Kuno's folk: missing the wood and the trees

Information relating to Kuno’s cheetahs is now a matter of national security, breaching which could also adversely impact India’s relations with foreign countries.

Or, at least that’s the reason given by the Madhya Pradesh government while turning down a right to information (RTI) request in July 2024 seeking details on the management of the cheetahs. Bhopal-based activist Ajay Dube who filed the RTI says, “all information about tigers is transparent, then why not about cheetahs? Transparency is the norm in wildlife management.”

Ram Gopal who lives in the village of Agara adjacent to Kuno park, is blissfully unaware of any threat his livelihood poses to our national security and diplomatic relations. He and thousands of Adivasis like him have other, more pressing worries.

He recently switched to a tractor. Not because he could suddenly afford the machine over oxen. Far from it.

“Modi ji gave us an order. He said we should not let go of our oxen. But the only grazing is in the forest [Kuno] and forest rangers will catch and throw us in jail if we enter. So, we thought, let’s just rent a tractor instead.”

It’s an expense Ram Gopal and his family can ill afford. Their household income keeps them firmly below the poverty line. After Kuno National Park became the home of cheetahs, it has caused them a severe loss of forest-based livelihoods.

This protected area shot into national prominence in 2022 when Acinonyx jubatus – African cheetahs – were brought in from South Africa to stamp Narendra Modi’s image as Prime Minister of the only country that is home to all big cats. The cheetahs were welcomed by him on his birthday.

Curiously, cheetah reintroduction as a conservation goal is completely absent in our National Wildlife Action Plan 2017-2031 that lists steps to conserve native and highly threatened species like the Great Indian Bustard, Gangetic Dolphin, Tibetan Antelope and others. Bringing in cheetahs was rubbished by the Supreme Court in 2013 who asked for a ‘detailed scientific study’ of the same.

Despite all this, hundreds of crores has been spent in cheetah travel, rehabilitation and publicity.

Turning Kuno into a cheetah safari has devastated the lives and livelihoods of Sahariya Adivasis like Ram Gopal who depend on the forest for non-timber forest produce (NTFP) like fruit, roots, herbs, resins and firewood. KNP covers a sizeable area and falls within the larger Kuno Wildlife Division – a total of 1,235 square kilometres.

“For 12 hours, from sunrise to sunset, I used to work at least 50 of my trees, and return four days later to collect the resin. Earnings from my chir trees alone was 10,000 rupees a month,” says Ram Gopal. Those 1,200 precious chir gond trees are now out of bounds for locals. When the park was turned into a cheetah project, the trees disappeared into the new buffer zone.

The couple, Ram Gopal and his wife Santu, both in their thirties, cultivate a few bighas of rain-fed land on the edge of KNP, mostly for their own consumption. “We grow bajra [millet] which we eat, and some of the til [sesame] and sarson [mustard] we sell,” adds Ram Gopal. It is here that he needs to rent a tractor during the sowing season.

“Other than the jungle we don’t have anything. We don’t even have enough water in our fields. Now as the jungle is closed to us, we will have to migrate [for work],” he says. An added blow is the sharp fall in the forest department’s routine buying of tendu leaves – the state year-round purchases of the same were an assured income for Adivasis, and as purchases have shrunk so have Ram Gopal’s earnings.

Across the state of Madhya Pradesh, NTFP is a lifeline for people living in and around forests. Chief among these is chir gond – collected through the year barring the summer months of chaith, baisakh, jaith and asadh roughly March to July. Most people living in and around KNP are Sahariya Adivasi, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG), and 98 per cent depend on the forest for their livelihood, says this 2022 report .

The village of Agara is an important trading hub for locals who bring forest produce to sell to traders like Raju Tiwari. Before the forest was closed off, says Tiwari, hundreds and hundreds of kilograms of resin and roots and herbs would find their way into the market.

“The Adivasi was attached to the forest, and we were attached to the Adivasi,” is how he puts it. “Their link to the forest has been cut and we are all feeling the repercussions.”

On a cold January morning, Ram Gopal has left home with a few metres of coiled rope and a sickle. The stone-walled boundaries of Kuno National Park are three kilometres from his home in Agara, and it’s a journey he often makes. Today he and wife are going to bring back firewood; the rope is for securing the bundle.

His wife Santu is worried and not at all sure they will be able to get firewood saying, “they [forest officials] don’t let you go inside sometimes. We may have to turn around and come back.” The family say they have never been able to afford a gas connection.

“In the old village [inside the park], the Kuno river was there so for 12 months we had water. We could find tendu, baer, mahua, jadi bootie [roots and herbs], firewood...” adds Santu as she strides along.

Santu grew up inside Kuno park and moved with her parents – part of the 16,500 people displaced in 1999 to make it a second home for the only population of Asiatic lions in the world, currently all housed in Gir, Gujarat. Read: In Kuno Park – no one gets the lion’s share

“Going forward, parivartan [change] is coming. Jangal mein jaana hi nahin [there will be no going into the jungle anymore],” says Ram Gopal.

Although Forest Rights Act 2006 does not allow the state to snatch land away without consent of the local people, with the arrival of the cheetahs, the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 has kicked in. “...may  construct  such  roads, bridges,  buildings, fences or barrier gates…(b)shall take such steps as will ensure the security of wild animals in the sanctuary and the preservation of the sanctuary and wild animals.”

When Ram Gopal first heard about the [boundary] wall, “I was told it was for a plantation, so we thought it’s okay,” he recalls. “But after three years they said ‘now you can’t enter. ‘Don’t enter beyond that boundary. If your animals stray inside, you will have to pay a fine or go to jail’,” he adds. “If we enter, we will go to jail for 20 years [we were told]. I don’t have the paisa for it [bail],” he adds laughing.

The loss of grazing rights has shrunk the population of cattle and locals say cattle fairs are now a thing of the past. In the 1999 displacement, many people left their animals behind in the park, unsure of where and how they would manage the grazing in their new surroundings, far from the park. Even today, cows and oxen move around the buffer zone of the park, many of them set free as their owners can no longer graze them. There is also the fear of cattle being attacked by forest dogs who rangers have warned, “they will find you and kill you [if you or your animals go inside the park.”

But such is the desperation for fuel that “ chori chupke [quietly and stealthily],” many still make furtive trips. Sagoo, a resident of Agara is returning with a small pile of leaves and twigs she is carrying wrapped up on her head – the only weight she says she can take now in her sixties.

“ Jungal main na jaane de rahe [we are not allowed into the jungle],” she says, welcoming the questions as a chance to sit down and rest. “I will have to sell my remaining buffaloes.”

Sagoo says that earlier they would bring cartloads of firewood and keep it for the rainy season. She remembers a time when their entire home was built using wood and leaves from this very forest. “While our animals grazed, we would collect firewood, fodder for other animals, tendu leaves to sell.”

The hundreds of square kilometres are now only for the cheetahs and the tourists who come to see them.

In Agara village, Kashi Ram speaks for many who have lost out saying, “nothing good has come [for us] of the cheetah’s arrival. Only losses.”

The villages of Chentikheda, Padri, Paira-B, Khajuri khurd and Chakparon have bigger problems. They say a survey has been done and work has begun for a dam on the river Kuari that will flood their homes and fields.

“We have been hearing about the dam for the last 20 years. Officials say, ‘you won’t get NREGA as your villages are going to be displaced by the dam,” says Jasram Adivasi. The former sarpanch of Chentikheda points out that many have not got their NREGA benefits.

Standing on the roof of his home, the Kuari river a short distance away, he says, “the dam will come cover this area. Our village and 7-8 villages, will drown but there has been no notice to us yet.”

That goes against the rules of – Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act , 2013 (LARRA ) which clearly lays down the steps for displacement such as a social impact study with the village people. The dates for this must be announced in the local language (Ch II A 4 (1)), notice must be given for all to attend and so on.

“We were displaced 23 years ago. With great difficulty we have re-built our lives,” says Satnam Adivasi of Chakpara village. He often goes for wage work at construction sites in Jaipur, Gujarat and other places.

Satnam heard of the dam from a news story which was circulated on a WhatsApp group in the village. “Nobody has talked to us, we don’t know who and how many will be going under,” he adds. Officials from the revenue department noted which houses were pukka , kuccha , how much land they occupied and so on.

The memory of the last displacement has not faded for his father, Sujansingh who will now be displaced twice. “ Humare upar double kashth ho raha hai [We are in for double trouble].”