Livelihood And Ecotourism A Sociological Study Of Valmiki Tiger Reserve West Champaran Bihar

Abstract

At the outset, we must understand various perspectives related to ecotourism in Indian context as newlineprelude. At the global level, the year 2002 was declared international year of ecotourism by newlineunited nation s general assembly. In Indian context, the decadal phase 2000-2010 is basically newlinereferred as integrative whereby integration of environmental concern in economic and social newlinedevelopment has taken precedence. (Verma and Dutta, 2021). Further, to understand the political newlineeconomy we must refer to Vandana Shiva(2016), according to her, political economy of growth newlinehampers or affects feminine principle of forest management and expoits male labor for its newlinebenefit. Overall, the survival capacity of families gets affected. This is sufficient argument to newlinestudy the ecotourism development along with the impact upon traditional livelihood of newlinecommunities. Thereafter, we must refer to the study conducted by Sunita Narain (2017) to newlineunderstand various perspectives related to ecotourism in tiger reserve. She has been memember newlineof Tiger Task Force which published its report titled joining the dots . She advocated two newlinepronged study for successful conservation and development in tiger reserves of the country; one newlinethat inviolate spaces are important for wild animals and thereby require a better relocation newlinepackage and it must be on voluntary basis and other in the remaining villages, which has to co- newlineexist with tigers habitat, must be given preferential shares in tourism to the collaborative newlinemanagement of the reserves. newlineThe thesis works upon the various components of ecotourism, such as livelihood and tourism newlineexperience, through the angle of neo-liberal conservation. The title must be interpreted based on newlinethe reality; its meaning is twofold. First, Livelihood means traditional livelihoods of the fringe newlinevillages of Valmiki Tiger reserve, where the concept of ecotourism is in intial stages. It has newlineissues like crop-loss, human-wildlife conflict and such contingent matters concerning forest newlinebased livelihood. On the other hand