An honest challenge, a knave's escape

 
Published: Thursday 31 October 1996

the World Bank's ( wb ) attempts to sneak in funds for the potentially ruinous ecodevelopment projects in seven national parks in the country has finally been exposed. The Bank officials and those from the Global Environmental Facility had no answers to one honest challenge from the people who have been managing the forests, their homes for aeons. As one tribal said, "Why don't you give the money to us, instead of the wildlife bureaucracy?" (See report: 'Jungle bungle')

Obviously, they had nothing to say to that. It is understandable, therefore, that the Bank officials would be floored by the arguments of a Gujjar tribal, from the community which has taught the ngo s most of what they know about forest management. But not just that; the Bank, even when it met the ngo s, presented them with a fait accompli . The project had been approved on September 5, and the ngo s' opinion was being sought on September 27. It was only when the Van Gujjars strongly stood up for what the ngo s were saying at the farcical meet that the Bank officials cowered out.

We have been stressing right from the beginning that the ecodevelopment project will go against the interests of the country as a whole. Instead of addressing the scientific and management questions relating to the involvement of people in managing parks, and ensuring that all the economic returns go to them, the new scheme seeks to give the people living in and around parks alternatives for their fuelwood and other needs.

There are two clear but interrelated issues of ideology and economics involved here. The Indian government (the forest bureaucracy in particular) and the wb share this ideology of people being the bte noire of protected areas, the ravager of biodiversity. No amount of documentation by Indian researchers, and no amount of international certification from experts have convinced them that people are the best managers of their own resources.

The government has also not heeded the words of warning from non-artificial, proven-to-the-core patriotic ngo s that the project will be a huge economic burden on the country. More than a decade ago, the ngo s had warned against the forest bureaucracy lapping up wb funding for social forestry, saying that it would fail and burden us with debt. And it has failed resoundingly.

In the case of ecodevelopment also, cse , along with many other ngo s and people's organisations has been warning that the bureaucracy is seeing in the project its own immediate pecuniary benefits. But all that the wb will do again is dump loans, and once the project fails, take back each ounce of blood that India owes it in loan and interest. Meanwhile, the environment will have become so much the more pauperised, because a forest needs its people to remain healthy, people who know what the forest needs and when. Not foreign or even Indian bureaucrats warming their seats in megapolises.

All good governance systems teach us that development and management efforts should be cost-effective, have people's involvement, stakeholder participation and control, transparency, democratic ways of functioning, and devolved decision-making. But how much of that exists in this eco-development project? Consultants and experts sitting far away from the nature parks are trying to understand what people living around these parks want and develop programmes accordingly. This approach is destined to go wrong from the very outset.

Towards the beginning of last month, Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda had surprised many a sceptic by expressing explicit interest in the alternative forest management proposal and plan devised by the Van Gujjars of Rajaji National Park in Uttar Pradesh. Yet, so far there has been no word of dissatisfaction, let alone of protest, from the government, at the way the wb has been conducting itself by blackballing the demand of the Gujjars raised during the meeting.

The government should tell the Bank now that since the Gujjars, whose proposals it had itself found worth a try, have thrown open a challenge, wb should take it or forget the project. But the government cannot do that, because so far, it has done nothing to make people's participation in forest management mandatory by law. And it is doubtful, given the bureaucracy's ideological kinship with anyone who can give loans, whether this will ever see the light of day. Even the people's representatives in Parliament are not ideologically against ecodevelopment, because the recent Standing Committee report on science and technology, environment and forests lambasts the ministry of environment on all issues but ecodevelopment. So, unless the people's organisations steam up their agitation and make it a national and nationalistic issue, the country is in for another devastation.

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