Displacing People to Save Tigers in India

Every time 12-year-old Laxman Khade drinks foul-smelling brown water, he thinks of a freshwater spring his father helped dig in the nearby forest.

That spring is off-limits to Khade and other members of the forest-dwelling Gawli people now. The fresh water is in a nature reserve, and Laxman’s plight is a grim consequence of India’s efforts to save the tiger.

“What kind of a world takes care of the tiger and leaves people to die? We dare not step into the sanctuary for water or we will be fined and beaten,” says Laxman’s father, Gondo.

Six children were hospitalized after drinking filthy water in a recent two-month period in Vairat, a hamlet on a hill surrounded by the Melghat sanctuary, 710 miles north of Bombay.

Already accused by conservationists of failing its mission, India’s Project Tiger now is being criticized for its effects on some of the weakest members of Indian society.

“Take [tribespeople] out of their villages and they will die faster,” says Satchit Bhandarkar, a welfare worker.

In the early years, the Korku and Gawli people, the predominant tribes in the region, were allowed to share the Melghat park with tigers. But three years ago, planners began setting aside land exclusively for the cats.

The sanctuary consists of 144 square miles where people are not allowed to live, 210 square miles where villagers are under few restrictions, and 460 square miles dotted by villages whose inhabitants are not allowed to graze their cattle or draw water in much of the surrounding forest.

There have been proposals to move 22 villages and their 10,000 residents out altogether, but the tribals are resisting.

“We will not go anywhere. Farming is what we know,” says Santulal Dhandekar, a Korku tribal in Pistalai village.