Vantangiyas, who derive their name from a Burmese tradition of hill cultivation, have lived in tin shacks without toilets for decades

There is no proper road to Jungle Tinkonia-3.

As its name suggests, one must pass a woodland of sal and teak trees to reach it. The situation gets even more precarious during monsoons and medical emergencies, as the village does not have any health centre.

Its infrastructure is ramshackle, with most residents living in mud houses sheltered by tin roofs and with not a single toilet for a population of 3,300 people.

Yet there is a sense of renewed hope and excitement in this village, buried in a forest near Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh.

In a culmination of decades of extended struggle by its inhabitants, Tinkonia is finally being exposed to the benefits of government schemes and a wider range of employment and utilization of resources previously prohibited by forest laws.

Previously a forest-bound village, Tinkonia is among the 23 Vantangiya villages in Gorakhpur and Maharajganj that have been declared as revenue villages by the Yogi Adityanath government, opening the doors of development in these neglected settlements for the first time since Independence.

No facilities

As they earlier fell under the Forest Department, these villages and their residents were deprived of basic government schemes and could not even get basic facilities, including BPL cards, employment guarantee projects, healthcare, education, electricity connections, pensions, loans and permanent housing.

After being declared a revenue village by Chief Minister Adityanath as a “Deepavali gift” last year, it has been electrified with solar connections, seven water tanks and three hand-pumps have been established, and ration cards issued. But a lot still needs to be done for them.

“Slowly but steadily we are getting the rights we were deprived of. I hope that by the end of this month we will have money deposited into our accounts, and get benefits under the housing and toilet scheme. And with the commitment of Yogi Adityanathji, I am sure even the kutcha road will be transformed,” said Ram Ganesh, the mukhiya or headman.

He stands outside the shed-like structure of the Hindu Vidya Peeth, run by the Guru Goraksh Seva Sansthan, the only source of education in the village for several years.

At a distance, scores of villagers have gathered under a tree with documents as they fulfill formalities to qualify to get new houses under the government scheme. However, Chandrajeet, an elder Vantangiya, as these villagers are known, says, “The biggest respite is that since last year, the forest officials no longer threaten to evict us from here.”

His relief underlines the Vantangiyas' long struggle to gain ownership rights over land and permanent settlement in the state. As estimated 50,000 Vantangiyas live in U.P.

'Tangia' is a distortion of the word for the Burmese technique of shifting hill plantation, Taungya, under which the space between the planted trees was used for growing seasonal crops by the labourers. Inspired by the Burmese, this was introduced to UP by the British around 1922 to offset the huge loss of trees due to expansion of the railways. Landless labourers, mostly from backward and Dalit castes, were deployed in these forests as settlers, earning them the name Vantangiya. For their services, the labourers were allowed to keep the produce of the crops but endured a nomadic existence as they had to shift from one location to another after every four years and did not enjoy any land rights.

“The Vantangiyas have a special way of planting trees. They would dig gullies that were 18 inches deep and 14 inches wide, and divided the plantation into three sections,” said Parmatma Nishad, the mukhiya of Chilbilwa, the second of the five Vantangiya villages in Gorakhpur.

Caretakers banished

The Vantangiya system continued after 1947 but in the 1980s, after the Forest Cooperation took shape, the forest working planning was scrapped and the Vantangiyas were served eviction notices and asked to give up all claims to the forest. Once known for nurturing the forests, they were now branded encroachers.

“While some agreed to sign the eviction notices, others did not and protested, to which the forest department retaliated with oppression. The Vantagiyas were raided, their huts set on fire, crops trampled by tractors and many of them arrested for violating forest laws,” said Vinod Tiwari, an activist.

Parmatma recalls how in 1985 the conflict reached a peak after two protesting Vantangiyas were shot dead and 28 injured, following which nine forest officials were convicted. The Vantangiyas then got a stay from the High Court and gradually started organising themselves for citizen rights. Manoj Singh, a senior scribe in Gorakhpur, says they got their voting rights in 1995. But this was only for the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls. They still had no rights in their own villages.

Helped by FRA

Their claim to land was bolstered by the Forest Rights Act, 2006 and in 2011, when the BSP was in power, the Vantangiyas, for the first time, received land titles, getting their share of rights on forest land. “But we could not still build any permanent structures and forest officials did not stop harassing us. The biggest problem we faced for long was that we could not get our caste certificates. That deprived us of a permanent identity,” says Parmatma.

In 2015, after another sustained movement, the Vantagiyas earned the right to participate in the panchayat elections but only as voters attached to other gram panchayats. Though they still didn’t have an independent village identity, this was a historic moment. “Two of the Vantangiyas even won,” recalls Manoj Singh.

The scribe, who has tracked the Vantangiya movement closely, says the conversion into revenue village has finally opened the doors of development. “Even after independence they were not counted in any schemes or given caste certificates. Two full generations were deprived of basic rights,” said Mr. Singh.

“The Vantangiyas are good at fishing but were prohibited from using ponds near their settlements. The Forest Department sold the fish, while the Vantagiyas had to purchase fish coming from other states,” he said.

At a review earlier this month, CM Adityanath instructed officials to speed up the development work.

Bringing Vantangiyas into the mainstream is a priority for Mr. Adityanath, said Commissioner of Gorakhpur Division Amit Gupta. The process of identifying beneficiaries and carrying out development in these villages was on at a fast pace. Mr. Gupta said since the settlements were declared revenue villages, over 6,000 houses and 8,000 ration cards had been issued.