical injustice” tribal communities have suffered. 

Satish Gogulwar, head of the nonprofit Amhi Amchya Arogyasathi (AAA), poses for a picture in his office in Kurkheda in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra. Roli Srivastava/The Migration Story

The laws gave tribal villages control over the forest and its produce, which had so far rested with the government’s forest department, and the right to set up a ‘gram sabha’ or village committee—the smallest governance unit in the multi-layered administrative bodies that exist in the world’s largest democracy. The gram sabha was legally vested with powers to monetise forest produce, the larger aim being to economically empower the community. 

But despite being in existence for so many years, the implementation of the two ‘game-changer’ laws remains poor. According to government data, eight of ten Indian states that have a predominant tribal population have notified state-specific rules under PESA, with states holding awareness sessions even this year on the law’s implementation. However, as campaigners pointed out, even in places where it was implemented, state governments stopped short of giving complete control—in Orissa and Jharkhand, for instance, forest land has been taken back for various projects, a threat that Zendepar is currently fighting.

Several villages that got community rights over their forest remained unaware of the power of this legislation. “They got the land title papers, they won a right but they didn’t know what to do with it,” said Satish Gogulwar, head of the nonprofit Amhi Amchya Arogyasathi (AAA), which facilitated the creation of the Maha Gram Sabha in Korchi in order to help villages get through the process of implementing the forest rights laws. The process of mobilising people and enlisting representatives from each village’s gram sabha wasn’t easy—it stretched for nearly three years, with villagers reluctant to join and even sceptical that they held any right to the vast forests.

Eventually, however, the Maha Gram Sabha reached a robust membership of over 90 gram sabhas in Korchi taluka. Livelihood solutions began to emerge after this, as villagers gained control over the forest land and began to sell the produce as a collective, which strengthened their bargaining power. Gogulwar said that individual earnings saw a threefold rise, which has arrested migration from Korchi’s villages.

The forests in Korchi taluka are rich in mahua, bamboo, jamun and tendu trees among others, the produce from which has economically empowered villages. Roli Srivastava/The Migration Story

Awareness about the laws has made villagers more protective of their green cover and the need to conserve it for their future generations. It has also restored pride in tribal culture—young girls in Korchi’s villages are reviving Gondi songs they learnt from their grandmothers which celebrate the tribal way of living  together.

The villagers of Zendepar are now drawing upon the forest laws to strengthen their plea against the mining project. “We are currently taking legal opinion, drafting a petition and aim to move court shortly,” they said, gathered on a humid June morning to discuss their futile attempts to seek the district administration’s intervention to protect the forest. “We have no choice but to take legal recourse.” 

Sanjay Daine, district collector or administrative head of Gadchiroli district, said that the improved awareness of villagers was undoubtedly helpful. “Bureaucrats like me  work on projects or plans that we believe the community needs,” he said. “But here, they (the community) express what they need. Officials now try to see their point of view and resolve their issues accordingly. We will do this in Zendepar’s case as well.”

‘Jal, jungle, zameen’ 

Drums stacked in a community hall at Padiyal Job, Maharashtra. Roli Srivastava/The Migration Story

The narrow roads connecting Korchi takula’s 133 villages are flanked by trees with long branches, a few bursting with flowers, others bowing under the weight of fruit.

At 70 percent, Gadchiroli district has the highest forest cover in the industrialised western Indian state of Maharashtra, and is commonly referred to as its lung. For the longest time the district was disconnected from information sources, with television making entry into villages a decade ago and mobile phones only in 2021.  As per India’s last census in 2011, a mere 0.3 percent of Korchi’s over-9,000 households owned a computer with an internet connection, and about 15 percent of all households owned a radio or a television.

So when the Maha Gram Sabha was set up, volunteers went from one village to another to hold meetings on the two laws, the potential they held to financially empower villages and the strength villagers would gain from one another if they collectivised.

A villager shows a stock of tendua leaves from this season’s collection at Padiyali Job, Maharashtra. Roli Srivastava/The Migration Story

Padyal Job village, about 23 km from Zendepar, was among the nearly 100 villages that initially signed up. Five years later, it is largely identified in the region by the electric power line that runs over its ocean-blue sky through tall transmission towers that fetched this small village of 218 people a cash win of 29,00,000 rupees (34,734 USD) as compensation for using their land in 2018.

“In an earlier time, the towers would have been erected without much fuss from villagers,” smiled Madanlal Ghani Ram Porethi, 38, who helms Padyal Job’s gram sabha. “But the tower project came after the village had received its forest rights papers and knew the market worth of the foliage that grew on the land where the transmission towers were planned.” The villagers showed the officials overseeing the digging their forest rights letter and stopped them. 

The protests led to the transmission tower work ceasing for about 20 days. But the villagers soon realised that a final resolution depended on the district administrative head’s intervention, which would need paperwork. Porethi was entrusted with the task.

“I had no experience of writing applications,” he laughed, sitting in the gram sabha office with plastic chairs piled at one end and ‘dhols’ (drums) that the village uses in festivals neatly stacked on an overhead shelf. “I have studied up to Grade 12 and never entered a government office, let alone spoken to an official.” Porethi then tapped the Maha Gram Sabha network to identify other villages the transmission lines would run through, garnered support from nine of them over a period of one month, and made a collective application for compensation.

Kumari Jamkatan, secretary of the Maha Gram Sabha, sits in the federation’s office in Korchi, Maharashtra. Roli Srivastava/The Migration Story

“Each village calculated the loss of trees and our potential earnings from their produce in the years to come,” he said. “We discussed how to write the letter and took advice from other villagers. We used to feel scared entering a government office, but we were stronger as a community.” Porethi has presented the success story at several workshops for village councils.

The whopping cash compensation, which funded the construction of the gram sabha office, a drain and a tractor to navigate the treacherous roads to the highway, was a major feat for a village that had made its acquaintance with television and mobiles only recently and used to get its news only from the radio, newspapers and later at Maha Gram Sabha meetings. Now members of this federation also have a WhatsApp group where discussion points, decisions and plans are shared.

Zendepar was among the nine villages that joined Padyal Job to seek  compensation and received a small sum for the few trees that it lost to the transmission tower on the village border. Interestingly, Padyal Job’s big win has been as much a learning as an inspiration for some. “The number of trees lost could not be recovered,” said Madavi. “Our forest is too big and old to be compensated for or for or replenished by new green cover. Money can’t bring back trees.”

Stemming migration

Former migrant worker Teejan Pemanda Jethumal, in her newly constructed house  with her husband in Botekasa village, Maharashtra. Roli Srivastava/The Migration Story

In Korchi, locals dedicate their months to different trees. March and April, the months when people collect the sweet-smelling mahua used in medicines, food and also for making alcohol, are allotted to this deciduous tree flower; May for tandul, the leaf used as a tobacco wrapper for beedis; June for jamun (black plum); and July to November for paddy fields that yield one harvest. But the period between December and March has always been the migration season, when entire families would leave home to seek work in distant towns and cities.

“People migrated to work at construction sites or on farms. I myself migrated to Andhra Pradesh to pluck chillies. That has stopped now,” said Kumari Jamkatan, secretary of the Maha Gram Sabha. Citing the iconic slogan raised by Gond tribal hero Komaram Bheem, who fought for the rights of tribal communities on forest land in the early 20th century, she added, “We have learnt our right to jal, jungle, zameen (water, forest, land).” 

The Maha Gram Sabha has brought villagers together to set a process for the sale of tendu leaves. Jointly, they place advertisements in local newspapers, call for tenders, and set the price themselves, a departure from the earlier process of the forest department fixing the price of the produce and paying the villagers who collected the leaves labour charges of about 200 to 300 rupees per day.

Collective bargaining has helped villagers earn a uniform rate: a hundred 70-leaf bundles went for 840 rupees this year, fetching each worker 84 rupees per bundle. Families pick leaves together, collecting 300 to 400 bundles every season and sell them collectively.

“Our leaves are as precious as gold. This year we collected 1,20,000 tendu leaves and sold them for 11 lakh rupees. This is our earning,” said Zendepar’s Madavi.

Improved incomes have revived farms, which has helped those who had migrated return to their villages. 

Teejan Pemanda Jethumal and her husband worked for 13 years on daily wages at a construction site in Nagpur, a city that is about 200 km away from her village Botekasa in Korchi taluka. “We earned 200 rupees a day for eight hours of work, and we managed with that,” she said. “We never had money for seeds or fertilisers for our farm, so we had to work at the construction site.” 

The couple returned to the village farms during the Covid-19 lockdown. The following year, they made over 1,100 rupees on 100 bundles of 70 tendu leaves each, as rates had improved due to the collective auction of the leaves of several villages. The earnings, along with other state schemes for farming such as interest-free farm loans, improved their paddy yield to 25 quintals from five quintals earlier. Jethumal and her husband have now built a pucca house, and are planning a college education for their three daughters.

Villagers in Korchi said that they earlier cut trees or their branches for firewood, but stopped doing so once they gained ownership rights. “We used to call it the government’s jungle until 2017 and would go and cut what we felt like,” said Parsadi Porethi, a resident of Padyal Job. “But after we got our rights, we understood that the village owns it. I understood that we have to keep it safe for our next generations to benefit from it. We don’t cut more than we need.”

Combatting intruders 

Pictures of Gond tribal heroes adorn the walls of a community centre set up to revive tribal music and stories in Korchi taluka, Maharashtra.  Roli Srivastava/The Migration Story

But the forests that feed villages are also rich in other reserves. Iron ore in the case of Zendepar. 

Twelve hectares have been earmarked for the opencast mining project and a 10-km surrounding area has been marked as a buffer zone, according to the project details submitted by a private company for environmental clearance in one of India’s many contentious projects that locals fear will erode forests, livelihoods and unleash harsh climate conditions on them.

Even on a hot day, Zendepar locals take pride in the weather, saying they can still sleep without a fan, which is largely because of the forests they have preserved, which, they believe, act as a cushion against the impact of climate change. They have also remained self-sufficient because of the forest produce.

“We read about farmers ending their lives in Marathwada (a drought-prone region in Maharashtra) owing to droughts,” said Madavi. “We don’t want a similar fate. If they mine in these forests, we will lose our livelihood. We will bring a climate crisis upon ourselves, and we will have to migrate from one place to another to earn a living.” Zendepar’s villagers said the forest fed not just their families but villages in a 10-km radius.

The project report says that the mining project will not harm the groundwater and will create work for 78 people, with the potential for more employment opportunities. Its last public hearing was held in October 2023, and it is awaiting final clearance from the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board for the work to begin, said Umesh Barade, the district mining officer at Gadchiroli. Barade claimed that the area marked for mining was not a forest area but a private plot on which trees had grown, and which villagers had become dependent on.

A board of the Maha Gram Sabha on the wall of its office in Korchi, Maharashtra.

Roli Srivastava/The Migration Story

Representatives of several villages have rallied behind Zendepar, visited the collector’s office for public hearings as a group over the years, helped identify a potential lawyer for the village and are doing the paperwork together—which is an all-too-familiar way of living in tribal villages. Marriages are never a single household’s expense—villagers pitch in to put together a feast, make accommodation arrangements for guests and also contribute grains, said locals.

Monthly meetings are conducted in the Maha Gram Sabha office in Korchi, which has a small room with a computer and internet connection that villagers use to write applications, and two halls to hold meetings.

The merits of the collective notwithstanding, the federation’s members are shrinking, down to 64 villages from 90-odd when it started. A sense of ennui is also setting in among the members, as they look to learn newer skills to better their incomes and the growth prospects of the village as also to help the next generation that is looking at cities as a destination for its dreams. “We speak about our success all the time, but who will we learn from on what should be next for us?” asked Rajaram Chattar Naitam, gram sabha member at Padyali Job village. 

Nevertheless, plans to protect the future are underway. Several member villages have come up with a 10-year forest conservation plan—a thick document with maps, pictures and diagrams—which is a record of their trees, forest produce, water bodies and farms within forests. The document, along with projections on the kind of work that forests will generate until the next decade, has been given to the district collector, and the members have kept a copy for themselves as a roadmap to protect their forests and livelihoods.

“Until 2010, the identity of this region was that it was backward and inundated with  Naxal activity,” said Amhi Amchya Arogyasathi founder Gogulwar. “Now all gram sabhas have their own funds. Adivasis, who didn’t know how to do business earlier, have found the courage to do it as a collective.”

Madavi, meanwhile, is leaning on the collective for the battle ahead.

“We have no choice but to go to court now. We have the support of this union of villages so we are strong. A single village wouldn’t have that strength,” she said, climbing down the hilly forest.

(Edited by Radha Rajadhyaksha)

(This is the first in a three-part series that will spotlight local democratic practices from across the country that demonstrate innovation, effectiveness and good governance. The author has researched the subject for a documentation project undertaken by The Centre for Local Democracy at the Azim Premji University.)