A path leading to a forest village

New Delhi, Feb. 27: Over 700 forest villages will be developed in the Northeast, spanning Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya and Mizoram, under a new initiative of the Centre.

For the first time ever, the Union ministries of tribal affairs and environment and forest have come together to develop as many as 2,700 forest villages in 13 states.

Of these, 702 villages are in Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya and Mizoram. The aim of this initiative is to enhance ?basic minimum services?.

The Planning Commission has agreed to offer support to the endeavour. It was finalised last week at a workshop held at the India Habitat Centre. Ministers and officials from the two ministries attended the workshop.

Forest villages are converted into revenue villages after the relevant forest land is denotified. State governments are required to submit proposals for conversion of such villages into revenue villages for the Centre?s approval.

After conversion, villagers are conferred heritable but inalienable rights to the land.

The tribal affairs ministry is of the view that these villages are being deprived of basic services since they have not been recognised as revenue villages. Again, several of them, particularly those in the Northeast, are located in hilly and remote areas with limited accessibility and connectivity.

As a result, the level of socio-economic development in these villages is rather poor.

An official said the scenario could be changing, thanks to a series of developments in the past few weeks.

To facilitate faster implementation of development schemes in these villages, a committee has been formed which comprises officials of the Planning Commission, the National Commission of Scheduled Tribes and the two ministries.

The environment and forest ministry has also accorded approval for taking up development activities in these villages under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980.

So far, proposals of five states ? Assam, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal ? have been sanctioned. Proposals from a few other states have been received.

During the Tenth Five Year Plan, a sum of Rs 450 crore has been allocated for the development of these forest villages. Around 2.5 lakh people live there.

A sum of Rs 230 crore was given to the tribal affairs ministry in 2005-06 for integrated development of the villages.