Abstract
Yadav introduces how the Gonds are caught up in the battle between the Human and Tiger in Panna and how that currently shapes their livelihood options. She focuses on postcolonial institutions of governance, market, economy, and forests in the village and compares the experience of the Gonds, the works of other scholars who have worked on displacement and resettlement of tribal populations due to forest conservation policies. She also introduces the current debates on universal basic income in India for cash transfer in the context of conservation based evictions of Gonds from the forest and how India compares with other countries like Scandinavia such as in Norway, drawing upon Ferguson (2015), where communities are compensated through cash transfers due to commodification of the Norway’s natural resources. She also in detail describes her experiences of doing fieldwork in a conservative Hindu and patriarchal society and her efforts on establishing a trustful relation with the Gonds. She concludes the book by suggesting that the case of the precarious lives of the Gonds should be treated not as being passive but as an active form of anarchy against the state.
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- 1.
Livelihood diversification is conceptualised as an coping strategy (Niehof 2004) to deal with rapidly changing economic environments and as an expression of the Gonds’ resilience and entrepreneurship at a time when traditional livelihoods are under serious threat.
- 2.
“A long list of the Gond Kings who ruled from these places is given by Major Lucie-Smith in his Settlement Report of Chanda District, 1869. When he was preparing the land revenue settlement report of Chandrapur, 1863–1869, he compiled a genealogy of the Gond Kings based on oral and written traditions which he had collected.” http://mygadchiroli.com/down21.html.
- 3.
1860 Gond rebellion, begun by Ramji Gond in Adilabad.
- 4.
Some of the Gonds had acquired marginal amounts of land because their ancestors were also clearing forest lands through slash and burning activities to make way for subsistence form of agriculture. The various Gond hamlets around the forest were basically a part of the thick and dense forest before the Gonds had settled there.
- 5.
Scholars studying Gonds of Central India (David Baker, Archana Prasad, Suresh Mishra, Ajai Skaria, Andre Wink, Sumit Guha) have extensively studied tribes of Central India like the Gonds but do not mention Sur Gonds .
- 6.
- 7.
Newly married women do not engage in earning for their families as their primary duties are household chores and nursing.
- 8.
They are aware that forests are a source of basic income for them.
- 9.
There is a precedence to Panna National Park. Out of the 166 national parks in India, 9 are in Madhya Pradesh alone because of the vast forest area.
- 10.
Ashraf was one amongst those who acted as agents for the local administration to help in convincing the villages relocating them from the forests about five years ago. These agents got a small commission from the state for doing so. Working out a compensation package and communicating that to the village being considered for relocation is a long drawn process as the villagers have to produce residential documents and identity cards issued by the panchayat.
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Yadav, S. (2018). Introduction: Urgent Anthropology. In: Precarious Labour and Informal Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77971-3_1
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