In March 2023, a Sarus crane that Mohammed Arif Khan from Uttar Pradesh’s Amethi district had cared for was confiscated from him by the Forest Department. The Sarus crane, UP’s state bird, is a protected animal whose possession by individuals is illegal. The bird was relocated from Mr Khan’s home, where it had made itself comfortable with his family, to the Samaspur Bird Sanctuary (The Hindu, 2023). The Forest Department also charged Mr Khan under the Wildlife Protection Act (1972) for keeping a protected species in his home (Sharma, 2023).

The case of Mr Khan and the Sarus crane in Uttar Pradesh is symptomatic of something more than a close reading and implementation of the law. It is also arguably an overreaction. While taking the bird to a sanctuary where it can be cared for by a professional is a rational course of action, charging Mr Khan with an offence under the Wildlife Protection Act is not. The act’s provisions are safeguards against offences such as hunting and poaching. Its aim to protect is self-evident in its name. Mr Khan was not overtly in contempt of these clauses of the act. 

This overreaction stems from a broader argument that can be made about the ideology that the Forest Department operates on, particularly in relation to issues of conservation and jurisdiction.

The Forest Department’s new raison d’etre

The Forest Department, set up by Dietrich Brandis under the British government in 1864, was originally a purveyor of the profits emanating from India’s forested territories (Schug, 2000). It was a rationalising body whose role was to garner profits by maximising the physical borders of forests and minimising their use by those dependent on them.

In the past 150 years, the Forest Department has, like other arms of the government, been subjected to a variety of civil and political demands. These demands in the form of legislation and people’s movements have changed the Forest Department’s public presentation.

It has taken on a noticeable conservationist garb, one that promotes the prioritisation of conservation of natural resources within the department’s remit–the forests and the biodiversity within it–above all else. It has eschewed its historical raison d’etre for a more palatable and contemporaneously relevant one. Conservation is the means to meet the end of keeping the department’s perception in the public eye favourable, rather than the end the department aims for. 

This conservationist stance is uniquely placed to sympathise with debates on environmentalism prevalent in the country. Environmentalism, which can simply be understood as an interest in the environment’s protection, comes in several forms. It can highlight a class divide, with the upper classes (Guha & Martinez-Alier, 1997) lobbying behind Not in My Backyard Movements. It can also be an ‘environmentalism of the poor’ (Narain, 2021), crusading for a bottom-up approach to environmental conflict. Most importantly, it is a critical lens advocating for nature’s rights in an increasingly anthropocentric world.

Additionally, the Forest Department is a technocracy. A technocracy is a system of administration in which an “elite class of…planners systematically apply technical knowledge to the solution of social problems and the creation of a rational social order” (Gunnell, 1982, p. 394). A technocracy’s legitimacy comes from its “appeal to scientific knowledge” (Centeno, 1993, p. 313). The rationalisation of society is linked to the institutionalisation of scientific and technical development (Habermas, 1971).

This form of organisation is different from a bureaucracy in a few ways. A technocracy gives primacy to the persons in charge rather than the rules that dictate the function of the organisation. The expertise of those in charge and their interpretation of the rules hold weight over the rules themselves.

The Forest Department’s technocratic and conservationist strands of thought come together to form ‘technocratic environmentalism’, which is the co-option of environmental concerns that is transgressive and untrue to the original objective of environmentalism. The technocracy’s need to stay in power and to hold legitimacy in changing times supersedes the aims of environmental concerns such as conservation as it simultaneously appropriates these aims.

Keeping people out

The Forest Department uses its technocratic expertise – represented by a cadre of officials who by virtue of their position in the system become the ‘elite’ in the forest–to keep people out of the forest in the name of conservation and preservation of the forest’s pristine state. The latter is an ironic appropriation of environmentalist debates around the protection of nature. It is ironic because the Forest Department that purports to conserve the environment is complicit in its segmentation and parcelling to private interests (Sud, 2009; Kashwan, 2013). For example, the department has been documented to have aided the forcible takeover of Adivasi land in Jharkhand in 2019 (Choudhary, 2019) and has been historically known to have ‘saved’ sections of the forest for timber merchants (Baviskar, 1994).

The new regime dictating the Forest Department in the wake of its self-alignment with environmentalism is one where conservation has just become a place card for restrictions on access to the forest and its elements. The Forest Department has historically been protective of its territorial boundaries and jurisdiction (Baviskar, 2004; Joint Parliamentary Committee, 2006). By creating core areas within National Parks where human activity is banned and by narrowly defining Minor Forest Produce, the department has erected strict restrictions on physical access to the forest – both to its land and to its produce. The department’s technocratic environmentalism, with its central tenet as conservationism, has aided in this separation between enclaves of human activity and core areas of the forest.

Protection of a protected animal is an infraction on the Forest Department’s ‘legislative’ territory. When a private individual takes on what would traditionally be the duty of the Forest Department, the ‘crime’ becomes representative of something more. Its punishment, then, is a warning to anyone who may want to take further liberties and venture into the Forest Department’s jurisdiction. Technocratic environmentalism is manifest in Mr Khan and the Sarus crane’s case. It gets approach gets operationalized through a particular interpretation of the law that was true to its written word but not to the integrity of its aim – to protect certain species of wildlife.

The Forest Department has indulged in a similar selective interpretation exercise while implementing the Forest Rights Act (FRA) (2006).  The FRA is a pioneering legislation aimed at recognising the traditional forest rights of forest-dwelling people, particularly Adivasis. The act sets out the categories of people eligible for land under its conditions. Interviews with forest officials in 2021 showed (Godbole, 2022) that they interpreted the provisions of the FRA differently in different states of the country, often coloured by preconceived notions about the Adivasis.  Such multiplicity in interpretations has diluted the implementation of the FRA.

Conclusion

The ideological and legal tussle between the UP-Forest Department and Mr Khan is but one topical example of how the former wrestles control of the forests from those most closely linked to them. The adoption of technocratic environmentalism by the ‘elite’ in the Forest Department has pitted conservation against zones of human activity, eroding people’s access to the forest – literally as well as in the ways they relate to it.

References:

Baviskar, A. (1994). Fate of the Forest: Conservation and Tribal Rights. Economic and Political Weekly, 2493-2501.

Centeno, M. (1993). The New Leviathan: The Dynamics and Limits of Technocracy. Theory and Society, 207-335.

Choudhary, C. (2019, February 14).  Adivasi, Dalit Villagers in Jharkhand move Court to get back Land acquired for Adani Power Plant. Retrieved from Scroll. in: https://scroll.in/article/912998/adivasi-dalit-villagers-in-jharkhand-move-court-to-get-back-land-acquired-for-adani-power-plant

Godbole, D. (2021). Whose Forest is it Anyway? Exploring the Intersection between Indigenous Identity and Environmental Discourse in India. Unpublished manuscript.

Guha, R. & Martinez-Alier, J. (1997). Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North and South. London: Routledge.

Gunnell, J.G. (1982). The Technocratic Image and the Theory of Technocracy. Technology and Culture, 392-416.

Habermas, J. (1971). Knowledge and Human Interests. Beacon Press, Boston.

Joint Committee on the Scheduled Tribes (Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill 2005. (2006). Evidence. New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat.

Kashwan, P. (2013). The Politics of Rights-based Approaches in Conservation. Land Use Policy, 613-626.

Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change. (1972) Wildlife (Protection) Act. New Delhi: Government of India.

Ministry of Tribal Affairs. (2006). Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act. New Delhi: Government of India.

Narain, S. (2021). Why Environmentalism Needs Equity: Learning From the Environmentalism of the Poor to Build Our Common Future. In R. Jha, Twenty KR Narayan Orations (pp. 247-268). Canberra: ANU.

Schug, D.M. (2000). The Bureaucratisation of Forest Management in India. Environment and History, 229-242.

Sharma, S. (2023, April 13). Calls for Sarus crane to be released after Heartbreaking Video with Human Friend: ‘Their Love is Pure’. Retrieved from The Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/india/sarus-crane-video-release-petition-reunion-b2318375.html

Sud, N. (2009). The Indian State in a Liberalising Landscape. Development and Change, 255-279.

The Hindu Bureau. (2023, March 23). UP’s Missing Sarus Crane that’s Stirred up a Hornet’s Nest in the State’s Policies. Retrieved from The Hindu: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/ups-missing-sarus-crane-thats-stirred-up-a-hornets-nest-in-the-states-politics/article66654154.ece

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Divya is a graduate in Development Studies and currently works for a non-governmental organization in the UK. Her research interests lie in the field of land rights.