Turmoil in the park

The book under review must be read for a better understanding of conflicts in and around protected areas in India, how these seem endemic and widespread, and the challenge of defusing them in a manner that keeps conservation values intact while bringing the local actors aboard. The authors have chosen the Great Himalayan National Park (ghnp) as their case study; the reviewer has been ghnp director from July 1998 till July 2006. This relationship, between the subject of the book and the reviewer's experience, will perhaps help the reader to see the context and logic of arguments given below in a more coherent manner.

Via the lens of politics, the authors examine the Parbati Valley Project, the allocation and expenditure of finances as part of the ecodevelopment project, and even the research by the Wildlife Institute of India at ghnp.

The first three chapters are a very interesting account of rights of the local people, the settlement process in British times and the origin of ghnp. However, the analytical portion--chapters 4 through 6--is mainly based on the premise that upon final notification of the park in 1999, "the local people have continued to enjoy de facto access to the Park's resources (medicinal plants collection and grazing), by dint of their clout with the political leadership and the ability of this leadership, in turn, to force the executive to ignore the breach of the law".

Thus, in the book, a lack of complete exclusion immediately after final notification--under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, the final notification of a National Park is issued only after extinguishing all the rights and concessions of the local people in the designated area--is seen as a failure of the park administration.

The book, published in 2006, covers matters only upto year 2000, when the area was really in turmoil after the park's closure to local people. The authors are particularly silent on the intervening period (2000-2006) and the park administration's work with the local people to pursue the conservation goals. As it is, actual field experiences of initiatives attempting harmony between conservation and development are not abundant; it is even rarer to find an example of a state-led initiative such as at ghnp, 2000 onwards, within the limits of the law of the land.

Immediately after closure, the park administration drafted a strategy of connecting with people. It took three years for the anger to subside. 2001 onwards, an ngo called sahara--comprising women from affected families and poor villagers--went from village to village, using street theatre to spread the message of livelihood options being provided by the park management in lieu of the rights of people that had been taken over. The administration facilitated the formation of women savings and credit groups to better use money earned from vermicomposting, handicrafts, apricot oil production or work in medicinal plant nurseries. In 2003-2004, the management took a conscious decision to prosecute offenders entering the park.

Moreover, after the Parbati Hydel Project, the local economy in the Sainj Valley has changed for ever. Most of the graziers have sold their sheep and goats to local butchers, many herb collectors have taken up daily-wage labour jobs with the project or have set up small businesses to cater to the needs of more than two thousand employees of the project.

Needlessly harsh
In Chapter 7, the authors have taken a very critical view of the faculty members of the Wildlife Institute of India who provided research inputs for the park management. The authors reject outright the research as being poorly designed; they could have been more moderate. In the last two chapters, the authors provide a quick solution of Joint Protected Area Management (jpam), which appears to be a poor cousin of the already prevalent Joint Forest Management in India.

The post-2000 period at ghnp must be seen as a pilot that represents a livelihood-based approach, in the given policy constraints in this country. For jpam, civil society has to evolve first so that government can be persuaded to change laws and policies to hand over forests or protected areas to communities.

At the moment there do not appear to be many voices, or a movement, in this country to jolt the legislature/bureaucracy into even handing over budget/funds to panchayats for which there are already so many laws, policies in place and very few implemented; whither, then, people-park issues?

Sanjeeva Pandey is currently Senior Advisor, Natural Resource Management, Winrock International, India

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