Life Outside the Forest: A Socio-Ecological Inquest To Voluntary Relocation From Protected Area In Kerala

Forest land is considered as the second largest utilization of land next to agriculture by the people for their subsistence as per the report published in Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The dependency of forest and its resources was a prudence based one during the historic time. But due to various reasons such as needs of human beings increases, changes take place in societies, increasing trend of human as well as wildlife population and climate change paved the way for the depletion of forest resources. This depletion of forest resources and subsequent degradation of forest ecosystem contributed lot for the increasing trend of human-wildlife conflict and destabilization of economy of the dependents of forest ecosystem services. In this backdrop, the present study looks into the socio-economic and cultural life of forest dependent tribal communities who are voluntarily relocated from the forest as well as the restoration of forest land where previous human habitation existed. The study adopted an ethnographic case study method for collecting the primary data from the voluntarily relocated vulnerable tribal families of Wayanad. Qualitative data is collected from voluntarily relocated tribal families who belong to Paniya and Kattunayakan communities in Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary. The main argument raised in this study is that family based segmentary egalitarian land holding pattern brought socio-cultural continuity in the human habitation in voluntarily relocated land. Continuity in group life brought noticeable transformation and adaptation in the changing socio-economic and cultural sphere of tribes within the alien socio-economic and cultural setting. Voluntary relocation diminishes incessant dependency on forest resources and maximizes the resource accessibility to wildlife. Mankind transforms themselves towards the development scene and fragmented wildlife habitat regenerated for wildlife.