Tribal youth killed by tiger a victim of red tapism too

KOZHIKODE: The tribal youth Baburaj who was mauled to death and eaten up by a tiger at the Kurichiyad settlement located deep inside the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary (WWS) on Thursday was as much a victim of government red tape as the fatal man-animal conflict which claimed his life.
In a tragic irony of sorts, Baburaj, who had expressed his willingness to move out of the entrapped forest village despite being a member of the forest dwelling primitive Kattunayaika tribe, lost his life even when the Rs 6 lakh fund allotted by the central government to relocate his family was lying unused in his joint bank account opened for the purpose.
He couldn't move out of the settlement as the district level implementation committee of the voluntary relocation programme, which was to purchase and provide alternate land for him, failed to do so. As per the project guidelines, tribal members cannot purchase land on their own and it has to be done by the district level implementation committee. The cash is also transferred in the joint account of the beneficiary, the panchayat president and the tribal development officer.
The central government had in July 2014 sanctioned Rs 7.5 crore to implement the voluntary relocation programme for the 93 families trapped inside the Kurichiyad settlement. The state tribal department had also recently issued orders to transfer Rs 7.4 crore to the forest department to relocate the tribal families of three settlements including Kurichiyad.
Though 52 of the total of 93 families have already been relocated out of the Kurichiyad settlement by providing Rs 6 lakh of the total eligible compensation of Rs 10 lakh for each family, the dreams of the family of Baburaj and a dozen other tribals to emerge out of the forest to lead a life free from fear of wild animals remained caught up in red tape.
N Badusha, president of the Wayanad Prakrithi Samrakshana Samithi, said that Baburaj had selected a piece of land at Thathoor near Chethalayam, but the land was rejected after inspection by the district level implementation sub-committee.
"After that, he again identified some other plots, but the bureaucratic hurdles delayed the purchase of the land. It is the duty of the six member subcommittee to inspect and purchase the land identified by the tribals under the relocation programme. But the sub- committee has not been active for the last four months," Badusha, who is also a member of the district level project implementation committee said.
"He used to work in automobile workshops and yearned to move out of the forests. It is a tragedy that his life ended up in the claws of tiger even when the sanctioned funds for relocating his family were lying unused in his account," said Kuruchiyad Raghavan, a villager who had relocated from the settlement using the central government funds recently.
Sultan Bathery Tahasildar N K Abraham said that the relocation of the family of Baburaj and some other tribals were held as the land selected by them were either unsuitable due to lack of road access or were above the budget.
Based on the KFRI report, the state government had submitted Rs 80-crore proposal for the relocation of the 800 families in 14 settlements in the first phase which was approved by the Union government in 2011 under the MoEF's Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitat Scheme (IDWHS). Availability of the funds was the main constraint and only Rs 17.80 crore of the promised Rs 80 crores have come by from the centre.