Conserving a wild myth
THE conservation agenda of India's wildlife establishment has always been held suspect by genuine environmentalists. The composition of the committee - mandated to "recommend ways and means to preserve and protect wildlife" - established in the last week of July by the Union ministry for environment and forests (MFF), can only deepen the scepticism of environmentalists. Many of the prominent members of the committee are known proponents of the traditional system of wildlife conservation - a system known for perpetrating gross injustice upon humans and also a system that has4ailed to live up to its own mandate.
One of the tasks of the committee is to sugguest measures that will help people living in the vicinity of national par 1, s and sanctuaries express their aspirations. These concerps have for some time now been mouthed by internation"ali donor agencies, like the Global Environment Facility, which fund wildlife management in India. In recent years, concepts like public participation, oint protected area management and buffer zone management have become cliches in the corridors of the NIEF. The committee may, therefore, use its familiarity with these concepts to prove the honesty of its intentions. Obviously, it will be lying through its teeth.
For one, the various interests and lobbies represented in the committee are part and parcel of the problem, since they have been involved in conceptualising and executing the existing strategy of wildlife conservation. The strategy's detractors - environmental:ctivists and groups - who base their opposition on first hand observation of its impact, have been denied ev@u a toehold in the committee. There are indications that the committee will end up endorsing the wildlife establishment's modus operandi. This establishment has obstinately refused to acknowledge the symbiotic relationship between people and the surrounding flora and fauna. It denies the centuriesold intricate trellis-work of sustainable dependency and nurturing of nature. What it tends to do is hallucinate that all wildlife is necessarily exotic and under constant siege from humans. This blinkered view has led to the creation of vast national parks and sanctuaries at the cost of the areas' inhabitants, who are routinely fenced out.
The arithmetic of this turf marking are telling: in 1960, India had 60 sanctuaries and 5 national parks. By 1990, they had increased to 421 and 75 respectively - constituting nearly 3.5 per cent of the subcontinent's landmass, which the wildlife establishment proposes to extend to 5 per cent. Since India is one of the most densely populated parts of the world, the displaced people number millions. A simple It back-of-the-envelope calculatidt will show that 9 million people depend on percent of lnd.. land, which means that the number nearly 30 million. The MEF itself accepts that 600,000 peoiple -1fave beA' displaced by national parks and sanctuaries.
The 'routine displacements assume the menacing proportigns of a virtual pogrom. The key weapon of the establishriment is the Indian Wildlife Act of 19723 and its Amendment in 1990. This Draconian document was shaped by conservationist zealots within the government and by collaborative NGOS: it carries provisions to protect the "interests of wild animals" from the threat posed by "the interests of local people".
Taken together, the entire gamut of Indian forest and wildlife laws form a terrible, prohibitive apparatus which denies the stake of humans in nature. Millions of Indians depend onthe bounties of nature for even mere sustenance. The issue is'critical for the poorest section of the country's population which shares the habitat with wild animals for its entire requirement of food, fuel, fodder, building materials and livelihood. The existing wildlife provisions have choked off villagers' access to these sources, and tens of thousands of them have been forcibly evacuated from their traditional settlements. Their rehabilitation, promised prior to ejection, has received little thought and lesser action; so much so that villages still inside sanctuaries have been bypassed by all development activity, since they are to be eventually uprooted.
There are other concomitant problems: growing animal populations have become a serious threat to agricultural activity around the reserves. There is no recourse to humans defending their cattle and even themselves from protected animals. For hundreds of thousands of Indians parked around sanctuaries, breaking the stupid law has become the only wa to survive. Every national park and sanctuary in India is a simmering pool of protest and struggle, of a human-animal symbiosis that has gone wrong.
A stringent law-and-order approach to wildlife is typical of the environmentalism of the rich, who rather patronisingly believe in "the preservation of the environment" - read "developmental deep freeze". The Indian wildlife establishment and all committees and bodies instituted by it to date are inspired only by this view. The actions of the wildlife establishment must be resisted, if only to ensure the survival of the "environmentalism of the poor", which is based on a sustainable use of all nature, wildlife included.