Retreading the Forest Path

"The government has given us land but we have lost our identity" - this lament of a Muduvan tribal elder for the lost dignity of her people echoes across 150 years of history, from the time the British administrators took control of India's forests in 1865. At that moment, overnight, the adivasi people became 'trespassers' - their struggles to claim their homes declared 'criminal'. Today, the majority of them, a huge 7.5% of India's population in the year 2000, are regarded as the poorest of the poor. Like adivasi people all over the world, their longing for their home in the forest embraces deeply reverent attitudes towards the meaning of life and Mother Nature. To understand tribal 'forest culture' and its disruption is crucial to any endeavour to enhance their lives.

INSTITUTE OF PEOPLES' EDUCATION - JAN SHIKSHAN SANSTHAN (JSS), a job training program launched by the Goverment of India, is run by the M.A. Math in Idukki, Kerala and Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu. More than 100 courses in occupations varying from candlemaking to computer science are offered through this program. The M.A. Math also encourages JSS beneficiaries to participate in their communities and offer selfless service.

The JSS Idukki team is helping tribal people to become self-reliant by training them as forest guides and enabling them to establish fair trade opportunities for their products. One of the most important aspects of this work, which is being done in isolated Muduvan tribal hamlets, arises from the exchange of human values. Sharing the spirit of 'forest culture' with the Muduvan community, and understanding their ways and values, has become an important motivating factor embedded in the experience of imparting skills to the tribal people. Amma, the founder of Mata Amritanandamayi Math, the NGO managing JSS in Idukki inspires the team. She encourages this empathetic approach to development work, saying, "Having empathy is to feel the sorrow of others as our own sorrow, and their happiness as our joy. This is the mental attitude we need to develop."

The Idukki District of Kerala is superbly scenic. Its mountains abound with rain forests, verdant valleys, and waterfalls. Plantation owners have sculpted the hillsides with stepped fields that hug the slopes like green carpets. The population of Idukki is largely composed of these plantation owners and their migrant labourers. Tribal people inhabit the dense interiors, or live in areas demarcated for them by the government. Idukki is home to the Periyar Tiger Reserve and the Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary. Munnar provides the exclusive habitat of the Nilgiri Thar, (a deer like animal) and its hills bloom blue every 12 years when the unique Neelkurinji flower opens. Idukki has virtually no industries, transportation is underdeveloped and many remote areas are inaccessible even by road.

Idukki's natural beauty makes it a popular destination for adventurous tourists. One of its treasure troves, the Marayoor sandalwood forest - the largest in Kerala, is also, unfortunately a preferred location for sandalwood smuggling by the mafia operators in the metropolitan cities. Ironically, the greed to extract forest products, which alienated the tribal peoples from their home 150 years ago, has now become instrumental in partially returning them as forest guides.

Marayoor village is surrounded by 1,500 hectares of sandalwood forest. The wood's fragrant quality and high oil content ensures great demand in India and abroad. Mr. Mahesh Kumar, the District Forest Officer explains, "The sandal wood smuggling mafia consists of a network of middlemen who work for a financier who stays totally out of the picture, literally six or seven states away. The mafia gangs attract the poor people of the forest - the seasonal day labourers who live in hamlets near the tea estates - by giving them money for cutting and transporting the trees. The tribals are excellent smugglers, they know the ways of the forest, they are totally in tune with the behavior and warning cries and calls of animals and birds, and this makes it very difficult to catch them. Women are also used as carriers. They disguise themselves as pregnant women and hide the dried logs inside their sarees. Marayoor is on the border of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, so the smugglers can move products easily to Tamil Nadu where there are no border checks. In the nearby commercial centres of Palghat and Salem, the mafia sells 1 kg of dry sandalwood for between Rs.25, 000 and Rs.50, 000."

The Forest Officers know that the tribal peoples' natural guilelessness makes them easy prey. So to combat the rising crime the Forestry Department decided to rehabilitate these innocent smugglers by giving them a salaried role in forest management and sandal wood protection. The department established twenty-four self-help groups drawn from the tribal and scheduled caste people living in the forested areas. The Forest Department approached JSS Idukki with a request for a course on Eco-Tourism for 75 people drawn from these groups. The idea was novel, its aims were:

To promote adventure tourism by tapping into the skills and knowledge of the indigenous tribes of the forests and training them as guides.
To guide the tribes away from smuggling by giving them an alternative and socially acceptable livelihood.

To reduce smuggling by bringing tourists into the most inaccessible areas where smugglers thrive.

JSS designed the eco-tourism training with these purposes in mind. The new forest guides, mostly women, were given intensive training in visitor management, sociability and communication skills, forest protection and natural history.

'Forest Treks,' are popular with tourists. The JSS-trained guides lead visitors on explorations of vast expanses of the forest, following the same paths that are trodden by smugglers to carry their precious booty across the border. Night treks are an especially exciting treat for adventurous tourists, and are useful in denying the smugglers their undercover nightly operations. During the day, the guides take the tourists to a village to see how the famous Marayoor Jaggery (palm sugar) is made. For transporting their guests, the guides use a covered, bullock-drawn cart, which protects them from rain showers and sharp winds. The cart ambles through the wide swathes of sugar cane and long avenues of sandal wood trees. The tourists visit the famous tribal wall murals deep inside the forest. The guides also lead them to the Muniyaras - the abode of the saints - the hilltops, where centuries ago holy men and women meditated in the crisp, cold air to attain samadhi. The guides also act as forest wardens; they patrol wearing camouflage uniforms, happily protecting the forest that was previously their own. The Forest Department pays each self-help group for the work of its members.

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