Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Book Review Title: Dudiya: In Your Burning Land Author: Vishwas Patil Translator: Nadeem Khan Publisher: Niyogi Books, New Delhi, 2023 Pages: 220 According to official data, 25% of India’s land is forest. In reality, only 12% is forest. The rest has been encroached on by the corporate sector with the permission of the government. Even the Modi government which pretends to be corruption-free and idealistic has altered the forest laws in order to hand over certain forest land to some corporate bigwigs under various guises including environment protection! The people who are most affected by these shady deals between the Indian government and the corporate sector are the tribals and Adivasis living in the forests. This novel by Vishwas Patil, written originally in Marathi, is about these shady affairs in the forests of the country, particularly in Dandakaranya in Chhattisgarh. Dudiya is a real character, an Adivasi woman whose people were betrayed first by the government

India is fast losing her forests, thanks to her government. India’s deforestation rose from 384,000 hectares in the ten years between 1990 and 2000 to 668,000 hectares in five years between 2015 and 2020. How do you get a few thousands of those hectares of forests? You have to be a friend of the central government, in the first place. Then you need to conjure up some developmental project like oil palm cultivation or ecotourism or something of the sort. That’s almost all. Quite simple. On 4 Aug this year, the Modi government amended the Forest Conservation Act 1980 to make deforestation as easy as bulldozing the houses of certain people in Uttar Pradesh or Haryana. There is no Forest Conservation Act now. What Mr Modi has given the country in its place is Van [Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan] Adhiniyam. Quite a mouthful, isn’t it? Sounds exotic too. Only, it is – far from being exotic – toxic. This new Adhiniyam [half of Indians won’t understand what that is] narrows the definition