Implementation of forest rights act in scheduled areas: a study of koraput District of Odisha

The welfare state in post-colonial India has prioritised the issue of tribal development. But it took many years for people to realise that governmental control over resources and restrictions on tribe usage of forest resources were the result of historical injustice. The Forest Rights Act of 2006 is a recent piece of legislation that guarantees tribal people's access to the forest resources while also attempting to right that historical wrong done to Indian tribes. The Act, 2006 is regarded as a significant turning point in government policy for the restoration of traditional rights of forest dwellers and the preservation of ecological stability with a view to providing scheduled tribes (STs) and other traditional forest dwellers with sustainable livelihood options.Even after more than seven decades of India's independence, the fundamental problem of tribal rights has largely gone unaddressed. The post-independence strategy was quite incoherent because it gave the state monopolistic power over land and forest resources without paying consideration to indigenous peoples' rights to forest resources. The Indian government passed the Forest Rights Act in 2006, and it went into effect in 2008. The Act offers a legal means of redressing the past wrong done to Indian tribal people.The Act made a commitment to protect tribal people’s means of subsistence and to establish legal protections for them to stand up for their rights in the future. In Odisha, the Act's implementation procedure got under way in January 2008. Although the 2006 Act was passed with a larger scope in mind to ensure justice for groups that live in forests, the state government of Odisha started putting the Act into practice without conducting a meaningful campaign of sensitization and awareness among the tribal communities. Due to the state government's carelessness in implementing the forest rights legislation, prospective beneficiaries from tribal communities were confused about the proper way to submit an application to the relevant authority in order to get benefit from the act. In this context, the study discovered that the state apparatuses had not implemented suitable regulations to control the efficient application of the Act. It has also been noted that many potential beneficiaries were unable to exercise their rights because they were unaware of the Act's provisions. Further, due to bureaucratic indifference at the governmental level, the tribal people have also been excluded from receiving their rights.