Year: 2019 | Month: September | Volume 64 | Issue 3
Tracking The Status of Forest Rights Act, 2006 and its Impact on the Livelihood of Tribal Communities in Wayanad District of Kerala, India
Merlin Mathew
K.B. Umesh
DOI:10.30954/0424-2513.3.2019.19
Abstract:
Tribal population is the aboriginal inhabitants of India who have been living a life based on the natural environment and have cultural patterns congenial to their physical and social environment. Realizing the disadvantage position of forest dwelling communities, Government of India passed The Schedule Tribe and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA). The act aims at granting legal entitlement, empowerment and improvement of livelihood by way of various provisions of the act, but due to lack of proper awareness and impediments in the implementation this goal was not fully achieved. The present study was conducted in the tribal majority district of Kerala, Wayanad, where FRA was implemented to strengthen the social security and livelihood improvement of forest dwelling communities. This study attempts to enlighten the status and progress of FRA in Wayanad along with its impact on the major tribal communities. The assessment of impact on socio-economic and livelihood improvement was done based on the primary data collected from 160 households of four tribal communities viz., Paniya, Kuruma, Kattunaika, and Urali, which are the predominant communities found in the study area. Study revealed that Kuruma community found to have ‘very good’ socio-economic condition after the implementation of Act. There are positive outcomes in terms of socio-economic status and livelihood progress of other communities as well but the difficulties in realizing rights and utilizing it lead to the poor impact of FRA, 2006 on them.
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