The Blame Game

http://www.hindu.com/mag/2006/09/24/stories/2006092400150200.htm

A FEW days ago I wrote an article for an English newspaper on the
discussions and debates surrounding what has come to be known as the tribal
bill - proposed legislation that seeks to give rights over forest land to
tribal communities and those defined as traditional forest dwellers. The
debate on the issue had been and continues to be extremely acrimonious and
heated.
The piece finally appeared with a headline that could only be considered
eye-catching. "It needn't be tigers vs. tribals", it screamed from the
centre of the editorial page. Admittedly, the title I had originally
proposed, "Balance needed in the tribal bill discussion", was drab and dull
in comparison.
Articulating a debate
It also, however, set me thinking. This is not how I had seen the issue - it
had not been my intention to position the tiger and the tribal in a "vs."
kind of situation. The tiger, in any case, had found only one passing
mention in the entire piece of over 1,000 words. I wondered what it could
be. Is it just the doing of a creative sub-editor? Phonetically speaking,
tribal and tiger certainly sound nice when put together - the "t" and "r" in
one going well when placed next to the other. Journalism perhaps demands a
clearly and starkly polarised conflict to make it attractive and where
better to put it, than in the title? Or is there something else? Is this
then a statement, more, about those articulating the debate (this writer
included) and less about the real situation on the ground? Do we do this
because it helps to effectively push the issue into a domain that we are not
part of, isolating and sanitising us from the responsibilities of what
happens or doesn't happen?
The intention of this piece, then, is not to deal with the specific
situation or the particular newspaper, but as a starting point to ponder
about the larger processes and issues involved.
Every problem has its visible and proximate reasons - the obvious ones - the
poor tribal killing a wild animal to feed his family, a farmer committing
suicide because the crop failed, cities losing trees because there is not
enough road width to carry the increasing number of cars. What we also know
is that these are the mere symptoms. The malaise lies deep and some place
else, the underlying causes, the root of the problems that are not visible
but those that are the real drivers.
Is the tiger really posited so obviously against the tribal? Are they really
threatening each other so squarely? Fundamental questions indeed.
Yes, the tiger was wiped out from Sariska; yes, this magnificent animal is
threatened across the Indian subcontinent; yes, India's wildlife and
wilderness area face a severe crisis - all this and much more of the
doomsday predictions are true. But, and this should be an important but, is
it the tribal that is responsible for all this?
Tribals make up less than 10 per cent of our population; it is that section
of the country that continues to be the most vulnerable and marginalised,
the section that the might of the State has mercilessly gunned down in
places like Kashipur or Kalingnagar for opposing projects and a notion of
development that they don't believe is theirs. In such a huge country with
so many points of view and so many stakes on resources, it seems strange
that all the problems of the tiger and forests are being laid at the door of
the tribal and to the complete exclusion of everything else.
It was quite a coincidence that the day my piece was published, Finance
Minister P. Chidambaram was quoted in another national business daily
("Dissent will be brushed aside if it impedes growth", The Hindu Business
Line, 11/09/06) saying "he was willing to tolerate debate, and perhaps even
dissent, as long as it does not come in the way of eight per cent growth...
" Why the Finance Minister thought there would be dissent when the country
was growing so rapidly (and presumably benefiting all) is best left for him
to answer.
There can be no harm in speculating about the quarters from which he is
expecting this dissent. There will certainly be the grandstanding of the
political parties and the related ideological differences, perhaps from the
opposition, certainly from within the ruling coalition. The FM is certainly
in no position to "brush" these away; the contempt of brushing away can only
be reserved for those less powerful than you.
There are, in my limited understanding, two other concerns that the FM, and
the powers that be, have had to deal with in the recent past. These, they
still perceive, perhaps, as continuing to be the major impediments in the
nation's march to global super power status that need dealing with (brushing
aside?) - concerns of social justice and those of environmental and
ecological security.
Things brushed aside
Thousands of acres of productive land are being acquired to create Special
Economic Zones at the cost of thousands of families and millions of existing
livelihoods; traditional tribal lands (many which are thickly forested) are
being mined and drowned with impunity across the length and breadth of the
country; huge infrastructure projects are being created in some of the most
sensitive ecological systems and dollar-earning tourism projects are being
advocated in lands where traditional communities are being displaced in the
name of wildlife conservation. There was an interesting report a couple of
years ago of encroachment and tree felling by tribals deep inside the
Simlipal Tiger Reserve in Orissa. Investigation revealed that these were
people who had been recently displaced by huge mining projects in
neighbouring Jharkhand. These, we have to realise, are human beings and
cannot be expected to vanish into thin air. They have to go somewhere; they
have to do something to ensure their survival and that of their families!
Still tiger vs. tribal?
It has also been argued that the tiger has no votes, the tribal is a huge
vote bank and that is why vested interests with short-term political
horizons are willing to sacrifice the forests and the tiger. That's true.
The tiger has no votes, but incidentally, neither does the huge "capital"
(increasingly foreign) that wants to mine the tiger and elephant-rich
forests of Niyamgiri, construct a port at Dhamra right in midst of Olive
Ridley turtle habitat (both in Orissa), rip apart critical wildlife
migratory corridors for coal in the Jharkhand's North Karanpura Valley or
ensure fast moving rail and road traffic that has claimed a number of wild
elephants in forests across North Bengal. Gujarat Forest Department figures,
for instance, reveal that nearly 150 wild animals, including leopards, hyena
and neelgai were killed in road accidents between 1998 and 2004 in the
Vadodara Forest Circle of the State alone. This is not an isolated case and
is happening across the country. An animal killed by a tribal can at least
be eaten. Of what use is one that is flattened within minutes between fast
moving rubber and rock hard bitumen?
Let's accept the fact that development, speed and GDP growth will come with
a price. Let's be honest about it. We've eaten the cake (certainly eating it
at the present) and we are also crying that we are losing it. We, obviously,
cannot have both things at the same time. What's worse, however, is we want
to pass the responsibility of what is happening on to somebody else - the
tribal, the tiger, the elephant... those that don't really have a voice,
have never had a voice.
It never was the tiger vs. the tribal. It cannot be the tiger vs. the
tribal. The brushing off is already happening and happening effectively.

Pankaj Sekhsaria edits Protected Area Update, a bi-monthly newsletter on
wildlife and wildlife related issues. Email: pankajs@vsnl.com