Statehood & the IMF Affair: Crisis and Opportunity, 2001

The people of the Niti Valley looked forward to statehood for the Uttarakhand Himalayas that was carved out of the Uttar Pradesh hills and given the name "Uttaranchal" in November 2000. As a struggle for cultural identity, appropriate development, and local control of resources, the separate state movement that had raged throughout the 90s found echoes in the Nanda Devi situation. In fact, the first tourism minister of the small mountain state was a Bhotiya from the region himself, and it seemed for a while that things were about to change for the better.

In May 2001, the Indian Mountaineering Foundation (IMF), under the auspices of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MEF), gained the Uttaranchal state government's permission to enter the core zone and determine the feasibility of reopening the park to tourism. At first pleased by the stated intent of the IMF, Lata's residents grew apprehensive. Fearful that the government would betray them again and allow national and multinational level tour operators and travel agencies to monopolize tourism in Nanda Devi, the local communities launched into a flurry of activity aimed at safeguarding their rights.

Into their third year of the Jhapto Cheeno movement, village leaders felt that the IMF affair would prove pivotal in their own struggle to regain their common property resources and prevent further erosion of their rights and livelihoods. With the government leaning seriously towards reopening the reserve but possibly falling under the influence of large business interests, the movement sought to deploy the network of social activists and environmental justice organizations it had built up in the preceding years to push their own agenda for establishing community-based ecotourism.

Solidarity at Home and Abroad, 2001

Fortunately, the Bhotiya communities received critical assistance from outside groups, both in Uttarakhand and abroad. Dr. Sunil Kainthola of Jaanadhar, a forest rights organization working throughout Uttarakhand, assisted in launching the Vanaadhikar ("our forests") initiative to unite similar communities affected by protected areas and draconian forest policies. As early as January 2001, he had held consultations with the much esteemed Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra (RLEK) that had been working on the similar case of Van Gujjars in Rajaji National Park. Other communities facing displacement from large-scale development projects such as the many dams planned throughout Uttarakhand were also seen as natural allies.

Recognizing the power of such coalition building, Kainthola helped convene the Alliance for Development, a coalition of grassroots organisations that aimed to introduce a strong pro-people and pro-environment voice to the development debates taking place in the new Uttaranchal state. The Alliance felt that making these links was crucial to proposing culturally appropriate and ecologically sound alternatives to prevailing development practices. Moreover, the wedge driven between people and their local environment in such places as Nanda Devi was seen as both a social and environmental catastrophe, requiring a sharp revision of existing conservation policies and a democratization of natural resource management regimes. Furthermore, the Alliance, which included many leading figures in the Uttarakhand activist community, provided a platform to network activists around the country, pool office and staff resources, and present a stronger united front.

With such intervention, the MEF, state government, and local park authorities all realized the problematic nature of the IMF proposal. In the fall, two IMF-sponsored international expeditions were denied access to the core zone as the Forest Department pledged to prevent any further unauthorized entry. By October, the Nanda Devi communities would issue their own declaration and hold a workshop elaborating their community-based proposals for opening up the NDBR to ecotourism.

In this task, Satish Negi played a vital role from his base in San Jose, California. A software engineer with ancestral links to Uttarakhand, Negi joined the campaign and provided solidarity from abroad by interacting with various scholars, activists, donor agencies, and professional bodies on the campaign’s behalf. He also procured funding for the planned workshop to elaborate the community-based ecotourism plan.