People's Democracy

Antony Govt. Aiding Forest Mafia

About the plunder of the natural resources Karl Marx had prophetically stated: "Cultivation when it progresses spontaneously and is not consciously controlled…. leaves deserts behind". " All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the soil…."

These predictions of Karl Marx have come fully true in the forests of Kerala while all attempts of the governments led by the party of the working class are nullified by the successive bands of the UDF conglomeration of all sorts of brigands and mafia.

The extent and depth of the expropriation of the forestlands now going on in the state would make the high ranges of Kerala a desert in a very short span and the aborigines inhabiting the region would be thrown out of the habitat as the American Indians lost their land and habitat due to the unscrupulous exploitation by the European imperialists. We make this pronouncement in the wake of the following development in the state.

The UDF government has at last decided to enact a bill on the lines of the ordinance brought by the LDF regime to conserve and protect the forestlands in order to distribute them to the Adivasis. The Chief Minister A.K.Antony said to the press that the legislation will be brought in the next session of the Assembly. He also said that no change will be made in the ordinance when it is made a law. If at all any change is required it could be made in the course of discussions in the Legislature. It would seem from these statements and the decision that the UDF has become an angel within a very short period. What a change!

But closer examination of the course of events would prove the false pretensions of the UDF. What the LDF government had done was to regain 23,000 acres of forest land unauthorizedly confiscated and cleared by the forest mafia since a long time. The ordinance was prevalent up to the July 16th 2001. The Anthony government did not do anything to enact a bill or extend the period of ordinance when its validity period expired. Thus it was giving a golden opportunity to the forest mafia to fell the trees and clear the forest and thus convert them from their original biosphere status to the status of plantations. This simply means that the forest lands originally belonging to the Adivasis of Kerala were to be terminated by the forest mafia and grabbed from the government control so that they could expropriate them as plantations. Thus the process of felling trees and clearing of forest are going on speedily in all forest lands.

Now that the government has decided to renew the spirit of the ordinance what it should have done was to issue a new ordinance in place of the lapsed ordinance and issue it with retrospective effect.

These steps are highly solicited in view of the forest felling and clearing spree undertaken by the forest mafia with the support of the UDF bandwagon.

The mafia has begun to cultivate short term plants like bananas and the like by which they will be able to prove before the willing forest officers patronised by the UDF bigwigs that the land is plantation par excellence and as such it could not be brought under the purview of the new proposed Act.

The sincerity of the government in this regard was exposed when it submitted to the Kerala High court that it has no intention of holding the lands which were confiscated by the earlier ordinance. This will very much help the forest mafia to perpetrate their acts of converting the biosphere land to plantations. If the government is realy sincere it would have to issue the ordinance immediately and with retrospective effect. Otherwise the forest mafia would, with the help of the willing officers, clear the remaining forestlands and claim that they belong to the plantation category.