In his piece on tigers IE, May 25, Jay Mazoomdar claimed that the government has to make a “choice” between the “tiger” Bill and the “tribal” Bill. There is actually no choice to make. Recognising people’s rights and protecting tigers can and must go together. This is for a simple reason. Millions of people live in forests and have done so for generations, but most are deemed “encroachers” because they aren’t on records. Forest management plans and wildlife protection plans ignore them. Official policy sees them as obstacles, inconveniences at best and criminals at worst, and tries to evict or resettle them where possible. But this hasn’t worked.

Our wildlife is disappearing. Poachers are free to move around when there are no people and even get help from impoverished locals, while forest guards turn corrupt due to the ease of extorting money from those same locals. Meanwhile, forests erupt in violence as people turn against the official “conservation” that subjects them to such brutality. The result? Animals, forests and people die in what the Tiger Task Force called the “war within”.

This is why the joint parliamentary committee has adopted a different approach. First, the JPC has not said that “everyone” will have a right in forests. Non-tribals who have been in forests for three generations, or who have been pushed in by the government, should be included. The aim is to include all traditional forest dwellers and those with no alternative. This fits with the report’s theme: ordinary people are partners in conservation, not its enemies. The Committee has stressed that all matters such as land use and mining licences should be decided by open, public institutions where everyone has a voice. The report recommends that communities can frame conservation rules, not in order to “twist” them, as Mazoomdar claims, but to allow them to add their own rules to existing ones.

More than 10,000 communities are doing this but without legal sanction. Further conservationist concerns about creating “inviolate spaces” by resettling people can, in fact, be helped by the Committee’s recommendations. Currently there are no safeguards for proper relocation. When it’s done badly people are driven into other forests or back to the original area — Sariska is an example. This means more forest destruction, more poverty and conflict.

The JPC has therefore recommended involving communities and experts, with safeguards to force the government to resettle people well. In short, if you give people security, they will protect forests, since their lives are so intertwined with them. If you disregard people, you will lose both forests and people. This is hardly anything radical.

The same principle works in panchayats and through citizen participation in the cities. Making ordinary people part of government is both more democratic and more effective. Think of it this way. What is more likely to destroy the environment: having millions of people conserving forests? Or dumping it on a handful of environmentalists, dependent on a corrupt government department? Let us not miss the forest for the trees.