A UK perspective of Tigers vs Tribals...

[Bibhav Behera]

In India, the battle between bourgeois greens and pro-poor greens has reached a critical point, so much so that the conflict even has a tabloid name: "the tigers versus the tribals". Dwindling tiger numbers are a flagship bourgeois environmental issue, under which almost any crime against the country's 80 million-strong tribal population can be committed.Tribal leaders are still battling for the successful implementation of India's recent Forest Rights Act. This breakthrough law was conceived to give tribes ownership of jungle lands so often snatched from them for industrial or national park use. The law was also a historic acknowledgement that these most marginalised of Indians could play a role in the stewardship of the country's environment.
But India's bourgeois environmental elite knows this is a grave threat to its control of the country's forests, and so it has lobbied that granting tribal people such rights would be a conservational disaster, claiming they would be encouraged to hunt tigers and chop down trees within their given lands. The act has duly been watered down with the inclusion of "critical wildlife corridors," which promise more tribe-free wilderness playgrounds for rich people bouncing around in Land Rovers.
The urban elite's forest management in India is not just cruel, it's utterly incompetent. The country's Panna Tiger Reserve admitted, in July this year, that it is a tiger reserve without any tigers. They have all been lost. Many of the missing creatures were probably shot, despite the claim that such reserves are the best defence against poachers. It's not the first time – four years ago, it emerged that Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan was also totally tiger-free. Eager to reintroduce new big cats and to avoid the same humiliation in the future, the authorities at Sariska decided upon clearing entire villages from within the boundaries of the park. Villagers said that their local knowledge could have helped save the tigers and combat the poachers. They were ignored.


The full article can be found at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...e-conservation

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Am not sure whether the author of that article understands the issues in question. It is easy to portray the tribals as the oppressed and probably it immensely appeals to the ideological slant of its readers.

[Bibhav Behera]

I agree with you Sabyasachi... That is precisely why I posted this article... To show how this looks from Neptune...