Some Roots Go Deeper Than Rights
I went to Kudremukh with a research question. I came back with something I hadn't expected — a quiet sense of inadequacy. Not about the work. About myself. I sat with tribal communities in and around Kudremukh National Park — in village circles, in small homes, under areca trees with the forest just a few feet away. I was there to study the Forest Rights Act of 2006 and what it had meant for the people who live inside one of India's most biodiverse landscapes. I had my frameworks. My coding software. My FGD guides with their structured open-ended questions. What I didn't have was preparation for the kind of people I was about to meet. There was a man — I won't forget him. Yoghappa, around 70 years old, from Balekadi village. He spoke about his mother's practice of healing — a grinding stone in every home, leaves and roots brought in from the forest, treatments passed down not through books but through presence and patience. He still carried some of it...
