There are more than 580 national parks and sanctuaries in India. They have been set up with the primary aim of conserving biodiversity, and the rules prohibit human habitation as well as the exploitation of natural resources. However, surveys indicate that there are people living within many of these protected areas (referred to as PAs) who are economically dependent on the natural resources available inside these regions.
Over the decades, there has been a widespread trend towards relocating villages from protected areas, with the forest managers blaming the inhabitants for 'biomass extraction' and otherwise posing a threat to biodiversity conservation. Such displacements have been strongly opposed by local communities as being both unnecessary and inequitable. Over the years, there has grown a controversy of considerable proportions, with social activists siding with the communities and pitted against biologists who tend to speak for the forest managers. The conflict has come to a head after the sudden decline of the Royal Bengal Tiger population in India due to poaching, which had the forest departments of many states pushing for 'people-free zones'. In this, the forestry officials have been egged on by influential wildlifers.
Social activists have been typically opposed to the relocation of villages from wildlife sanctuaries, as the process has historically been a cause of impoverishment and grievous social harm to the 'oustees'. Numerous studies have shown that displacement invariably endangers the livelihood of forest-dependent people, often leading to destitution. Such impoverishment has been comprehensively documented in the case of Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh, from where 24 villages were removed starting in 1998. In another instance, a recently framed village relocation plan in the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve of Maharashtra is likely to take the Gond tribal inhabitants away from their traditional forest resources without development of substitutes. It is true that concerns over forced relocation have recently generated some attentiveness towards the livelihood security of oustees, as has been seen in the case of the Corbett Tiger Reserve (Uttaranchal) and Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary (Karnataka). By and large, however, the humanitarian challenge remains unaddressed in PAs throughout the Indian landscape.
Inviolate areas