Examine the Centre-State tensions in implementing the Kasturirangan Committee recommendations on the Western Ghats. How can ecological conservation be reconciled with local livelihood concerns?

The Kasturirangan High Level Working Group (2013) proposed about 60,000 sq km — roughly 37% of the Western Ghats across six States — as an Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA) [1]. Thirteen years and seven draft notifications later it remains unnotified, a deadlock rooted less in ecology than in federal design and livelihood anxiety.

Roots of the Centre-State tension

• Legal asymmetry: ESAs are notified by the Centre under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 [3], while land, agriculture and local regulation are State domains — the Centre restricts, the State absorbs the political cost.
• Unequal burden: Karnataka's ~20,668 sq km is the single largest State share, concentrating resistance in Malnad and coastal districts and pushing it onto the floor of the Assembly.
• Contested delineation: States seek physical ground-truthing over satellite-based mapping; village lists shift with each draft, so no household knows its own status.
• Consent by attrition: final notification effectively awaits the concurrence of all six States [2]; every lapsed draft resets the clock, delivering neither protection nor certainty.

The livelihood dimension

• The prohibitions target mining, quarrying, thermal power and red-category industries — not plantation farming or housing [1]; yet prolonged uncertainty itself depresses land values, credit access and land transactions.
• Mapping done without prior consultation turns a technical exercise into a perceived threat of displacement.

Reconciling conservation with livelihoods

• Issue a final, even reduced, notification rather than another draft: a smaller enforceable ESA protects more than a large paper one.
• Adopt State-led, village-wise ground verification — as Kerala did via the Oommen V. Oommen Committee — converting outright rejection into negotiation.
• Enforce existing law: CAG audit found most inspected Kerala quarries violating norms amid weak monitoring [4]; an unaudited ban changes nothing.
• Settle rights first through gram sabhas under the Forest Rights Act, 2006 [5], so families know precisely what they retain.

Conservation and livelihood are not rival claims here; the real failure is procedural drift. Participatory demarcation, a time-bound final notification and credible compensation can convert confrontation into cooperative federalism — securing both the Ghats' rivers and the people who farm beside them.