{"id":6165,"date":"2018-05-11T14:00:15","date_gmt":"2018-05-11T14:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/southasia\/?p=6165"},"modified":"2018-11-30T18:48:43","modified_gmt":"2018-11-30T18:48:43","slug":"how-to-steal-a-forest-mining-bureaucratic-sabotage-and-indias-forest-rights-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/southasia\/news\/how-to-steal-a-forest-mining-bureaucratic-sabotage-and-indias-forest-rights-act\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Steal a Forest: Mining, Bureaucratic Sabotage and India\u2019s Forest Rights Act"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"firstp\">This talk by journalist\u00a0Chitrangada Choudhury traced how substantive decision-making power over extractive projects is denied to India\u2019s indigenous and forest-dwelling communities, even as they have clinched rights to ownership and consent, under the landmark Forest Rights Act, 2006.<\/p>\n<p class=\"firstp\">Examining the \u2018free, prior, informed consent\u2019 mechanism provided under the act, Chitrangada argued that the possibilities and limits of such mechanisms are shaped by the larger state-bureaucratic architecture and practices that govern the process of corporate\/state takeover of forests from rural communities \u2013 \u2018forest diversion\u2019 in officialese. Analyzing a case of a forest diversion proposal for an iron ore mine in eastern India\u2019s resource-rich state of Odisha, Chitrangada demonstrated how consent provisions are derailed by \u2018bureaucratic sabotage\u2019 i.e. the power of corporations and state officials to control and manipulate the circulation of documents across different tiers of government. Prior to the Forest Rights Act, forest diversion processes cast forest-dwelling communities as absent subjects. Following its enactment, such processes include forest-dwelling communities, but as pliant subjects, free only to award consent.<\/p>\n<p>Read one of Chitrangada&#8217;s recent articles on forest rights in The Hindu:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/opinion\/op-ed\/anti-forest-anti-forest-dweller\/article23437396.ece?homepage=true\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Anti-forest, anti-forest dweller.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"middlep\">Chitrangada Choudhury is an independent journalist, based in Odisha, and was a 2017-18 Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. She has been a reporter with The Indian Express and The Hindustan Times, and written for outlets including The Caravan, The Economic &amp; Political Weekly, Columbia Journalism Review, Himal Southasian, The Guardian and The Hindu. Her reportage has probed power and marginality in a country in flux, and been named for\u00a0 multiple national and international reporting awards including the Press Council of India\u2019s National Excellence in Journalism Award and the Lorenzo Natali Journalism Prize. She has been a part of the founding group of The People\u2019s Archive of Rural India, a multi-lingual website launched in 2014, and devoted to covering rural citizens, systematically overlooked by India\u2019s mainstream media. As an Open Society Fellow, she chronicled the impact of resource conflicts on the lives of indigenous and rural communities in India\u2019s forested mineral belt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This talk by journalist\u00a0Chitrangada Choudhury traced how substantive decision-making power over extractive projects is denied to India\u2019s indigenous and forest-dwelling communities, even as they have clinched rights to ownership and consent, under the landmark Forest Rights Act, 2006. Examining the \u2018free, prior, informed consent\u2019 mechanism provided under the act, Chitrangada argued that the possibilities and<\/p>\n<div><a class=\"more\" href=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/southasia\/news\/how-to-steal-a-forest-mining-bureaucratic-sabotage-and-indias-forest-rights-act\/\">Read more<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":561,"featured_media":5761,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","region-south-asia"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How to Steal a Forest: Mining, Bureaucratic Sabotage and India\u2019s Forest Rights Act - South Asia Center<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/southasia\/news\/how-to-steal-a-forest-mining-bureaucratic-sabotage-and-indias-forest-rights-act\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to Steal a Forest: Mining, Bureaucratic Sabotage and India\u2019s Forest Rights Act - South Asia Center\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This talk by journalist\u00a0Chitrangada Choudhury traced how substantive decision-making power over extractive projects is denied to India\u2019s indigenous and forest-dwelling communities, even as they have clinched rights to ownership and consent, under the landmark Forest Rights Act, 2006. Examining the \u2018free, prior, informed consent\u2019 mechanism provided under the act, Chitrangada argued that the possibilities and\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/southasia\/news\/how-to-steal-a-forest-mining-bureaucratic-sabotage-and-indias-forest-rights-act\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"South Asia Center\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-05-11T14:00:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-11-30T18:48:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/southasia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/12\/2018\/04\/chitrangada-750x562.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1122\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"841\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Michael Walstrom\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Michael Walstrom\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/southasia\/news\/how-to-steal-a-forest-mining-bureaucratic-sabotage-and-indias-forest-rights-act\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/southasia\/news\/how-to-steal-a-forest-mining-bureaucratic-sabotage-and-indias-forest-rights-act\/\",\"name\":\"How to Steal a Forest: Mining, Bureaucratic Sabotage and India\u2019s Forest Rights Act - South Asia Center\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/southasia\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/southasia\/news\/how-to-steal-a-forest-mining-bureaucratic-sabotage-and-indias-forest-rights-act\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/southasia\/news\/how-to-steal-a-forest-mining-bureaucratic-sabotage-and-indias-forest-rights-act\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/southasia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/12\/2018\/04\/chitrangada-750x562.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-05-11T14:00:15+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-11-30T18:48:43+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/southasia\/#\/schema\/person\/b7e14ae0b6703081652d1e7323abe046\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/southasia\/news\/how-to-steal-a-forest-mining-bureaucratic-sabotage-and-indias-forest-rights-act\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/southasia\/news\/how-to-steal-a-forest-mining-bureaucratic-sabotage-and-indias-forest-rights-act\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/southasia\/news\/how-to-steal-a-forest-mining-bureaucratic-sabotage-and-indias-forest-rights-act\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/southasia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/12\/2018\/04\/chitrangada-750x562.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/southasia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/12\/2018\/04\/chitrangada-750x562.jpg\",\"width\":1122,\"height\":841},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/southasia\/news\/how-to-steal-a-forest-mining-bureaucratic-sabotage-and-indias-forest-rights-act\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/southasia\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"How to Steal a Forest: Mining, Bureaucratic Sabotage and India\u2019s Forest Rights Act\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/southasia\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/southasia\/\",\"name\":\"South Asia Center\",\"description\":\"Just another The Henry M. 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