The Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006 was enacted to correct historical injustice by recognizing the land, livelihood, and cultural rights of Scheduled Tribes and other traditional forest dwellers.
In the Sundarbans, labour is shaped by uncertainty—cyclones, embankment breaches, salinity and erosion reduce local work, pushing large numbers of people into seasonal and long-distance migration.
In the Sundarbans, livelihood is inseparable from ecology. Families earn from a braided economy. But every income source is “taxed by risk”: cyclones, embankment breaches, etc.