Among India’s states, Madhya Pradesh has the largest number of tigers and tiger reserves, as well as the highest number of Adivasis and forest villages. Under the guise of tiger conservation, the state and central governments have violated both the law and the rights of forest-dependent communities.
Among India’s states, Madhya Pradesh has the largest number of tigers and tiger reserves, as well as the highest number of Adivasis and forest villages. Under the guise of tiger conservation, the state and central governments have violated both the law and the rights of forest-dependent communities.Illustration by Aishwarya Iyer; photographs from Aditi Vajpayi
Politics

The huge human costs of Madhya Pradesh’s tiger and cheetah reserves

Hungry for wildlife and conservation funds, Madhya Pradesh has violated science, the law and the rights of forest dwellers to establish its brand as a tiger-cheetah conservation state
Aditi Vajpeyi

Aditi Vajpayi is an independent journalist, researcher and activist. They write on political economy, land-resource conflicts and governance issues and are involved in various people’s movements.

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“WE NEVER WANTED to relocate, never consented either,” Dhani Singh Marvi, a resident of Ramkhiriya, told me when I visited his village in 2023. “But the forest department pestered us to go away, saying tigers and cheetahs were to live here.” 

Ramkhiriya is a small village inside the Nauradehi forest, an area designated as a wildlife sanctuary in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. In 2010, it was one of three protected areas shortlisted by India’s central government as a possible site at which to reintroduce cheetahs in the country. The Madhya Pradesh forest department and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) – an advisory body to the country’s environment ministry on matters of wildlife management and conservation – published an action plan in 2012 for the reintroduction of cheetahs in Nauradehi. It recommended relocating human settlements to create an area of 700 square kilometres within the wildlife sanctuary as a core habitat – an area described in India’s Wild Life (Protection) Act as an “inviolate space” for tigers. The plan proposed the immediate relocation of 21 villages and three settlements out of the total of 69 villages in this sanctuary.

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