The issue of people living in forests that are also inhabited by wildlife has been one of the key points of debate and disagreement in India for a very long time. Various issues involved include the rights of the forest communities, the codification of conservation and wildlife laws, the impact on these laws and the conservation paradigm on the lives and livelihoods of these communities, the challenges and opportunities in this context of the Forest Rights Act and the possibility (and the need) of a paradigm of human-wildlife coexistence as often seen in the case of adivasi communities. The presentation will discuss some of these issues in the specific context of the forests of the Melghat region in Maharashtra, which was also notified the first tiger reserve in India in 1974.
Purnima Upadhyay is a founder member of the Paratwada, Maharashtra, based Khoj Trust that has worked in the Melghat landscape for over two decades on issues of livelihoods, conservation and rights of the Adivasi communities here. She also worked with Amnesty International India from 2001-2004. She has Master's degrees in Sociology and Law and has extensive field level experience in the implementation of forest related laws like the Indian Forest Act, the Wildlife Protection and also rights based legislation like MNREGA, FRA, PESA. She has served on multiple state level committees that include among others the the Vidarbha Statutory Development Board, the Sub Committee on Scheduled Tribes under the Kelkar Committee established to identify the indicators for balanced development in the State of Maharashtra and the Critical Wildlife Habtiat Monitoring Committee set up by the Tribal Development Department for Melghat Wildlife Sanctuary