Future of the Forest is the story of legal transformations of forests across India through collective action. Since the nineteenth century, Indian forest dwellers have been unable to enforce their claims to forest land and its products. But at the turn of the twenty-first century, a new national movement led to the Forest Rights Act, a landmark law that recognizes the tenure and user-rights of millions of Indian landless forest dwellers.

Anand P. Vaidya tracks the Forest Rights Act from the movements that pushed for its passage to its drafting and many revisions to satisfy local peoples, conservationists, political parties, and movements. He also looks closely at its impact on two neighboring villages in central India’s forest belt.

The forests have seen a long history of political authority enacted to the benefit of the powerful; Future of the Forest follows the work of activists and forest dwellers who turned to the law to shift this balance of power.