Christina Lizzi is a student in the Environmental Law Program and in her final semester at Richardson. She spent January 2017 – August 2017 in India, attending O.P. Jindal Global Law School in Sonipat and, as a Sam L. Cohen International Human Rights Fellow, interning at the Principal Bench of India’s National Green Tribunal in Delhi over the summer. She shares with us a particularly eye-opening experience she had during her time in India.

---

“Are we there yet?” I wondered. We had only gone maybe a mile up the steep incline, but my face was already starting to match the color of my patialas (traditional Indian style pleated pants).

I was following two young boys and their father, along with my friend, into the foothills of the Himalayas to meet the villagers that I had heard were living “trapped inside a Tiger reserve” just outside of Rishikesh.

These young boys and their father walk this trail every day. The approximately three-mile trek is their lifeline to work, to school, and to basic amenities. Since the establishment of Rajaji National Park in the 1980s, all development in their small village has been prohibited.

We took a break to sit down. The young father carried his lunch in an aluminum tiffin. It clinked against the rocks on the ground as he sat. The boys, aged about 5 and 7, crouched near the edge of hill, throwing rocks. The youngest was shy; he barely looked at me. The elder was proud to demonstrate his English. Below us the Ganges River flowed.

Rishikesh is known at the “birthplace of Yoga.” The Beatles made it famous to the Western world when they came here to learn transcendental meditation from Maharaji Mahesh Yogi. Prior to that, however, Rishikesh was already well-known throughout India as a deeply spiritual place and pilgrimage site for Hindus to bathe in the sacred Ganges and to visit the many temples and ashrams along its banks. Today, Rishikesh’s streets are filled with shops and hotels catering to foreign tourists and yoga students who mingle with the dozens of orange-robed sanyasis (wandering monks), devout Hindus, adventure-seeking middle-class Indian twenty-somethings, and cows. (In addition to its spiritual pull, Rishikesh is also known for some of the best bungee jumping and river rafting in the country.) Two bridges, the Laxhman Jhula and the Ram Jhula, mark where two Hindu gods once crossed the Ganges, and bisect Rishikesh into two distinct communities.

The small village that we were headed to lay closer towards Laxhman Jhula.

I asked my friend and translator, Renuka, if she could ask the father about the village and his life there. I struggled to apply the bit of Hindi I had picked up as I listened to him. His story was the same one that I soon would hear repeated again and again through my translator from the other villagers.

His village is called Dhotiya, and he had lived there all his life. The story goes like this: In the 1980s, some people from the government asked the gram panchayat of Dhotiya if the community would like to have a park. Not fully understanding the meaning, the leader for the gram panchayat agreed. (India’s most localized form of self-governance is at the gram panchayat level.) They did not understand that the proposed park would be a national park and that development would be prohibited. They did not understand that it would mean that their water infrastructure would no longer be considered or cared for by the government. They did not understand it would mean that no shops could be built. They did not understand that it meant that no electricity could be run up the hill to them. They did not understand that it meant that roads could not be built. They did not understand that it meant that teachers would no longer come to their schools. They did not understand that their way of life would come to a stand-still, be cut off, and trapped within the borders of the park.

A national park, under India’s Wildlife Act of 1972, affords the greatest protection to wildlife and its habitat. No human activity (with very limited exceptions) is allowed in a national park. When a national park is “notified” by a state, all claims to land within the proposed park boundaries are supposed to be assessed. Villagers are supposed to be relocated. For reasons unknown to the young father and the other villagers, Dhotiya, along with several other small villages, were neither excluded from the boundaries of the 320 square mile park, nor relocated.

The situation was exacerbated in 2015 when Rajaji national park was additionally designated as a tiger reserve. Man-animal conflicts escalated, and villagers increasingly feared for their children’s safety on the daily trek through the wilderness to school.

Today, approximately 70 people live in Dhotiya. Each family, often multigenerational, appears to live in a single room of one of the several single-story buildings. When we arrived, the young father welcomed us into his home. His wife served us chai and biscuits. Renuka and I took out the Kit-Kats we had brought from Rishikesh for the kids. The room was sparsely furnished: a bed, a coffee table, two chairs. The couple and their young children shared them all. The monsoon rains began, and in the back of my mind I worried about our journey back down the mountain (I had a 11pm bus to catch back to Delhi that night).

I asked, through Renuka, if the wife ever went down to Rishikesh. She laughed a bit. No. Not often – maybe once a month at most to pick up some things. Her husband went there daily for work. He, like most of the men in the village, made a living by driving a taxi. Another man worked in one of the shops. The women farmed, took care of cooking, fetched the water, washed the clothes, and watched over the children. There was much to do in Dhotiya just to survive.

We decided that the rains were not going to let up and crossed from the first home, through an area where some cows were kept to a home on the same level. There, we huddled inside, as another young man and his family recounted the same story of how life came to a stand still in his village, how he feared for his children’s safety, and saw no future for the community unless something was done.

Then we climbed the steep stairs in the rain to the next home. Crops, including some resembling taro, filled in the terraced spaces between the properties. We were again invited to sit and drink chai. This time, two elders repeated the narrative.

Another level up. Another home. I played with a small friendly puppy as we all talked. The grandmother pointed out that the dog very well may not be there for long. The tigers had eaten others. I asked how often they saw tigers. “All the time” was the response. She asked a young boy to confirm that he had seen one just last week. But the elephants, she said, were the real problem. They would come through regularly, destroying anything in their way.

The rain stopped. The grandfather pointed up to a small solar panel attached to a wooden pole outside the home. He told us that the last help they had received from the government was installation of that panel over a decade ago. When the water pipe broke a few years ago, the villagers had to collect money on their own to fix it. It was still a two and half mile walk from the village to reach the pump.

“What would solve the problem?” Renuka asked for us. By now, several of the villagers were sitting with us. Some believed being excluded from the borders of the park would help. At least then, they could develop. If not that, they would be happy to relocate, but some had heard horror stories of the government relocating people to areas with no resources. At least here they could farm.

Noting that the sun was about to set, we thanked them all and headed to the last home at the top of the hill. Two menacing dogs appeared, dissuading us from entering. Several children appeared. This was the home of Madan Singh Bisht, the man who had greeted us in Rishikesh and connected us with the young father who would be our guide. He was still down in the town.

Madan Singh Bisht is the community’s leader and advocate. Since the 1990’s he has been pounding on the doors of every government official seeking relief for the villagers. In 2015 he met Advocate Gaurav Kumar Bansal. Bansal took up the villagers plea to the National Green Tribunal, naming seven governmental entities as defendants, and alleging violations of the Forest Conservation Act of 1987 and violations of the villagers fundamental rights. The case is pending before the National Green Tribunal. In August 2017, the Tribunal ordered the government to produce a report on rehabilitation of the children in Dhotiya. The report was submitted in September 2017, and further hearings are scheduled.

I met Bansal while interning at the Tribunal. He is on the board of the National Green Tribunal Bar Association and regularly appears before the Tribunal, the Supreme Court of India, and the Delhi High Court. He is one of the rare advocates who takes up cases for communities like Dhotiya regularly and on a predominantly pro-bono basis. I interviewed him as part of my research on access to justice and, knowing that I frequently travelled to Rishikesh, he recommended that I visit Rajaji to meet the villagers and better understand what they were facing. He facilitated the connection with Madan Singh Bisht, enabling me to meet with the villagers after I completed my internship with the Tribunal and right before I left India.

Witnessing the plight of the villagers first-hand brought together so many issues I had confronted on paper and had heard from the mouths of advocates during my internship at the Tribunal. For one, the connection between human rights and conservation could not have been clearer. Here, the misapplication of the law was strangling a community and putting lives at risk. The Tribunal had jurisdiction to deal with both matters. Second, it made it clear that the Tribunal serves an important purpose as a forum “for the people” when all other doors are shut. The Tribunal can only be accessed, however, when advocates like Gaurav are willing to identify issues and without hesitation (and in many instances, without remuneration) bring them forward. Although the Tribunal allows for pro se applicants, throughout its history, only a handful of individuals have approached the Tribunal in this manner. Furthermore, the nearest bench of the Tribunal is a six-hour bus ride from Rishikesh, hardly accessible to a villager from Dhotiya. Access to justice, therefore, depends on access to advocates.

Renuka and I made our way down the hill towards Rishikesh alone. We were wary. She told me her mother would kill her (or maybe me) if anything happened to us. She was familiar with the jungle; I was blissfully unaware of potential dangers and grateful for an experienced guide. Really, we were just scared of tigers. I thought of the children who made this hike every day. As we neared road we encountered Madan who was driving his moped as far as the trail would allow him before he would have to park it and trek the rest of the way. He got off his vehicle and pulled out papers from the seat compartment to show us – the different filings he had made; the responses from government officials. He reiterated the history and issues we had heard above. We thanked him for his time, for sharing with us, and for all he was doing for his community. I thought of Bansal, of the Tribunal, and of the law. I hoped that this forum would fully hear out the complaints and find a solution for the villagers. I questioned what my role was, now as a witness, and decided that I would carry the images and the conversations with me. That I would remember that every conservation act has many consequences, and all need to be carefully considered. And that I would share the story with those who would listen. On behalf of those who took time to open up their homes and tell me what I have now told you, thank you for listening.

---

We last featured Christina on our blog when she shared with us her experience at the World Conference on Environment in New Delhi, India. Read about that here.