Meet to discuss relocation of villagers living in tiger reserves

The ministry of Environment and Forests has proposed a compensation package for relocating villagers from the tiger reserves, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Nov 28, 2006, 01:05:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Tigers would again be pitted against humans at the first meeting of the newly created National Tiger Conservation Authority on Tuesday when the issue of relocation of hundreds of villages in tiger reserves is likely to be discussed.

The ministry of Environment and Forests has proposed a compensation package for relocating villagers from the tiger reserves. "It is an attractive package," a ministry official told HT, while informing that land for the land policy is being adopted along with financial incentives.

There are over 2,000 villages in and around the 28 tiger reserves. The government wants most of them to be relocated in a bid to provide a protected environment for tigers and to improve conservation. A provision for relocation in consultation with the villagers was recently made part of the Wildlife Protection Act and is likely to be incorporated in the Scheduled Tribes (Recognisation of Rights) Bill, 2006, to be tabled in the current session of Parliament.

Forest dwellers, on the other hand, are opposing such a move. "Tribals and dwellers have been protecting wildlife for years. Removing them from reserves will open doors for poachers hand in glove with the forest department officials to kill tigers," said S Shankar of Campaign for Survival and Dignity, a body of tribals and forest dweller groups.

Raman Sukumar, professor at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and member of the authority, believes that relocation of people should be done judiciously. "We cannot create isolated habitats for tigers and elephants. It will make the job of poachers easy. Involvement of locals in protection is important," he told HT. A MoEF official, added "we are also proposing the involvement of local people in tiger conservation".

The environment ministry will also propose deployment of ex-servicemen in tiger reserves in the insurgency or Naxalite-hit areas like Indravati Tiger Reserve in Bastar District of Chattisgarh. No census could be carried out in Indravati as the area is said to be under the control of Naxalites and there are very few forest officials at the reserve. "Forest guards are finding it difficult to work and check poaching in these areas," the official explained.

The ministry, in the papers circulated before the meeting, has not expressed much happiness with the poaching control measures and the state that poaching still continues to be very "high". "There is no significant reduction," the official said. But, Ashok Kumar of the Wildlife Trust of India said poaching is still very rampant as many cases go unreported.

The ministry will also inform the members on the work done on Tiger Census, the first phase of which is expected to be reported by December. A brief paper on the follow-up action on the recommendations of Tiger Task Force report submitted in 2005 will also be presented.

Email Chetan Chauhan: chetan @hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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