“In a country like India, this is a dilemma,” Karanth says. “We have semi-natural ecosystems, which cover about 10% of India’s land, and 4% is under protected areas. We have passed the point of squeezing this further. If the problems of a billion people have not been solved with 96% of the land then the remaining 4% cannot save them.”
Root of the conflict
The current conflict is, ironically, rooted in a 2006 law that sought to confer on forest dwellers and tribal communities rights to land and forest resources they had lived off for generations; such rights had not been recognized in any land record since independence.
Conservationists and the ministry of environment and forests had warned that the Scheduled Tribes and Traditional Forest Dwellers Act, or forest rights Act, whose rules were notified in December last year, and which is now in the implementation phase, would be bogged down exactly where it is at risk of getting mired— in the national parks and wildlife sanctuaries.
The rules of the Act were notified in early 2008. Opponents of the Act have argued that it will lead to massive forest destruction.
The ministry of environment and forests had the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, amended in December 2006 to try and keep at least the tiger reserves out of the purview of the Forest Rights Act. Tiger parks until then didn’t have any legal status; they were merely an area designated to benefit from funds allocated to Project Tiger, which was launched in the early 1970s to protect the tiger from ruthless poaching that had led its population to fall.
The amendment gave legal backing to the idea of tiger reserves as a critical habitat and later executive orders ensured that such areas would be made inviolate and people living there relocated. Two officials from the ministry of environment and forests declined to comment on the matter, citing its “sensitive nature.”
Villagers say the critical tiger habitats were notified in great haste, just two days before the rules of the Forest Rights Act were published. And although the so-called core regions of critical tiger habitat need to be free of human presence, the rules require gram sabhas, or village councils, to be informed about the scientific basis for declaring the areas inviolate. Regardless of any relocation, forest dwellers’ rights to land and other resources have to be signed off by a district-level committee. These rules were overlooked, according to the villagers.
Rules bypassed
“We were just sent a notice and told. No gram sabhas were called nor any discussion held, nor have any rights been settled,” said D. Rajan, of Moyar village in Mudumulai tiger reserve.
The forest department admits that some provisions have been overlooked. “The processes in the sequence have not been followed. We are currently in the process of obtaining gram sabha agreements,” said Rajiv K. Srivastava, field director of Mudumulai Tiger Reserve.