This chapter through an ethnographic study finds that “development” invents/reinvents a public space for the community to assert themselves and hence rephrase the politics of community dynamics as well. Through the new institutional base of the Gram Sabha, the chapter further finds that certain types of “development” are challenged by other types of “development” and power in this complex rubric of historic and contemporary contestations over forests. The FRA (Forest Rights Act) hence provides the opportunity for communities to claim their stake in developmental processes both individually and collectively in an organic fashion, and also provides a critical insight into the workings of the State’s mechanisms. In the larger backdrop of forest jurisprudence and conservation this chapter based on empirical case studies argues for the urgent need to look at those living in and around forests as coevals in emerging debates around democratic forest governance. The chapter concludes with analysis of the narratives of events and processes emerging from the forest villages of north Bengal, in the Adaptation-Negotiation-Freedom framework instead of the dominant mainstream framework of Assimilation-Integration-Isolation framework thus reiterating the relationship between alternative epistemologies and development with justice.