What the Movements Changed in the Law Itself

In one line

Six changes in the law that a movement can be shown to have produced, and three that are usually claimed and cannot.

What "changed the law" has to mean

A claim that a movement caused a statute needs one of three kinds of evidence, and an answer should say which it is relying on.

The statute itself names the thing. The strongest kind. Section 4(2) of the Forest Rights Act names critical wildlife habitats; the Preamble of that Act speaks of a historical injustice; section 2(a) of the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act names the Supreme Court's order of 5 May 2006 in the Godavarman matter.

A judgment records the sequence. The Lafarge judgment records the order of 12 December 1996 and its effect; the Taj Trapezium judgment records the Institute's recommendations and the UNESCO advice.

Or the connection is asserted by historians and not by any document this book has. Chipko and the 1988 policy are of this kind, and the honest thing is to say so.

The six changes that can be shown

One, the forest diversion veto. The Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam, 1980, formerly the Forest (Conservation) Act, took from every State the power to de-reserve a forest or to allow its use for a non-forest purpose without the Central Government's prior approval. The statute is the change, and it dates from the period of the first large forest campaigns.

Two, the dictionary meaning of forest. The order of 12 December 1996 in the Godavarman matter, which the Lafarge judgment records, made the 1980 Act apply to forest in its dictionary sense, whoever owns it and whatever the record says. A single petition altered the reach of a statute.

Three, compensatory afforestation and net present value. The ad hoc Authority constituted under the Supreme Court's order of 5 May 2006 in the same matter, named in section 2(a) of the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act, 2016, and its balances transferred to the National Fund by section 3(3), with section 32 validating the transfer notwithstanding any judgment. A court created a fund; Parliament adopted it ten years later.

Four, the staged clearance. The Narmada judgment's direction that, beyond the 90 metres it allowed at once, any further raising of the dam's height be only pari passu with the implementation of relief and rehabilitation and on the clearance of the Relief and Rehabilitation Sub-group. That is now the standard form of a conditional clearance for a displacing project.

Five, the Gram Sabha's consent. Section 4(2)(e) of the Forest Rights Act, the free informed consent of the Gram Sabhas in writing; section 38V(5)(v) of the Wild Life Act, the informed consent of the Gram Sabha and of the persons affected; section 3(2)(ii) of the Forest Rights Act, the Gram Sabha's recommendation for the thirteen village facilities; and the Niyamgiri reference. Consent moved from a courtesy to a statutory condition in a single decade.