The traditional users of Indian forests, lands and water resources end up being called “encroachers” on their own land. To begin to address this problem, Purabi Bose proposes that in India these millions of people be recognized as “forest citizens” with legitimate claims to the resources they have used in common or with individual rights for so long. She notes that the government of India has failed to identify these people as “indigenous,” with the kinds of resource rights recognized by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, even though India is signatory to that declaration. Bose’s research and her proposal are unique because she pulls together data from a wide ethnic diversity of indigenous, tribal and local communities living in distinct landscapes all over India, from desert grasslands to mountainous bamboo forests. She notes that the lands and waters traditionally used by these peoples provide them with an informal food security system difficult to replace and deserving of protection; its value amounting, in food and nutritional value alone, to USD 2.5 billion a year.

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