Abstract
The Van Gujjars families migrating to the Alpine pastures today face the same fate of being the ‘victims of conservation'. It started in the forest of foothills at the beginning of the 1990s with Rajaji National Park, but during the last decade most of the summer pastureland in the upper ranges has also been converted into national parks, global heritage sites or sanctuaries. Apart from National parks, Van Gujjars elsewhere had the right to graze their animals in parts of the forest against a fixed grazing fee. But now some forests are being closed by the implementation of Joint Forest Management Programmes. This Paper is based on a mixed research in which the quantitative aspect aimed at identifying the factors and levels of women empowerment before and after sedentarization through a Women empowerment Index. Qualitative research aimed to explore perspectives of young women from Gujjar community in terms of patterns of coping in their sedentarized life. Narratives of women presented a sense of collectivism and identification with issues and concerns of other Gujjars in terms of an identity of victimhood and a sense of being marginalized and socially excluded. Following patterns of coping emerged from narratives: Use of existing resources, Women as Livestock owners and managers, Women as Leaders in Migration, Work Participation and status of women, Women as Builders of Asset base, Gujjar women- the Natural resource managers, Coping through normalizing and acceptance, Coping in social matters and Assurance for moneylenders.
Highlights
Van Gujjars are fully pastoralists following transhumance between two distinct eco zones without much diversification of subsistence strategy
A Van Gujjar residing in the foothills of Shivaliks of Uttar Pradesh need to migrate to the Alpine regions of Uttarakhand or Himachal Pradesh need to migrate through Uttarakhand where they are seen as intruders with no permanent State belonging, as gets evident in the case of Van Gujjars of Uttar Pradesh who were stopped from migrating to their summer pastures in Uttarkashi in the State of Uttarakhand
Flintan [5] emphasizes in her study on women and pastoralism that is there difference in the socio-economic status of and constraints over pastoral women, and there are differences between the pastoral systems themselves and level of mobility on which they are based; the systems of ‘rights’ available to both men and women including de jure, de facto, nominal and actual; and women’s and men’s own perceptions of what ‘empowerment’ means, just to name a few
Summary
Van Gujjars are fully pastoralists following transhumance between two distinct eco zones without much diversification of subsistence strategy. The controls further emphasized on the restrictions on herd size with the limited number of animals they were allowed to keep despite being fully pastoralists These rules left the Van Gujjars waiting every summer in the lowlands for the checkpoints to be established along the migratory routes and for official permission to proceed up Sociology and Anthropology 3(11): 598-607, 2015 into the hills. There is non existence of linkages between them and government services for education, health and veterinary support This emphasizes on the exclusion faced due to shrinkage of pastures owing to the creation of National parks in their traditional pasture land, traditional view of conservation by forest authorities as being anti people and negative attitude of villagers on the migratory routes
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