Northeastern View | In Assam, unwarranted killings, forced evictions sully wildlife conservation efforts

The incident brings to the fore a lingering conflict between the state government’s wildlife conservation agenda and local marginalised communities, which is framed by oft-ignored questions around the militarisation of wildlife conservation in the Northeast.

Militarised conservation

In January, forest officials in Assam’s Burachapori Wildlife Sanctuary, conjoined with Laokhowa, announced with great joy that Rhinos had returned to the area after 40 years. Sarma attributed the historic return to a yearlong “anti-encroachment operation.” It is unclear who was evicted or under what circumstances.

One media report from February 2023 reveals how local authorities deployed a massive contingent of armed police and earth-moving equipment to clear 1892 hectares of land in Burachapori from “illegal occupation.” Again, the report does not mention who exactly was evicted. Similar omissions are rife in mainstream reportage on the state’s anti-poaching actions, a lot of which involves forest guards opening fire at suspected poachers without confirmation of who they really are.

These obfuscations are symptomatic of a larger problem in Assam’s wildlife conservation approach, which continues to overlook the human costs. A 2017 report by the BBC claims that more than 20 people are killed by forest guards in Kaziranga every year.

To be sure, both poaching and encroachments are serious issues that need to be confronted head-on if Assam’s ecological biodiversity is to be protected. But, instead of treating them as problems that need bottom-up social interventions and multi-stakeholder consultations, the state has dealt with them as predominantly security challenges.

This has rationalised the use of brute and sometimes lethal force against innocent civilians who trespass into protected areas without mal-intent or unwittingly inhabit reserved patches. This, according to noted political and civil rights activist from Assam, Pranab Doley, is because of “an excess of power given to the forest rangers of Kaziranga.”

Anti-poor conservation

In many cases, those living in areas contiguous to the Kaziranga National Park have received abrupt eviction notices from state authorities that offer no legal context or recourse. These have left the people, most of whom belong to marginalised groups, in a lurch. The state sometimes offers monetary compensation, but often, the notified people seek to legally reclaim the land that they are accused of encroaching on.

Last year, the Assam government signed deals to construct a five-star hotel and a resort in Kaziranga, as part of a larger plan to infuse ₹3,214 crores of private sector investments into the state’s development. But, according to some environmentalists and local organisations, these projects would threaten Kaziranga’s fragile natural ecosystem – an irony given the state’s commitment to wildlife conservation. One such organisation, Jeepal Krishak Shramik Sangha, has even accused local and foreign NGOs of colluding with the state government to allow the disruptive constructions.

Needless to say, such projects would end up displacing even more people in the name of clearing “illegal encroachments” on government land. Already, some Adivasi cultivators were reportedly evicted earlier this month to make way for the proposed luxury resort in Golaghat district. Others face similar evictions, as the Assam Tourism Department stakes a claim on their land.

Such cases reflect an insidious conflation of militarised wildlife conservation with brash economic development in fragile ecological habitats. Reckless development could undo the state’s own conservation efforts in Kaziranga, and yet, big-ticket projects are being sanctioned without extensive stakeholder consultations. In the process, some of Assam’s poorest are being forcibly displaced from their homesteads.

A change of approach needed

The Assam government must understand that no wildlife conservation programme can succeed in the long term if it alienates local agrarian communities that are part of the natural ecosystem. It must realise that countering adverse anthropogenic influences on nature is not the same as violently uprooting people who have lived in harmony with wildlife for aeons.

In fact, local peasant communities can play an integral role in wildlife conservation wherein the state can both learn from them and impart new knowledge to them. They need to be taken into confidence and included in key decision-making processes around both wildlife conservation and physical re-development of protected areas, for they are directly impacted by these endeavours.

The Assam government should also undertake a thorough review of its anti-poaching SOPs and put in place non-lethal protective measures. Here too, local communities should be brought into the loop for a collaborative effort to curb poaching. By allowing forest guards to shoot at them on mere suspicion, the state only ends up creating a state of exception that will create more social and political instability in the future.

Angshuman Choudhury is a New Delhi-based researcher and writer, formerly an Associate Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research and focuses on Northeast India and Myanmar. The views expressed are personal.