A barefoot friend of the tiger

By Alladi Jayasri

NEW DELHI, DEC. 31. While the seminar circuit and policy-movers were arguing intensely over the merits of ``think global, act local'', in Delhi one dhoti-clad barefoot young man was already doing his micro-bit in the ``act local'' department, co-opting irascible, civilisation-wary tribals into forest protection in the remote recesses of Kerala's Periyar Tiger Reserve, a rib of the spiny Western Ghats. And showing that dying forests can be brought to life again.

Mr. S. Guruvayurappan, in the Capital recently to receive the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Tiger Conservation Award 1999 for `notable work in involving people in tiger conservation', is not the sort of greenie such as Ms. Medha Patkar, Mr. Sunderlal Bahuguna, who are usually expected by the anything-but-green lobby to be apologetic about being, well, greenies, and coming in the way of development and progress.

Mr. Guruvayurappan is a sociologist. That, of course, is not to say he is no environmentalist. When he joined the World Bank- approved eco-development project launched at the Periyar Tiger Reserve, neither the forest authorities nor the tribals he was supposed to `convert', thought the project would work. Neither was Mr. Guruvayurappan expected to last long.

Villagers and tribals in Mannakudy and Paliakudy were in the clutches of money-lenders, and certainly disinclined to consider the welfare of the forests, its flora or fauna. ``A hand-to-mouth existence does not really make for accommodating such concerns, and I wanted to change that'', Mr. Guruvayurappan said.

There were the 20-odd poachers who were playing havoc with the predator-prey balance, and didn't care a hoot if the last tiger in Periyar wound up eviscerated and sold in the illegal market for wildlife products. ``It was as if the forests belonged to the poachers alone. Villagers foraging to feed their families didn't even dare think of calling their bluff''.

Mr. Guruvayurappan's brief was to get these people to begin nurturing the forests, instead of living off it. And to get villagers to identify themselves with the objectives of tiger conservation programmes, not to mention its place in the food chain. ``Giving themselves a stake in the survival of the forests, ensuring their intellectual property rights, this is something they have to be taught'', Mr. Guruvayurappan says.

Three years on, 2,000 families in the villages in and around Periyar reserve have shown how to leave the forest alone. Livelihood away from the forest, not off it, is the credo that reverberates through the hills and dales of Periyar these days. An annual survey over the last two years has proved an exultant Mr. Guruvayurappan right - in 1997-98, the forest resources exploited by villagers in Sathram was worth Rs. 20 lakhs. But neither their quality of life nor their economy indicated any of this.

After Mr. Guruvayurappan got into the act, the survey results of 1998-99 showed ``zero income''. The villagers had simply ceased regarding the forest as their golden egg-laying goose. How did this happen?

Mr. Guruvayurappan began by sharing the secret of micro-credit and self-help groups for the villagers, and weaned them away from the moneylenders. The tribals then discovered the joy of starting pepper plantations without worrying about loan- sharks snapping at their heels. A revolving fund was set up, and the Forest Department released funds to eco-development committees, comprising women and men from the village communities.

The aim was to reduce dependence on protected areas and forests, and introduce integrated resource management to the community. Soon Mr. Guruvayurappan had got 46 microplans, in 15 villages in Idukki district going. As enjoined by the World Bank concept of participatory approach to eco-development, each microplan (Promotion of Area Level Mutual Interaction Assessment or PAMIA) is site-specific.

From working out the annual needs of forest produce, firewood, and activities such as grazing, to determining the legal status of the village vis-a-vis the forest, and crackdown on poachers, the villagers decide for themselves. Now exploiting forest resources is the last option that they like to resort to.

So successful has PAMIA been in demonstrating the workability of the participatory approach followed in the eco- development committees, with a forest official merely taking part in an ex- officio status, that the World Bank has recognised it as a suitable model for India. It has already been emulated in Nagarhole National Park in neighbouring Karnataka.

``I have tried to promote mutualism, commensuration and interaction, giving the people a stake in the nurture of forests,'' says Mr. Guruvayurappan, as he dedicates the award to the people who believed in him, and made it all happen.

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