“I fear that with all these sagwan plantations [of the forest department], our children will grow up seeing only that. They will lose all the knowledge we have of the forests and the trees, plants and animals,” says Laichibai Uike of Umarwada village in Madhya Pradesh.

India’s forest department, created in 1864 by the British colonial government, remains the country’s single biggest landowner. For over a century, the laws it wields have fenced-off forests and lands citing conservation and commerce (such as sale of timber), criminalised Adivasis and forest dwellers, and been used to evict them from their customary lands.

Reformative legislation like the Forest Rights Act of 2006 was brought in to address this “historical injustice” by giving forest-dwelling communities (over a 150 million Indians) rights of tenure, and the powers to manage and conserve their forests. But such provisions remain grossly under-implemented.