Environment minister scraps process initiated by predecessor for amending forest Act

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Editor's note: This edition of Thirty-six takes a breather from narrating grim accounts of conflicts across India to tell you about this rare, and thus far unreported, instance of the central government quietly going back on a controversial decision that could have resulted in conflict had it been implemented. We are talking about the much-criticized decision by the union environment ministry, under former minister Prakash Javadekar, to seek bids from private law firms and other independent entities for amending India’s oldest law on forests, the Indian Forest Act 1927. The law serves two key purposes: create legally protected forests and regulate transit of forest produce. This has substantial implications for forest-dependent businesses and people as well as wildlife and forest conservation. In recent years, the environment ministry has been attempting to amend the law, apparently to update it to current needs. As this writer revealed in a detailed report in July, the ministry called for bids from law firms for drafting a “comprehensive amendment” to the forest act during the second wave of COVID-19. Two of the three controversial agri-marketing laws passed by …