20 Years of the Forest Rights Act and Rising Protests Expose India's Crisis of Coexistence and Governance - FrontlineBookmarksSectionsFeaturesEssentialsPublished : Jul 29, 2026 09:00 IST - 4 MINS READCOMMentsSHAREThe headline on our cover asks, can we coexist? We ask it in the context of 20 years of the Forest Rights Act (FRA), wondering just what it will take for humans to figure out that we, the forests, the shrublands and grasslands, the animals, insects, and birds all have just this one home and that we need to share it. Not only for altruistic reasons, but for very practical ones. Without forests and greenery, the human race will not last very long. Already, the ill effects of forest degradation, overgrazing, and over-concretisation are making themselves felt each time we talk of “heatwaves” in an abstract manner and buy another air-conditioner.Even more importantly, what our cover asks is this: when will we accept that the many vast forests are not just “resources” to be cleared for timber or ore or real estate. They are home for some people. For centuries, tribal communities have lived in these forests, and their right to the trees, to the spaces and shadows, to the fruits and leaves and thorns, to their aeons-old ways of life is an inalienable right. It was the belated recognition of this, after many decades of struggle, that brought the FRA into being in 2006. The FRA is among the most enlightened pieces of legislation that independent India has enacted, but its execution has been patchy, reluctant, and ill-informed.The assault has been not just on the physical lands the forest communities inhabit but on their ways of life, their religions, languages, clothing, and culture. The RSS has for decades chipped away at these, its insecurities demanding uniformity, its fragile self-image frightened by differences. The Sangh Parivar’s determined programme of assimilation picked up speed after 2014, and by now it had a willing and greedy government-corporate nexus to help it forward. Coexistence? What coexistence?As we worked with the Bengaluru-based ATREE to put this cover together, something else happened that made us ask again, can we coexist? A bunch of infuriated youngsters, who now own the “cockroach” pejorative hurled at them, took over Jantar Mantar, some fasting, some chanting, demanding accountability for the paper leaks and student suicides. It was not an unreasonable ask—the magnitude of the corruption and failure is such that any self-respecting government would have immediately sacked Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. But here the government made its first mistake: it grandly ignored the protest.By July 20, the group had swelled to a defiant crowd more than a lakh strong set to march to Parliament to demand Pradhan’s resignation. Here, the government made its second mistake: it let the police loose on them. This act of petty retribution backfired badly. The Delhi Police might have come armed with lathis, but Gen Z came armed with cameras. The whole world saw some of the most appalling visuals of police excess. Brutal lathicharges, clothes torn, students viciously slapped, prodded, and kicked, students pummelled and pushed by frenzied policemen. And we asked, can students coexist with such a government? Can anyone?The next evening, when opposition party members led by the Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi sat in protest in front of the Prime Minister’s residence, there were many civilised ways the government could have responded. A democracy demands that the ruling party coexist with the opposition. But the government, again, chose brute force. We saw sordid scenes of Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav, Chandrashekhar Azad, and many others manhandled and dragged into police vans. As we go to press, young people continue to pour into Delhi and what began as a demand for Pradhan’s resignation is now a demand for the Pradhan Mantri’s resignation. The protest has spread across the country. The Prime Minister remains silent.In her essay in this edition, Anuja Date writes: “In a world afflicted by rising individualism, gram sabhas still demonstrate the immense power of the collective.” It is this idea of togetherness, of community that a government is expected to nurture. Whether forest-dwellers or students, opposition parties or State governments, Dalits or Muslims, this government must learn to listen. Listen to everyone, not just its toadies. It must learn empathy, not just wield batons from a fortress of indifference and contempt. Creating divisions might have helped it win elections up to a point, but without creating coexistence it cannot hope to win the nation. 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