Aathira Perinchery 
Bengaluru: In his 119th episode of Mann Ki Baat on February 23, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was all praise for India’s indigenous tribal communities. Many wild species are “deeply embedded” in our history and culture, Modi said, and several tribes revere them as gods and goddesses. He cited the examples of Waghoba, the leopard god that some tribal communities in Maharashtra worship; and that of the goddess Bonbibi – a guardian spirit of the mangrove forests of the Sundarbans in West Bengal – who rides a tiger.
The population of tigers in Karnataka’s Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Tiger Reserve has increased and a lot of credit for this goes to the indigenous Soliga tribe who live here and worship the tiger, he said.
“I would also like to thank my tribal brothers and sisters, because they actively participate in work related to wildlife protection…They have shown the world what co-existence with nature means,” he said in his monthly radio speech on February 23.
The prime minister is right: many indigenous tribal communities worship the wildlife they live with, revering them as gods, for their ways of life are intricately woven with the rivers, forests, grasslands and mountains they call home. But what the PM failed to mention is that his government has been steadily eroding this connection – in many ways. Here are some of them.
Moreover, the examples of coexistence and conservation that the PM referred to in his speech are more nuanced than he made them out to be, because of the multitude of factors that they depend on.
1) Evictions of tribal communities from their homes and lands.
According to a 2013 estimate, 6,00,000 forest dwellers have been displaced from their homes due to wildlife sanctuaries and national parks. On June 19 last year, the National Tiger Conservation Authority – which implements and oversees Project Tiger across the country, and operates under the union environment ministry – sent an order to wildlife wardens in all tiger states asking them to expedite the relocation of 591 villages, comprising 64,801 families, from all tiger reserves. Thousands of tribes from tiger reserves across the country have been protesting against this impending forced eviction since then. According to one report, the government has identified at least 5.5 lakh Scheduled Tribes and other forest dwellers who live in 50 tiger reserves across India for involuntary relocation by Project Tiger to create “inviolate areas” for tigers. Experts have noted that these evictions will violate not just Indian laws including the Wild Life Protection Act (1972) but also several international treaties such as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Out of the 5.5 lakh tribals who will now be evicted from tiger reserves, the government identified 2.9 lakh people for eviction only after 2021.
2) Many haven’t received their rights under the FRA.
All tribal communities have rights under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006 – better known as the FRA – to continue living on these lands unless they willingly agree to relocate. Towards this, state governments have to provide title land deeds to these communities and individuals. However, many have still not received them, and the FRA remains just a paper tiger. A study in 2024 that examined the implementation of the FRA across some districts in Maharashtra, Odisha, Karnataka, Assam and Chhattisgarh found that even 15 years after it became law, there are huge gaps in the implementation of the Act due to lack of knowledge and conflicts of interest, Mongabay-India reported. Meanwhile, an analysis found that the gap between the number of FRA claims filed and the number of claims recognised – which was always high – has increased after 2014. Delays in governments recognising claims is the norm.
3) New laws, forged documents enable industries to get away with destroying lands and resources that indigenous peoples are fighting for.
Many tribal groups are fighting against commercial take over of their lands and resources – like several tribal communities in the Hasdeo Arand in Chhattisgarh are doing. Villagers here claimed they never gave their consent for mining but trees were felled in the Parsa coal block in 2024. This later led to a violent clash between residents and the police. Later, an investigation by the Chhattisgarh State Scheduled Tribes Commission found that clearances for mining in Parsa block were given based on forged gram sabha consent documents, Mongabay-India reported.
The union environment ministry amended the Forest Conservation Act (1980) in 2024. Now called the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam, 1980, the new amendments dilute the definition of what a forest is, and open up forested tracts to a suite of developmental activities that do not require forest clearance like before. Conservationists challenged the amendment, and the Supreme Court ordered that the definition of a forest not be diluted as per set norms in any new instance.
In November last year, the Union environment ministry also released an additional set of guidelines to states and Union territories to “streamline” the approval process of proposals filed by mining companies to undertake surveys and exploratory drilling in forest areas. Under this, a nodal officer – authorised by a state or Union territory – who receives these proposals from companies will be able to grant permission within 45 days to undertake such surveys and exploratory drilling in forest areas if it involves cutting less than 100 trees in the survey area. And once the nodal officer grants this permission to an agency, the divisional forest officer of the area has to allow them to undertake the survey. Legal researchers have called this an “overreach” by the union government.
4) Human-wildlife interactions are nuanced – just because there is coexistence does not mean there are no negative interactions.
One of the examples that PM Modi referred to in his February 23 Mann Ki Baat is that of Gir National Park in Gujarat.
“In Gujarat as well, people have contributed significantly in the protection and conservation of Asiatic Lions in Gir. They have shown the world what co-existence with nature means,” he said.
However, human-wildlife interactions are nuanced: just because there is coexistence does not mean there are no negative interactions. And the latter are important to take into consideration, to ensure that authorities implement necessary action to not only conserve wildlife but also ensure the safety of people.
For instance, Gujarat’s lion population has increased from 411 in 2010 to 676 in 2020. In 2024, researchers analysed compensation records given by the forest department to people due to lion attacks on livestock and people between 2012 and 2017, and also interviewed 1,434 people from 277 villages where lions occur. They found that the number of villages that registered attacks on livestock increased by 105 (9.61%) per year: a sign that lions were increasing their range. Their findings also imply an increase in the number of lions in many areas, because livestock killed per village rose by 15% per year. At the same time, a majority of people they interviewed (61%) were tolerant of lion presence. What dictated intolerance, the researchers found, was peoples’ fear of lions, and the economic losses the animals caused by preying on peoples’ livestock.
“Communities that lived longer with lions had higher probability of tolerating lions and practiced livestock-rearing techniques that minimized predation,” their study noted.
However, it also found that the majority of lion attacks on people occurred in private lands where illegal and unregulated lion tourism where resort owners lure lions in with baits, which in turn makes lions more aggressive, according to the researchers.
5) Conservation is contextual.
“Every part of India is not only sensitive towards nature, but is also committed to wild life protection,” the prime minister said in his February 23 Mann Ki Baat. “I have been told about Anuradha Rao ji, many generations of whom have been associated with Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Anuradha ji had dedicated herself to animal welfare at an early age. For three decades, she has made the protection of deer and peacocks her mission. People here call her ‘Deer Woman’.”
The deer that Modi is referring to here are chital, or spotted deer – which did not occur in the islands until the British introduced a few animals here in the early 1900s. However, biologists now consider the deer to be an invasive species here: deer numbers have increased, and studies such as these have found that they impact both the native vegetation and local endemic fauna negatively. So while protecting invasive spotted deer in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands may fall under animal welfare or activism, it does not really count as conservation.
Instead, what would count as conservation in these islands would be scrapping developmental projects worth Rs.75,000 crore – including an international transshipment terminal, greenfield airport, township and power plant – that have been cleared to be constructed on Great Nicobar Island, the southernmost island in the Andaman and Nicobar island complex. The project will mean cutting down anywhere between 9.6 lakh to 2 million trees on the Island, and this will also impact two indigenous tribal communities, the Shompen and the Nicobarese. Both the communities are categorized as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups; one of them prefers to not interact with people from the mainland and are the epitome of true co-existence as they still depend on the forest for their survival.