‘Forest governmentality’: A genealogy of subject-making of forest-dependent ‘scheduled tribes’ in India

This paper analyses the historical trajectories of both British colonial rule and independent India to categorise scheduled tribes and to appropriate and legalise forests in tribal areas. It builds upon Foucault's notion of governmentality to argue that the history of the scheduled tribes’ subject-making and the related history of forest demarcation is indispensable for understanding the current politics of decentralised forest management in India. Three dimensions of ‘forest governmentality’ – the history of categorisation, the politics of social identity, and the technologies of forest governance – are discussed to show how recent efforts to politicise forest tenure rights have reinforced political control over the scheduled tribes through new forms of authority, inclusion and exclusion. However, to claim their individual and community right to forestland and resources, the scheduled tribes have internalised their ‘new’ ethnic identity, thereby creating countervailing power and room to manoeuvre within the current forest governance regime. This is supported by a case study of the Bhil, a predominantly forest-dependent scheduled tribe in the semi-arid region of western India.

► Explains the historical construction of the scheduled tribes and forest in India.
► Foucault's governmentality is used to analyse forest tenure reform.
► Politics of tenure reform creates new subjects and new forms of exclusion.
► Forest tenure reform reinforces state authority over the Bhil tribals.
► Individualisation of tenure rights creates opportunistic behaviour among subjects.