Description
The proposed paper aims to highlight the linkages between conservation as a tool of dominance and land grab retrenching the power and dominance of the world governments over indigenous people with special emphasis of its impact on the indigenous populations in South Asia, specifically in India. Exploitation of natural resources for economic development has not only increased the contestations on ‘space’, it also led to the massive degradation of natural environment. The idea to preserve nature has given way to the model of conservation which are free from indigenous people’s interference and thereby creating zones free from human beings. The Western approach of conservation which was based on two axioms of ‘Hands off nature’ and ‘Gigantism’ was applied to formulate conservation model in South Asia. These practices created dominant model of ‘Fortress approach’ of conservation in both global North and South based on exclusionary practice of evicting indigenous people from the space that are declared to be protected as they are of critical importance to wildlife and nature. This paper, through a study of National Parks in India, would attempt to highlight the linkages between the international politics of conservation regimes constructed by dominant first world governments, state interests in the post-colonial world and their impact on peoples, ecologies and sustainability.
Keywords: Conservation, Marginalization, Land Grab, Resource -Conflict
