Project Tiger will displace at least 5.5 lakh Scheduled Tribes and other forest dwellers, a report released by a New Delhi-based rights group on the International Tiger Day on Monday said.
The number of people displaced from 50 tiger reserves before 2021 was 2,54,794, which worked out to about 5,000 per protected area. The average number of people to be displaced from six tiger reserves since 2021 is 48,333, a 967% increase in displacement over the pre-2021 period, the report titled ‘India’s Tiger Reserves: Tribals Get Out, Tourists Welcome’ said.
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According to the report by the Rights and Risks Analysis Group (RRAG), some 1,60,000 people out of about 2,90,000 people to be displaced in the post-2021 period would be from the Kumbhalgarh Wildlife Sanctuary in Rajasthan followed by 72,772 people from the Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary under the Durgavati Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh and 45,000 from the Ranipur Tiger Reserve in Uttar Pradesh.
While 4,400 people would be displaced from the Ramgarh Vishdhari Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan, about 4,000 each would be evicted from the Srivilliputhur-Megamalai Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu and the Dholpur-Karauli Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan.
“The notification of an area as a tiger reserve has become the means for displacement. No tigers were found in five tiger reserves – Sahyadri (Maharashtra), Satkosia (Odisha), Kamlang (Arunachal Pradesh), Kawal (Telangana), and Dampa (Mizoram) but a total of 5,670 tribal families were displaced from these five tiger reserves,” RRAG’s Suhas Chakma said.
“Displacement destroys the affected communities and there is no rationale to displace tribal communities when there are no tigers for whom the displacement was carried out in the first place,” he said.
Mr. Chakma, also the Asia campaign manager on Indigenous Peoples Affected by Protected Areas and Other Conservation Measures, said India short-circuited the free, prior and informed consent under the Forest Rights Act and the Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972 by not seeking consent before designating an area as a tiger reserve. “Consent is only sought regarding forcible relocation after designation of an area as a tiger reserve,” he added.
Forced eviction
The report highlighted forced evictions through massive human rights violations.
“Houses are often destroyed and indigenous peoples can no longer hunt, fish, gather food, or access to their religious, sacred and cultural sites, burial grounds, and medicinal plants. The State government and authorities stop all sorts of development programmes in order to force the victims to accept what is euphemistically called voluntary relocation,” the report said.
“The victims also face gross civil and political human rights violations including extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture and ill treatment, sexual and gender-based violence, arbitrary arrest and detention, threats and intimidation often for collecting honey, flowers, firewood, hunting or fishing in or near the tiger reserve or for opposing or resisting evictions,” it said.
The RRAG report cited an official document claiming hundreds of alleged poachers were killed in Assam’s Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve between 1985 and June 2014. “Not a single forest staffer was killed in an encounter during this period, raising suspicions about such encounters,” it said.
The report also underscored the findings of the Comptroller and Auditor General on uncontrolled commercial and ecotourism activities in core areas of tiger reserves in Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and West Bengal while the ST communities and other forest dwellers were ousted without free, prior, and informed consent and rehabilitation.
On the brighter side, the report highlighted the successful coexistence of the indigenous peoples with tigers in Karnataka’s Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Tiger Reserve. The Soliga tribal people have been allowed to live with the tigers in the core area or critical tiger habitat in this protected area, where the number of the striped cat almost doubled from 35 to 68 between 2010 and 2014.
“This is far higher than the national rate at which the tiger population was growing during that period,” the report said.
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