REMINDER!!!
For YETI
Debabrata Phukon
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Madhavi Latha <madhavi@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, Jan 27, 2020, 9:28 AM
Subject: REMINDER: Talk by Anwesha Dutta on January 27, 2020 (Monday) at
03:45pm
To: Madhavi Latha <madhavi@xxxxxxxxx>
On 1/23/2020 2:36 PM, Madhavi Latha wrote:
You are cordially invited to a talk titled
*Ranger, Poacher and Villagers: Deconstructing the Hero versus Villain
Narrative in Kaziranga National Park, Assam.*
by
*Anwesha Dutta*
*Chr. Michelsen Institute, Bergen, Norway*
Date & Time: January 27, 2020 at 03:45 pm
Venue: ATREE Auditorium
------------------------------
*Abstract*
The Kaziranga National Park on the foothills of Himalayas in India has come
to be recognized as a conservation success story – from a handful of one
horned rhino a century ago to two thousand and four hundred or two-thirds
of the entire world population in recent times. However, not all is well
with the rhino and since 2010 local print and electronic media have
reported several instances of rhino poaching in and around the park
(Barbora 2017). In response to the increased poaching the guards in the
park have been given the right to exercise “shoot at sight”, supplied with
night vision goggles, been granted the usage of drones for surveillance.
Most recently, in July 2019 a sophisticated security force comprising of 74
men and 8 women, known as the Special Rhino Protection Force, was set up.
The other side of this incredible success in KNP is rather dark and imbued
in rampant human rights violation against local populations living on the
fringes of the park, including forced eviction and displacement, in certain
areas. At least 24 young men were killed in Assam (in different parks, but
mainly within KNP) in the year 2015. The forest department, as well as the
local media state that these killings were the result of encounters between
forest guards and poachers. At some stage the park rangers were allegedly
killing an average of two people every month.
Therefore, poaching is often presented as a problem in need of a (mainly
policy-oriented and technical) solution: the problem being ‘bad’ people
(read poachers) kill helpless, ‘good’ and innocent animals, and the
solution is to catch, imprison or even torture and kill, these ‘bad’
poachers (Büscher 2016; Lunstrum 2016), an important task for ‘good’
rangers. This has led to yet another unhelpful categorization of heroes and
villains (Duffy 2018). In this blatantly problematic dominant discourse,
the stories mainly revolve around the dead animals and the conservation
heroes.
Using empirical material gathered through over a month of fieldwork in and
around the Kaziranga National Park mainly consisting of informal
discussions, participatory observations and life histories with park
guards, fringe communities and surrendered poachers, this presentation
seeks to deconstruct and go beyond the heroes versus villain narrative. The
idea is to understand what makes someone a poacher and how do park guards
themselves perceive their positionally. Some of the questions that could be
explored further: how do forest guards navigate the often rigid power
structures they are embedded in while also ensuing a working relationship
with the communities? how does the notion of rhino nationalism further
militarised conservation while pushing the anti-national poacher to the
margins? how has this fervour of rhino nationalism further pushed people
away from the park or has this in fact brought the communities closer to
the administration by grooming them in anti-poaching?
*About the speaker*
Anwesha Dutta is a Post Doctoral Researcher at the Chr. Michelsen
Institute, Bergen, Norway. She has a PhD in Conflict and Development
Studies from Ghent University, Belgium. Her PhD research focused on
political ecology of resource extraction, conservation and livelihoods in
the reserved forests on the India-Bhutan borderlands in Assam, Northeast
India. She is currently working on an USAID funded project called Targeting
Natural Resource Corruption (TNRC) for which she will be undertaking
fieldwork in Kenya later this year. She recently undertook a month of
fieldwork in Kaziranga National Park in Assam, India where she researched
on park-people relationship and its evolution over time and subsequently
closely worked with frontline forest staff and their role in conservation.
------------------------------
*Tea/coffee will be served downstairs at 03:30pm*
--
__________________________________________________________________
Madhavi Latha G
The Academy for Conservation Science and Sustainability Studies
Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE),
Royal Enclave, Srirampura, Jakkur PO
Bangalore 560064, India
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Phone: +91-80-23635555 Extn: 121
Fax: +91-80-23530070
E-mail: madhavi@xxxxxxxxx
_________________________________________________________________
--
__________________________________________________________________
Madhavi Latha G
The Academy for Conservation Science and Sustainability Studies
Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE),
Royal Enclave, Srirampura, Jakkur PO
Bangalore 560064, India
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Phone: +91-80-23635555 Extn: 121
Fax: +91-80-23530070
E-mail: madhavi@xxxxxxxxx
_________________________________________________________________
--
__________________________________________________________________
Madhavi Latha G
The Academy for Conservation Science and Sustainability Studies
Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE),
Royal Enclave, Srirampura, Jakkur PO
Bangalore 560064, India
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Phone: +91-80-23635555 Extn: 121
Fax: +91-80-23530070
E-mail: madhavi@xxxxxxxxx
_________________________________________________________________
--
__________________________________________________________________
Madhavi Latha G
The Academy for Conservation Science and Sustainability Studies
Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE),
Royal Enclave, Srirampura, Jakkur PO
Bangalore 560064, India
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Phone: +91-80-23635555 Extn: 121
Fax: +91-80-23530070
E-mail: madhavi@xxxxxxxxx
_________________________________________________________________