Community forest management is a phase of transition between absolute state control and a renewal of community control over the forestland that has become possible with the enactment of the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006. Joint Forest Management (JFM), which used to have a robust presence in West Bengal, has been facing increasing challenges from the forest-dwellers who wish to implement the FRA (2006) in the state, despite the multiple hurdles placed by the forest bureaucracy and the state government. The article studies the status of the JFM programme in the Ajodhya Pahar Hill range of West Bengal, in the backdrop of the years-long resistance of the Adivasi forest-dwellers to the proposed Turga Pumped Storage Project (TPSP). Based on an ethnographic study conducted in Ajodhya Pahar in multiple phases between 2019 and 2024, the article claims that the deteriorating relationship between the forest-dwelling communities and the Forest Department had already weakened the JFM structure in Ajodhya Pahar, to which the nascent popularisation of the FRA (2006) added further complexities. The article further argues, despite rejecting the Forest Department, that the idea of boundaries and encroachment within the JFM structure has persisted in the activities of the Forest Rights Committees (FRCs), and has eventually become incorporated in the growing Adivasi assertion for implementing the FRA (2006) in the region.
AgrawalA. (2005a). Environmentality: Technologies of government and the making of subjects. Duke University Press.
2.
AgrawalA. (2005b). Environmentality: Community, intimate government and the making of environmental subjects in Kumaon, India. Current Anthropology, 46(2), 161–190.
3.
BanerjeeA. (2007). Joint Forest Management in West Bengal. In Springate-BaginskiO. & BlaikieP. (Eds.), Forest, people and power: The political ecology of reforms in South Asia (pp. 221–260). Earthscan.
4.
BanerjeeA., GhoshS., & Springate-BaginskiO. (2010). Obstructed access to forest justice in West Bengal: State violation in the mis-implementation of the Forest Rights Act 2006 [IPPG Discussion Paper No. 49]. Consortium for Improving Institutions for Pro-Poor Growth.
5.
BaviskarA. (2001). Forest management as political practice: Indian experiences with the accommodation of multiple interests. International Journal of Agriculture, Resources, Governance and Ecology, 1(3–4), 243–263.
6.
BoseP., ArtsB., & DjikH. V. (2012). ‘Forest governmentality’: A genealogy of subject making of the forest-dwelling ‘Scheduled Tribes’ in India. Land Use Policy, 29, 664–673.
7.
Community Forest Rights-Learning and Advocacy Process. (2016). Promise and performance: Ten years of the Forest Rights Act in India. http://www.cfrla.org.in
8.
CullenA. (2020). Transitional environmentality: Understanding uncertainty at the junctures of ecological production in Timor-Leste. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848620908201
9.
Directorate of Census Operations, West Bengal. (2011). District Census Handbook, Puruliya- Village and Town Directory. Census of India (2011). Series- 20, Part XII-A.
10.
ErbM. (2012). The dissonance of conservation: Environmentalities and the environmentalisms of the poor in Eastern Indonesia. The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology, 25, 11–23.
11.
FletcherR. (2010). Neoliberal environmentality: Towards a post-structuralist political ecology of the conservation debates. Conservation and Society, 8(3), 171–181.
12.
ForsythT., & WalkerA. (2014). Hidden alliances: Rethinking environmentality and the politics of knowledge in Thailand’s campaign for community forestry. Conservation and Society, 12(4), 408–417.
13.
FoucaultM. (1991). Governmentality. In BurchellG., GordonC., & MillerP. (Eds.), The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality. University of Chicago Press.
14.
GhoshS., DuttaN., YasminH., & RoyT. (2007). Commons lost and ‘gained?’ Forest tenures in the Jungle Mahals of South West Bengal. In Springate-BaginskiO. (Ed.), Understanding livelihood impacts of participatory forest management implementation in India and Nepal [Working Paper No. 7]. University of East Anglia.
15.
GogoiM. (2018). The nexus between sovereignty and ‘eminent domain’ under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 and the Land Act, 2013. Social Change, 48(2), 173–187.
16.
JurisJ., & KhasnabishA. (2015). Immanent accounts: Ethnography, engagement and social movement practices. In PortaD. Della & DianiM. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of social movements. Oxford University Press.
17.
KashwanP. (2017). Democracy in the woods: Environmental conservation and social justice in India, Tanzania and Mexico. Oxford University Press.
18.
KhannaS. (2014). Boundaries of forest land: The Godavarman case and beyond. In LeleS. & MenonA. (Eds.), Democratizing forest governance in India (pp. 230–260). Oxford University Press.
19.
KodiveriA. (2021). Our land is banked: Forest rights, consent and the invention of a legal exception as land banks. The International Journal of Human Rights, 25(7), 1148–1167. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642987.2021.1874938
20.
LeleS. (2014). What is wrong with Joint Forest Management? In LeleS. & MenonA. (Eds.), Democratizing forest governance in India (pp. 25–62). Oxford University Press.
21.
LiT. M. (2007). The will to improve: Governmentality, development and the practice of politics. Duke University Press.
22.
MachaqueiroR. R. (2019). Environmentality by the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change: Neoliberal ethos and the production of environmental subjects in Acre and Mozambique. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848619835134
23.
MathurH. M. (2013). Displacement and resettlement in India: The human cost of development. Routledge.
24.
PoffenbergerM. (1998). The struggle for forest control in the Jungle Mahals of West Bengal 1750–1990. In PoffenbergerM. & McGeanB. (Eds.), Village voices, forest choices: Joint Forest Management in India (pp. 132–161). Oxford University Press.
25.
SarapK., & MotkuriV. (2016). Development of Adivasis in India: An overview. In SarapK. & MotkuriV. (Eds.), Adivasis in India: Resources, livelihoods and institutions. Bloomsbury.
26.
SarinM. (2014). Undoing historical injustice: Reclaiming citizenship rights and democratic forest governance through the Forest Rights Act. In LeleS. & MenonA. (Eds.), Democratizing forest governance in India (pp. 100–146). Oxford University Press.
27.
SenA., & PattanaikS. (2019). The political agenda of implementing Forest Rights Act 2006: Evidence from Indian Sundarban. Environment, Development and Sustainability, 21, 2355–2376.
28.
ShylendraH. S. (2015). Regenerating forests through people’s participation: How far has the Joint Forest Management (JFM) worked?IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, 4(2), 152–165.
29.
SinghN. (2013). The affective labour of growing forests and the becoming of environmental subjects: Rethinking environmentality in Odisha, India. Geoforum, 47, 189–198.
30.
SivaramakrishnanK. (1999). Modern forests: Statemaking and environmental change in colonial Eastern India. Stanford University Press.
31.
Springate-BaginskiO., BlaikieP., BanerjeeA., BhatiaB., DevO. P., ReddyV. R., ReddyM. G., SaigalS., SarapK., & SarinM. (2007). Annexation, struggle and response: Forest, people and power in India and Nepal. In Springate-BaginskiO. & BlaikieP. (Eds.), Forest, people and power: The political ecology of reforms in South Asia (pp. 27–60). Earthscan.
32.
SundarN. (2001). Beyond the bounds? Violence at the margins of new legal geographies. In PelusoN. L. & WattsM. (Eds.), Violent environments (pp. 328–353). Cornell University Press.
33.
SundarN. (2012). Violent social conflicts in India’s forests: Society, state and the market. InDeeper roots of historical injustice: Trends and challenges in the forests of India (pp. 13–32). Rights and Resources Initiative.
34.
XaxaV. (2008). State, society and tribes: Issues in post-colonial India. Pearson Longman.
