Gender crossroads Towards gender affirmative action for Tribal rights and advancement through PESA and FRA Soma Kishore Parthasarathy* 1

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1 Gender crossroads Towards gender affirmative action for Tribal rights and advancement through PESA and FRA Soma Kishore Parthasarathy* 1 The formulation of policy for tribal communities, as for women, has followed a chequered trajectory in Independent India given the nature of discourse that positions them as objects of welfare, backward, and ignorant. Initially treated as subjects of welfare, both groups have gradually gained recognition in policy as subjects of development and then as claimants of rights, but the arena of these rights has invariably been delimited by the agenda of growth and development, as contradictory formulation of policies to exploit resources undermine the traditional rights of such communities to their resources and to lives of dignity. It is in this contrarian paradox that PESA and FRA and such potentially transformatory and progressive enactments need to be located and assessed. Although policies for devolution and decentralization were recommended in a three tier mechanism by the Balwant Rai Mehta Committee 2 as far back as in , and Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh were the frontrunners in creating a new threetier system, while several other states passed laws in the late 1950s and early 1960s, however this institutional reform remained largely on paper and the Panchayat Raj Institutions (PRIs) remained neglected apart from in Gujarat and Maharashtra. It was after several attempts that the 73 rd and 74 th amendment were finally passed that mandated a three tier system across all states, with the exception of areas under the jurisdiction of the IV th and Vth schedule. The 73 rd and 74 th Amendment legislations also went a step forward in provisions for women to be represented through reservations in the political representation in grassroots democracy, recognizing the constitutional mandate for affirmative action and political participation of women. The genesis of PESA Enactment lies in the formulation of the Panchayati Raj Amendments (1993-4) which provided the framework for decentralized governance and devolution of powers to the panchayat level, in order to make it applicable to the tribal areas while taking into account the specific conditions and socio- cultural and traditional practices of the tribal communities. This enactment also provided for the *Research Scholar, Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Mumbai. Natinoal Facilitatino Team Member MAKAAM; Coordinator Gender Sub Group CFR LA 2 This committee was instituted in 1958.

2 devolution of authority to the local elected representatives and ensure governance based on accountability to the local leadership in the three tier structure of governance. While this enactment does foreground the need to safeguard the rights and customary practise of tribals, its major shortcoming, especially from a gender perspective has been that it does not address the gendered nature of customary practice and cultural and social traditions in Adivasi communities, nor does it provide a safeguard for such to be implemented within the framework of the constitution. In so doing the PESA Act upholds the traditional systems practices and structures of Adivasi people, but stops far short of ensuring justice and rights of women. The gendered fallout of these provisions are discussed in this paper with a view to then suggest ways of redressal to move forward towards a gender just framework for advancement of tribal men and women as equal citizens. In this paper I focus on three specific contradictions that complicate the terrain of gender equality in the context of tribal rights and therefore render the implementation of the PESA enactment and the FRA challenging, and will need to be addressed at multiple levels in order to effect change in favour of women and for the effective assurance of rights for the trial population: World Views at crossroads The first is the contradiction between the paradigms of the tribal world view and the modernizing state, wherein private property regimes and neoliberal demands are superimposed upon the terrains and people whose lives have been defined and ordered around a commons based ecological world view with a relatively egalitarian structure of governance, albeit embedded in patriarchal overtones. The imposition of the concepts of private property over their perspective of common and shared resources and the accompanying way of life raises issues of survival and subsistence at a material level, but also cause the rhythms of their lives to be rendered asunder at other levels, since cultural and symbolic practices and the moral economy that revolves around their commons based belief systems 3 also emanate from such a world view. 3 A distinction is made here from the commons practices elucidated by Elinor Ostrom and others in their work and the commons structures and practices of the Adivasis, the former being referred to as enclosed commons and the latter as the open access commons.

3 Private property regimes snatch from the women of these communities their status and dignity. Rao 4, Agrawal and Kelkar have referred to this connection between the imposition of private property and the fall in women s status in communities where women have hitherto enjoyed a social status as the prime caretakers and sustainers of the ecological and moral economy of these socieites. Private property and accumulative politics deprives women the status accorded to them hitherto as sustainers of a socio economic and ecologically sustainable environment. The lack of rights to representation in the decision making processes at the formal level has only become more pronounced with the imposition of private property and the accompanying dominance of the household voer the earlier preponderance of community structures. Thus the imposition of rule structures/institutions formulated in a propertarian and commercially extractive idiom negate the inherent value of forests and humans as ecological beings, and results in the marginalization and increasing pauperization of those who most closely reflect the ecological being. Such a disruption in paradigm compels Adivasi people into unknown roles and struggle, as they are rendered displaced, with the assault of external forces of individuals state parties and private agencies seeking to gain access to their regions, their land and resources. The commons view of forest explicates a culture and tradition of community and shared resource regimes, of lives and livelihoods embedded in the natural environment. As opposed to this, a propertarian view which amplifies individual privilege and accumulation and negates community norms only serves to spread an extractive and individuated view of nature in a commoditized perspective wherein these hitherto ecologically vibrant and knowledgeable communities are left scattered and bareft of the lives they know best 5. The language too in some sections of the PESA Act refutes the purpose of the Act. The phrase consulted in the process of determining mining leases needs reformulation, to be changed to Prior informed consent of and seeking permission of the Gram Sabha rather than at appropriate levels as provided in the Act. This was proposed in an amendment in 2013, which has yet to receive consideration from 4 Nitya Raos work and publications on Land Rights and Gender in Jharkhand, Bina Agrawal s landmark publication A Field of One s own and her paper Gender and Command over Property-A critical Gap in Economic Analysis and Policy in South Asia published in World Development,Vol. 22 No 10 pg , 1994, and Govind Kelkars work on Gender Relations in Tribal Society are significant contributions on the subject. 5 The commons perspective of the tribals in india is further elaborated in the chapter by in a paper co-autohred by me entitled Our Ways of Knowing: Women Protect Common Forest Rights in Rajasthan of the Book entitled Patterns of Commoning by David Bollier and Silke Helfrich,Commons Strategies Group, 2014

4 the legislature. Moreover the reference to Minor minerals devalues and negates the rights of tribals to their own resources and needs to refer to all minerals in order to empower local Gram Sabha to be the locus for permissions for licensing and extraction; ensuring that local populations benefit from the mining and are able to regulate it to sustain livelihoods and their ecologically mediated lives and environments. Whether a tract of land or forest is to be used for farming with or without deep tilling, or sustained as forest with its multiple uses is a decision those most dependent and inherently living therein would be best positioned to determine, with first charge to then determine its nature and extent of extraction, the technologies most conducive and most invested in a reassurance of its regeneration. Given the fragile balance between species and the life they support, these intricate webs of relations (Massey) are as significant in the ecological context as they are in the socio cultural. A similar feature is reflected in the nomenclature of Minor Forest produce which differentiates the value of forest produce based on their commercial value, categorizing non-timber as of lower value, negating their intrinsic and use value. From women s experience and from the healing practices that the traditional healing systems and Gunis 6 of Rajasthan have amply demonstrated for instance, we gain a glimpse into the invaluable treasure of the medicinal value of severl herbs, yet considered and in fact secure hitherto from over exploitation due to this minor status in commercial value. Similarly for decisions related to whether projects will be beneficial or otherwise the local Gram sabha need to be involved directly rather than the Panchayats at appropriate level for acquisition for development and rehabilitation project. Such decentralised and localized decision making is necessary in recognition of the historically and inter-generationally transferred knowledge about the natural environment and the symbiotic lives therein, but is also desirable from an environmental perspective contrary to the conventional environmentalists approach. Within this discourse however the imperative of recognizing women as actors in the Gram Sabhas and of empowering gram Sabhas such that local men and women can participate in decision making processes to determine the pathways of development are critical agenda. Without such an investment in these processes the entire provisions of the enactment come to naught as the communities remain ill equipped to negotiate with the public sphere beyond their own communities. 6 Gunis are traditional healers, literally meaning knowledgable ones, to be found in the southern Udaipur district of Rajasthan. Gunis have been organized into an association in the region to assert their stake and for recognition in the health systems and practices

5 The state too has recognized this divergence in paradigms and has invoked paradigms existing in parallel universe was acknowledged by the state as reflected in its document (2012) where it states Over the decades since the decadent feudal landlordism with its oppressive exploitation began crumbling, both these viewpoints seems to be have progressively moved upfront to finally converge with Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (PESA) where relatively the formal structures were yet to penetrate or were weak, the feudal structures were at its weak and self-governance in an egalitarian tradition continued to persist. The parallel universe allows the relatively egalitarian Adivasi socio cultural and legal systems to prevail, while feudal socio economic structures continue to exert their influence as is explicit in the way that Adivasi lands have gradually been encroached and occupied by non tribals through means of coercion and indebtedness or through benaami transactions. The PESA Act was passed to attend to this and other anomalies of postindependence policies that allow the lands of tribal communities to be appropriated by non-tribals, by the state for its developmental initiatives by merely consulting tribal communities 7, or protected by the forest department to be managed by exclusion of the tribals. Neither the PESA Act nor the FRA address the issues of communities for whom their ways of living are threatened and rights are negated, even as they are displaced from their traditional habitats, nor do they address the issues of lands that have been encroached by other agencies or parties and how these can be restored to the tribal communities prior to these enactments. [ Who owns the forests? A dilemma of claims and territorial custody The second contradiction, emanating from the first is that of the eminence of state domain, and the control over forests by the forest department which considers itself as the custodian of the forests as its territorial mandate since the British colonial period and the Adivasi as the encroacher along with the legal provisions that continue to exist in and are implemented in violation of other recent legislations which are ignored or have left these jurisdictional issues unresolved, viz a viz that of political autonomy of the tribal people and their way of life, within which I would argue is implicit their relationship and domain over their resources and territories of occupation. 7 Archana Prasad also refers to this dilemma in her book entitled

6 The path adopted by the Indian government through the project of development : through mining, dam construction, promotion of special economic zones, industrial corridors, highway projects etc. can only lead to an increase in the numbers displaced. Given that more than the majority of internally displaced people already comprise of the tribal people, this trend is only likely to deepen the crisis of their lives to live with security and dignity in their traditional patterns/regions. The fact that only four states have hitherto issued guidelines for implementation 8 of the PESA Act and the tardy implementation of the FRA and ignorance of its provisions has meant that the institutional frameworks required to ensure the protection of their rights to the lands, to the resources and to the implementation of projects that they can take decisions upon remain yet to be implemented. The PESA Act and the guidelines issued in states create more ambiguities than they resolve. An attempt has been made to dovetail the provisions of PESA Enactment with the FRA, but the gender gaps and silence on gender in the PESA Act are contrary to the provisions of the Indian Constitution. Some efforts were made to resolve these in the rules and guidelines issued by the government of Rajasthan, but the same was too little and too late. Despite provisions for land titles to be registered in men and womens names under the FRA in registration of IFRs, and for a representation of women on the FRCs in the FRA, women s entitlements receive only passing attention and their voices seldom are allowed to determine the priorities for actions. The Gram Sabhas continue to be neglected as mechanisms for grassroots democratic processes, and even the state government and the local authorities continue to negate their role in an attempt to subvert the advancement of tribal communities. Efforts have been made in several pockets to strengthen tribal institutions and gram Sabhas and to bring womens voices to the fore in Odisha and in Maharashtra for instance by NGOs and civil society and peoples organizations, but at the next level of district and regional decision making, the representation of tribal interests and especially of womens voices remains marginal as departments of the government, especially the forest bureaucracy tend to overwhelm the process. 8 PESA (see Annexure 2)28 was enacted in Dec 1996 to extend Part IX of the Constitution to the Fifth Schedule Areas, being an extension to the 73rd Amendment to the Constitution. Nine States having Fifth Schedule Areas, namely Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Rajasthan, were to enact suitable laws within one year of the coming into force of PESA. More information on this is available in the report by Bijoy C published by UNDP According to a statement given by Minister in the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Shri Jual Oram in reply to written question in Lok Sabha.(Press Information Bureau 8.) only four States have framed their Rules for implementation of PESA. These are, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan till 2014.

7 As acknowledged by forest officials in obe state in the course of a field study, LATH Rathori rule of the authority of the state is necessary to keep the tribals subservient to the regime of the state 9. In the case of PESA and FRA, the government machinery has deliberately chosen take a laid back position, putting little effort to implement these enactments as is reflected even in the figures of implementation. One recent estimate presented by the RRI 10 claims that only a meagre 6 % of the potential of titles have been recognized of tribals to their traditional rights as defined by the FRA. Within these there is no gender disaggregated data to indicate the extent to which womens names have in fact been included in the titles so far recognized. Some states have been more effective in their implementation while others are lagging far behind. Ambiguities are often perpetuated by the state machineries themselves by flagrantly flawed interpretations of the content of the law, for instance in the definitions of community rights, where the public service infrastructure has been defined as CFR, rather than the recognition that needs to be accorded to community lands traditionally used by communities. These acts and the intervention of the Forest department in the processes of implementation of these laws reflect attempts to subvert their intent. The fear of loss of control by the forest department over what it considers its exclusive territories has been a key part of the problem. The resent thrust to bring in the CAMPA legislation and to superimpose the CAMPA Act and the JFMCs and prevent the emergence of FRCs as people centred democratic institutions is a flagrant violation of the provisions of law. The Forest Department s attempts to super-impose the Joint Forest Management programme, despite its commitments to withdraw its involvement in favour of the community, has caused the deliberate ambiguity with the FRCs. In Rajasthan for instance the state department has sought to gain recognition of the JFMCs as the FRCs for purposes of recognition as the decision making committees for FRA provisions. By creating these parallel structures and then seeking to dovetail them, the state has rendered the community members vulnerable to the machinations of the FD, where the decentralized processes remain merely paper exercises and the FD implements its agenda, while often flouting the priorities that communities have for the regeneration and management of their forests, and depriving them of access 9 Based on field work conducted in Rajasthan by the author in pursuance of her PhD work. Also refer to her paper entitled Interrgating state and Policy: Gender concerns in common terrains presented at the IAWS Bianniel Conference, Gawahati RRI Study

8 and rights to the resources from the forests. My field research in Sirohi district reveals a process whereby forest produce is regularly auctioned to private parties, flouting the claims of tribal communities. This is all the more evident in MADA areas where the FRA is flouted even more explicitly, and attempts to bring such areas within the Schedule V area are resisted. Various Government-appointed Committees have recommended the inclusion of these remaining Tribal Sub-Plan and Modified Area Development Approach (MADA) areas and similar pockets under the Scheduled Areas but this is yet to be complied with 11 (Bijoy 2012). Another example carried in a current affairs journal also illustrates the point about the privatisation of forest resources with industries becoming a third party. A prominent example of this was seen in Andhra Pradesh where the Indian Tobacco Company gave contracts to the tribal people to grow tobacco in Schedule V areas at cheap rates. By doing this they controlled the production process without interfering in the ownership patterns. In Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh markets were opened up to multinational and Indian business firms in non-timber forest produce through the removal of transit duties. Highways were modernised in Bastar to facilitate the access of industrial traders to the main markets, but the condition of public transport and village mohalla roads were ignored, thus denying access to markets for the tribal forest produce collectors. This meant that these collectors were dependent on small and medium traders to buy their produce and this in turn provided vital links to industrial houses in local markets. 12 Such marketized tender and sale processes denies the communities the right to their produce, its use as well as the decisions to determine how these resources will be managed. Another glaring anomaly in the implementation of the FRA has been the primary focus of the state on the individual Forest rights over the CFR rights, which reflect a bias towards negating the larger entitlements while making advantage of the FRA as a land reform instrument to be exploited for political gains. The silence about the more powerful and crucial component of community rights and the powers given to the gram sabha for governing, managing and protecting the forests indicates the states unwillingness to engage proactively towards the assurance of rights for the tribal communities. According to one author, Instead of being an empowering tool that strengthened the collective democratic rights of forest dependent communities 11 Bijoy C, UNDP India Panchayat Raj (Extension To Scheduled Areas) Act Of 1996: Policy Brief

9 the act was reduced to becoming yet another government programme of land distribution. 13 Apart from the negation of provisions for entitlements and the subversion of access to the resources from forests as entitlements for communities that both the PESA and FRA enactments provide for, the third dilemma and possibly the most significant is the institutional disarray that the machineries of the state have brought about by neglecting these enactments; first in the lack of recognition of the Gram Sabha, often in confusing its presence with the Panchayat, causing thereby greater distance from the institution for women and presenting greater hurdles for their participation; or by conflating the FRC with the JFMC, thereby reinforcing the might of the FD. Further by referring the IFR and CFR claims to the forest department without this being a requirement in the Act, the process of the FRA is further derailed and community processes sent into a tailspin with regard to claim procedures. Those claims that are even recognized, having gone through this entire process are recognized for far less land areas than the claims in the vast majority of cases, revealing an attempt to negate the authority of the FRC as the claim verifying body, and rendering the entire process a farce, when the department itself takes the final call. All these processes have a greater and direct impact on women, their labour and assertion of their priorities in the process of management of forest resources and in governance thereof. Even as women have sought to make headway into staking claims participating in discussions and asserting for their priorities in the deliberatinos of FRCs, such denial of claims or short changing them serves to dismiss their position as claimanats while often denying them the fruits of their labour as rightful claimants. The resistance of the state to recognition of claims to resources and to decisions related to resources and to the processes of development that the PESA and FRA present is in fact reflective of a deeper malaise within the state of preventing the emergence of the tribal population as claimants and empowered communities with jurisdictional authority, which explains the attempt of the state authorities to restrict the scope of the FRA to tenurial security and subvert the provisions of community rights and the rights against arbitrary displacement See the Campaign for Survival and Dignity website

10 With the CFA Legilation 15, the state seeks to upscale its authority in the governance, divergence and apparent protection of forests through the formation of a separate CAMPA Authority with minimal representation of Adivasi voices, while transplanting a mono-cultural notion of plantation forestry into the forest landscape. By providing funds directly to the joint forest management committees for afforestation, created and controlled by the forest department, and all decisions controlled predominantly by the forest and other bureaucracies the CFA 16 stands the potential of completely bypassing and undermining the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) (PESA) Act, 1996, and the FRA, which are powerful legislations for the Scheduled Areas. According to these laws the decisions to implement or reject mono-crop plantations and afforestation programmes that threaten to displace traditional livelihoods, biodiversity, associated indigenous knowledge and cultures and local ecosystems, should rest with the community and the gram sabha. In overriding these enactments the CAMPA Legislatino in fact thwarts the constitutional guarantees contained in other legislations and therefore needs to be challenged. The misguided course of development The third dilemma that confronts us in the context of the rights of Adivasis enshrined in the PESA and FRA legilations is the national governments rigour to enforce a growth centric developmental model that seeks to exploit the resources for extractive industrialization in the very regions of the country where Adivasis predominate and their resource rights need to be assured. On the one hand are the legislatinos related to the forests rights of Adivasis, and on the other these contrarian objectives of the development policies that are currently being placed in the public domain, such as the land Acquisition policies and the Mining, energy, smart cities and SEZ policies that seek to change land uses and promote increased production and productivity by harnessing natural resoruces on large scale for development. Without going into details of these polcies, it wold suffice to state that a pro people and tribal policy state would desist from promoting and pronouncing policies that declared the tribal an encroacher, compelled their displacement from traditionally occupied territories, rendered their traditional livelihoods resources inaccessible or denied them the benefits of their claims to resources. 15 CAMPA Legislation refers to the recent enactment that 16 CFA is the compensatory Forestry Act

11 Policies such as the Mines Act, the LARR have made reference to compensation for tribal people but do not address the fact that displacement is an assault on the lives, livelihoods and way of life of the Adivasis and is a violation of the right to autonomy enshrined in the PESA legislation. Attempts to convert land use to extract minrals and establish industries and industrial zones in forest areas with the cooperation of the custodians of the forests whose role it is to conserve the forests can only cause increasing hardship and disruption to the Adivasis who already form the majority of the displaced and marginalized. Data on forest health already reveals deterioration in the conditions of forests with inroads made for multiple purposes and the spread of urbanization. Changes in land use for urbanization have also allowed the misuse of policies to encroach upon the tribal lands. These policies along with the lack of access to basic needs such as food security and basic health and education infrastructure have rendered the Adivasi population further marginalized and hemmed in on both sides, by the states onslaught upon their regions and the organization of Adivasis through coercive means to quell resistance and the increasing unrest giving rise to militant resistance on the other. For women this increase in militancy has also meant an increase in violence and repression, as they are used as the means to quell communities and to flush militancy. The recent incidents of gang rape of women in Chattisgarh and the most recent targeting of researchers and human Rights activists to undertake research and fact finding missions to bring the voices of these communities and raise these issues through in media and other means has met with further targeting and violence. The actions against those coercively and aggressively claiming Adivasi lands and undertaking such violence against women including state parties however remain protected by impunity. The future can be bright or bleak, as policy drives it The future presents grave challenges that will need to be addressed in the context of increasing onslaught on forest areas and denial of tribal rights to resources and to basic services. The challenge can then be addressed in our view with a multi fold redressal of constitutional, structural, governance and operational bottlenecks if serious attempts are to be made to ensure the rights enshrined in the PESA and FRA. The constitutional pathway involves redressal of the impediments that pose a constitutional contradiction to the provision of these acts - is to raise the issues of Tribal Rights and the rights of women therein within the framework of constitutional

12 provisions. This would also mean a review of other policies and legislations that negate the provisions of these Acts. The contradictions between the PESA Act that hold sacrosanct the customary laws and the FRA which has created some room within its framework for creating titles for women, as well as for their representation in decision making systems will need to be strengthened. Laws such as the recently passed CFA will need to be reviewed to ensure its compliance to the interests and traditional rights of the tribals, and to recognize the authority of Gram Sabhas and Tribal councils over their regions and their resources there in. Any attempts to delimit this in the name of customary practices will need to be challenged from a constitutional viewpoint and a viewpoint of correcting historical injustice not only within the legal framework, but the societal framework as well. An important point towards this is to strengthen the mechanisms for grievance redressal in the implementation of these enactments, and to ensure that these are instituted in a way that is accessible to women, with adequate/equal representation of women. [[ The structural impediments lie in the historical material legacy of the Tribals being considered as the excluded category, to be mainstreamed. Instead a greater understanding will have to be forged of the merits of the Adivasi paradigm of life and wellbeing, and efforts made to strengthen systems for autonomy and sovereignty within the constitutional framework. The role of the state as a protector of these rights and status of these marginalized commnuties from the onslaught of other exploitative classes including the repressive Forest bureaucracies will also need to be considered seriously, and mechanisms of the SC ST Commission strengthened and representation increased of women such that their issues are raised and addressed. This would also mean strengthening the means to punish and hold accountable the mechanisms of the state responsible for assurance of their rights, and the removal of impunity currently enjoyed by state parties in dealing with tribal communities, including women. Currently even the MOTA and the Tribal Development Commissioners and department office are largely governed by the regime of the forest department The operational means include the implementation of the provisions of the laws, ensuring that the claims are filed and recognized efficiently while removing hurdles placed by the FD and ensuring that the FRC verification of claims is upheld. Single women s claims, claims of widows, unwed daughters and multiple wives in cases of bigamy and polyandry will need to be included and registered separately, while married women s names may be registered jointly but with their names as the first

13 claimant to address the inherent bias of patriarchal structures. This has been attempted in several regions with some success and resistance from Patwaris and other government and other officials and political representatives have also been challenged. The recognition of women s rights to the community forests is a priority and needs to be ensured, such that women are the primary claimants based on their being the primary workers and producers from such lands and in ensuring the ecological sustainability of such forests. Women without property of their own have relied on these commons as a means for sustaining their lives and livelihoods. Any attempts to encroach upon such community rights will need to be challenged, especially since such encroachments have invariably been made by powerful elites, by non tribal elements and state agencies. Even where such developmental initiatives and parks and sanctuaries are demarcated, the necessity of resettlement and rehabilitation should only be done after rightful claims are settled such that suitable compensation is provided, once and only if the community endorses the change in land use or the infrastructure creation by an absolute majority of 80% of residents. Further a mandatory number of representations of women should also be stipulated such that their interests are taken into consideration in defining the priorities for development. Resources from various sources including the penalties levied for diversion of forests etc should accrue to the GS, as should the revenues from the sale of their forest resources. Women must be a mandatory part of the decision making in equal numbers to determine the use of such resources for managing of the forests and for tribal development initiatives. Simultaneously, the provision of infrastructure for health education and development based on the priorities set by local gram Sabhas and tribal councils is an imperative. Further, the governance imperative for the mandate for PESA and FRA lies in the recognition nd strengthening of Gram Sabha as the key institutional architecture to determine the interests of the Adivasis, with at least an equal participation of women. The Forest Rights Committee the SDLC, the tribal councils all need to be strengthened and their rights and roles recognized as primary in the Vth Schedule areas; and MADA and such regions be brought under their jurisdiction and the jurisdiction of these laws as well. The removal of practices of appointment of external traders and auction of resources by FD must give way to the implementation of governance processes by the Tribal representative bodies themselves, with the state agencies being accountable to them, as in the PRI system. The removal of interference by other departments and their role in

14 supporting the plans of the tribal councils with appropriate gender representation will bring about a structure of governance and accountability that is in sync with the ecological commons paradigm of the tribal societies. Where this structure has been eroded and nullified by the domination of tribal elites and the dominance of nontribals efforts will need to be made towards restoration of the democratic structure with affirmative action for women s representation and voice. An adherence to the commitments made in the PESA and The FRA Act can restore tribal dignity and justice and bring about reparations to the reign of fear and exploitation that have prevailed, provided that provisions are made for the recognition and representation of women in all these processes. This calls for a serious engagement from all concerned, but in the first place an acceptance of the tribal voice and priorities equally of the men and the women - and enabling those to determine the course of action desired.