The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Tribal land alienation rampant

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jul 19, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Tribal land alienation rampant

By P. Venugopal

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, JULY 18. While the Government continues to grapple with the vexatious problem of providing land to all landless tribal families in the State, more and more tracts that have been allotted to these guileless people in the past are falling into the hands of their sophisticated brethren.

Over 500 hectares of tribal land spread across 28 tribal settlements in the Thiruvananthapuram forest territorial division has already been `alienated', according to an unofficial survey conducted by conservation officials during the last couple of weeks.

"The problem has two dimensions. First, the tribals are duped out of their landholdings. Second, the families thus rendered landless are then forced to encroach further into the forests," a top Forest official told The Hindu.

The pattern along which tribal land alienation usually takes place is clear from the recent happenings in the Vettikkavu settlement in the Peringamala area of the territorial division.

Sixty-one Kani families in this settlement were given assistance in 1998 under a scheme of the Rubber Board to grow rubber trees in their landholdings. The rubber trees are now ripe for tapping and suddenly people from outside have started eyeing the properties. Some members of the Kani community themselves are acting as agents for the outsiders keen on usurping the land that have now become highly money-yielding.

The land transfers take place over the payment of very small sums of money, according to the Forest official. The usurpers usually do not bother about any documents, because they are confident that they could easily tackle the powerless tribals in the event of any dispute in future. The tribals meekly move out of their properties and pitch new huts in the nearby forests. The outsiders then encourage them to make fresh clearings in the forests and launch farming operations so that, in due course, they could take over the newly-encroached areas also.

When the Forest Department tried to evict the Kani encroachers last month, there were demonstrations and even political interventions to prevent the move. The initiative of the forest staff was dubbed as `anti-tribal'. And the Government, instead of taking back the alienated land from the usurpers and returning it to the tribals, directed the Forest officials to withdraw from the scene. The land alienation at the Theviyarkunnu settlement in the Chooliyamala area of the territorial division is so complete that not a single tribal family is to be found there now. A stretch of 118 hectares of tribal land in this settlement is entirely with wealthy outsiders.

"We do not know where the tribals, who had been living in this settlement till about five years ago, have gone. They have been driven out of their land," the official said. Originally, this territorial division had tribal settlements over a stretch of 2,820 hectares. Nearly 1,000 hectares of this stretch was brought under rubber cultivation under the Rubber Board's scheme to help the tribals.

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