These Rights Have No Use? Forest Land Rights and the Economic and Subjective Wellbeing of Indigenous People in India

The formalization of rural people’s rights to agricultural and forest land is a key policy focus for many developing countries (Larson et al. 2010; Deininger and Hilhorst 2013). These reforms can improve marginalized people’s wellbeing by securing their hold on durable income-yielding assets, especially where land ownership is culturally prized (Holden et al. 2013; Lawry et al. 2014). However, other studies suggest that formalizing de facto land tenure may have negligible or detrimental effects, both economic and subjective (Sjaastad and Cousins 2008; Bose 2011, 2013). India’s Forest Rights Act of 2006 formalizes the rights of indigenous people to the government forestland that they have been using illegally (Government of India 2006). To estimate the results of this major reform, the author and her research assistant conducted 200 household surveys and 42 interviews with indigenous farmers in Gujarat, India. Although the Forest Rights Act is one of the most thorough attempts at forest tenure reform in South Asia, there is little published research on its results. This paper uses regression models complemented by qualitative data to estimate the effects of formal forestland rights on households’ economic outcomes and subjective life satisfaction. Logistic regressions indicate a strong correlation between indigenous households’ land rights and access to government benefits. According to these models, a household with formal land rights was 8.9% more likely to have received a subsidized borewell, and 16.5% more likely have received a home renovation subsidy, than an identical household without rights (p=0.041, p=0.009). There was no significant correlation between formal rights and farm income, rights and food security, nor rights and life satisfaction, perhaps due to pre-existing tenure security or the small amount covered by formal rights.