Report of the Tiger Task Force - PRS

Executive summaryThe Tiger Task Force report begins by placing itselfin context (see: The assessment, p 1-20). There is animmediate context to this report: the widely reportedand discussed event of the disappearance of tigers inSariska. There is also a larger context: the discourseand practice of tiger conservation in India.In terms of the immediate context, the Sariskadebacle, the Task Force investigated the affair. Thereport presents the conclusions (see: The Sariskashock, p 14-20). The protection system there hascompletely collapsed. While officials were busymisreporting the record of tiger numbers, poachersroamed about and cleaned the reserve out. Apowerful mining lobby, keen to carry out miningoperations in the reserve fringe, is thrilled. Localpoliticians now want the protected area denotified:“What is there to protect?” they ask. Villagers hereregard the tiger, and the park administration, as theircommon enemy no 1: they live sandwiched betweenthe two, and are bitter about their desperatelywretched existence and continued harassment. Thepark management talks about relocation, but hasdone little. In the meantime, even the one village thathad been moved out has come back into the reserve.There is unease all around. In this situation,protection cannot and does not work.In terms of the larger context (see: Conserving thetiger, p 2-13), the report finds important, butforgotten, moments in the recent history of officialconservation planning. The report of the 1972 taskforce headed by Karan Singh, Project Tiger: aplanning proposal for preservation of tiger (Pantheratigris tigris) in India, inaugurated the tigerconservation programme in India (and officialconservation as well). It is a remarkable blueprint. Itgave the programme a promising start.If “people versus parks” — and its inevitablecorollary, “people versus tigers” — is onecontentious point of the debate around conservationin India today, the report finds extremely sensitivedeliberations upon this issue in the past. It is obviousthat some, among those that have given direction toofficial conservation policy, were horribly aware thatin India, forests are not unpopulated tracts ofwilderness. The 1983 Eliciting public support forwildlife conservation — report of the task force, by acommittee headed by Madhavrao Scindia, focuses onthe dependence of rural people on forests: “In theirprecarious existence, enforcement of restriction inwildlife reserves triggers antagonism”. This reportwanted development programmes and funds forvillages located in the periphery of conservationzones. It calls these zones “islands of conservation”.“If the land surrounding such effort continues todeteriorate in productivity affecting the availabilityof resources for communities, these islands arebound to succumb one day to the community’sdemands”.In the 1990s, a furious storm breaks, reminiscentof today. The tiger is in deep trouble. Project Tiger,India’s flagship conservation programme, is in deeptrouble. Conservation itself is in deep trouble. Thiswas an opportunity to change directions. But whatemerges is: One, the conservation regime rededicatesitself to a command-and-control mode ofwildlife preservation. Two, it becomes no longernecessary to refer to or think of “people” whilespeaking of or planning for conservation.The Sariska debacle is irrevocably because of thisdirection we chose.3 unavoidable variablesIt is incumbent upon the Tiger Task Force to look tothe future. The Task Force realises that, so far asconservation policy and practice are concerned, anysuch blueprint must be predicated upon threeunavoidable variables (see: A paradigm change, p21-26). As the report puts it, “The protection of thetiger is inseparable from the protection of the forestsit roams in. But the protection of these forests is itselfinseparable from the fortunes of people who, inIndia, inhabit forest areas”. There is the tiger. Thereis the forest. There are the people, living inside theseforests and on the fringes of these forests.All readers of this executive summary areencouraged to look at the map on page 23. It showsthree layers: the 150 poorest districts of India; thefact that these are also constitutionally designatedSchedule V areas (areas primarily inhabited bytribals); and the fact that these are prime “tigerdistricts”. Consider also the tables on page 26 Forestcover and tribal districts, and Net change in forestcover in the country since 2001… . The fact is thatcommunities — not necessarily tribals, but equallyimpoverished — live in and around those areas theofficial conservation apparatus protects for the sakeof the tiger. Equally, forests in these areas are underviExecutive summary