Prof Bhaksar elucidates that the core state often prioritises mainstream interests, corporate profit, and resource control, marginalising diverse Adivasi communities and their nature-dependent livelihoods.
The practices of the core state often show it is for the promotion of mainstream interest, or the interest of most people or many voters. I am not very sure about it. An alternative idea could be that the state is for the promotion of at most the top ten per cent of the population. Other alternative ideas could be the promotion of one major language, one major religion, one major region, or one leader. Let me elaborate.
Kobi Guru Ravindra Nath Tagore’s language, ‘nana bhasha, nana mat, nana paridhan’ (different languages, different ideas, different dresses), has been subverted to ‘na bhasha-na mat’ (no language, no ideas) because the state needs homogenisation. Mathematical homogeneity is understood, but cultural homogeneity in a subcontinent of 1400 million people?
The Adivasis, Dalits, women, income-poor people, and workers show diversity or non-homogeneity that the core state may or may not like. But they exist in villages and forests. It is a different question if each one of them has an existence value. There are other socio-economic categories like the money elite, the corporate elite, the civil society, and so on. The interlinks between all these are not always transparent.
The manifestations of these categories at the bottom, like Adivasi and Dalit, are large families with children who dropped out of schools, early entry into ad hoc and often hazardous jobs, and collection from common pool resources for biological survival that often requires living near the forests and water bodies. Their art of living may not include all the types of activities mentioned and may include some not mentioned. Naturally, their nature-dependent living comes into conflict at one stage with the profit-seeking, nature-transforming corporate. The core state has to play a role as a custodian of natural resources.
One major conflict comes in terms of access to and ownership over natural resources – forests, water, mountains and rivers. All need these – some for bare survival, some for accumulation.
Corporate-State Nexus
The political arrangement of profit-seeking corporate is far ahead of the politics of the governed and far ahead of the thinking of civil society. A tiny section of civil society becomes executives to implement the plans of the tycoons, where it is understood who is the invisible hand. In case of resistance by the forest-dependent Adivasis, coercive actions are adopted by the core state, for national wealth has to multiply through the ‘creation of wealth’ of the capitalists or price-profit. Nature by itself has no price profit; it needs transformation into timber, medicines, paper and other public utilities. Adivasis cannot do it – corporates can.
Adivasi Question
Adivasis seem adamant not to leave nature understood by them as forests-water-mountains. Mainstream development does not care for the existence value of nature; it understands natural resources that are cardinal, priced, and marketed. Hence, the system captures the forests, transforms them or cuts hills to size to be consistent with roads and tunnels to facilitate the transport system. If in such situations the Adivasis remained tuned to their living that was centuries old, the core state may very well penalise them by eviction, killing, etc. The United States may be the glaring example of killing Adivasis – the ‘Red Indians’ – to make their mainstream system. India cannot be far behind.
The problem is with the advent of vote-based political democracy and the voice of the radicals. Hence, the core state may identify the ‘Adivasis with voice’ and identify them as Naxals or militants or anti-state and take measures that may not be pro-humanity. However, humanity is different or distanced from a system that is based on private property or on the appropriation of nature.
Corporate-State Question once again
The non-fulfilment of non-satiety of the corporate opens the gate for money-based economic growth that comes into conflict with the Adivasis and original settlers who were living in a social economy or collective system. The core state is for economic division of labour in ascending order, which may even lead to deforestation. The derivative consequences are obvious – pauperisation of the Adivasis. I am not confident to opine that the footloose people in India who live in tents at different locations come from the forest-displaced Adivasis.
Adivasi Question once again
One probable safety of the Adivasis is the conversion of their identity into Buddhism or Christianity – the latter I found in selected regions of the state of Arunachal Pradesh, particularly among the Nyishi tribe. Of course, they were also gradually becoming part of modern living with food habits that did not much change, that continued to be based on digging soil and keeping minor weapons for hunting in their bamboo-made house or room. All the Adivasis may not be so fortunate, and many may suffer, as in the states of Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. It also depends on mineral-rich locations where the Adivasis reside, which the corporates may be interested in.
Civil Society
It does not matter much for civil society or specifically for the educated mobile section who are displaced or evicted from forests, so long as this section is assured safe visits to these forests and wild animals inside as a bonus. Staying in treehouses and resorts is another attraction. The task of the corporate, supported by the core state, gets easier – the conversion of forests into economic resources for tourism and production purposes. Scoring goals ‘goalkeeper less’ is easy, and ‘opposition team less’ is easier. If the core state is the referee, the operation to evict the Adivasis is easiest – the referee executes the rules set by the same referee. The rules that centre on private property are beyond the comprehension of the Adivasis – historically, they understood a collective mode. The collective mode is not the capitalist mode.
An Example
It is not known so far what section of the forest-displaced Adivasi people has been rehabilitated with what life-support system. The task is, of course, difficult if not impossible for different languages, food habits, clothes and the like. To narrate one example, in Arunachal Pradesh, I found some years ago one super-elderly lady who never got relocated from her bamboo cottage since she was around ten and had never been a passenger in any automobile vehicle. It might have been inhumane to drag her to the city of Itanagar for rehabilitation. Of course, sane human living and insane development may come into conflict at some stage, for development provides benefits to sections different from the people displaced or evicted.
Questions remain
There is often a consensus among people unaffected by land acquisition or displacement. The displaceable Adivasis were not at the roundtable meeting pre-displacement to arrive at a consensus. Monetary compensation, announced, if at all, does not compensate for the livelihood requirements of the displaced. The Adivasis do not understand the intricacies of money or pricing, or the money market. One way of mainstreaming could have been to engage them in National Rural Employment under the MNREGA programme, with all its limitations that have miles to go.
So, the final question remains: whose mainstreaming?
Source: Based on my project works on land acquisition, 2008-2014, in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, as well as participatory observations in different regions of India.
Picture design by Anumita Roy
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