Aye for the tiger: hegemony, authority, and volition in India’s regime of dispossession for conservation

ABSTRACT

Dispossession of rural populations to create inviolate Protected Areas for biodiversity conservation is a shared concern in BRICS countries. This article explores the distinctive ideology, institutions, and actors that constitute the regime of dispossession for conservation (DfC) in India’s tiger reserves. It investigates the reasons for the regime’s continued stability and resilience in the neoliberal era, when land-taking for industrial development has become highly contentious. India’s conservationist state has effectively denied resource rights to the inhabitants of Tiger Reserves and displaced them through its Voluntary Relocation Scheme, which is posited as a win-win solution for tigers and tribals. The historically unequal relationship between the state and forest dwellers necessitates closely examining hegemonic processes through which volition for relocation is assembled. This article argues that the Dispossession for Conservation regime assembles volition through a complex interplay of its hegemony and authority with the unfulfilled development aspirations of India’s forest dwellers.

KEYWORDS:

• Democracy
• Environment
• governance
• livelihoods
• political change
• property rights
• refugees
• sustainable development

Acknowledgments

We thank the Special Issue Editors and the journal’s anonymous referees whose insightful and detailed comments helped to significantly improve the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. PAs that do not have human settlements are referred to as inviolate. Only scientific research and wildlife tourism under regulation is allowed in such PAs and local people dependent on the natural resource base are excluded.

2. It may be noted that a range of nonstate actors are also involved in tiger conservation in India, but their actions and their complex relationship with the conservationist state, although important, are beyond the scope of this paper.

3. In the words of the Director of Project Tiger and a former member of the NTCA, ‘There was resistance to shifting, mainly because villagers were unsure if adequate facilities and land would be provided for their rehabilitation. However, the provision of alternative facilities, such as adequately prepared agricultural land, new houses and other amenities well before the movement, coupled with perceptive persuasion, gradually broke through the barriers of doubt and resistance’ (Panwar, 1987, p. 112, emphasis added).

4. Figures from (GOI, 2005, p. 90). Since then 22 more TRs have been created between 2008 and 2020, increasing the number of villages and people located inside protected areas. At present, 42,398 families are estimated to be living inside Critical Tiger Habitats of 29 TRs and many more in the buffer areas.

5. Section 2(b) of the FRA.

6. Section 4(2) of the FRA.

7. Section 2(1), 3(c)(iii), and 3(r)(ii) of the Land Acquisition Resettlement and Rehabilitation Act 2013.

8. Section 38(V)(4) of the Wildlife Protection Amendment Act.

9. Section 38 V(5) of the Act.

10. The use of the NTCA Scheme has been challenged by statutory authorities like the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST), which has recently advised the Government of India to implement the provisions of Land Acquisition Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act 2013 when displacing people from PAs (Mitra, 2018).

11. The NTCA enhanced the funding assistance for voluntary village relocation from Rs. 10 lakh per family to Rs. 15 lakh per family in April 2021 (NTCA Order F. No. 15–3/2008 – NTCA (Vol. III) Pt.)

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Asmita Kabra

Asmita Kabra works on the interface of critical development studies and political ecology to study conservation, livelihoods and displacement.

Budhaditya Das

Budhaditya Das is a social scientist with interests in indigeneity, gender, environmental history and governance. He studies the politics of land and agrarian change in central India using qualitative and historical research methods.