It is happening now. The Indian Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change published a Draft National Forest Policy that, if approved, it will open up the public land to the corporate sector, to develop tree plantations on government-owned forest lands. So far, this is explicitly banned under the existing National Forest Policy, to  to protect forest dwellers. Now, not anymore. The previous (still exising) law stated that "Natural forests serve as a gene pool resource and help to maintain ecological balance. Such forests will not, therefore, be made available to industries for undertaking plantation and for any other activities.”  Now it seems that the forests will be sold out to expand industrial plantations.

 

Most ecologists say the new draft is a watered-down version of the current policy, and poor in content. Some say it is a hurriedly drafted document that undermines the role of community in forest conservation, while others point to how the new draft guidelines completely ignore widespread forest diversions. Even peer-reviewed scientific research shows how large blocks of forests are getting fragmented into smaller patches due to the ill-planned intrusion of developmental projects. Forest fragmentation has devastating impacts and one of the most serious threats to long-term conservation, but the new draft policy proclaims: “There has been an increase in forest and tree cover and reduction in the diversion of forest land… despite…increasing population, industrialization and rapid economic growth.”

In 2013, an paper by environmental lawyers Ritwik Dutta and Rahul Choudhary revealed that the country, on an average, loses 135 hectares of natural forest land per day to development schemes. 
Dutta and Choudhary say that in 2017 alone, the government has passed about 10,000 approvals related to forest diversions. Even the finest tiger habitats are not being spared. As of today, 200 sq. km from Panna (Madhya Pradesh), over 83 sq. km in Amrabad (Telangana), 1,000 ha from Palamau (Jharkhand), 39 ha from Pench (MP) and a 50km stretch in Corbett (Uttarakhand), are up for clearance either for dams, mining or road building.