Editorial: Hill People

11 December was International Mountain Day. It passed unobserved in Sikkim as perhaps most of India which is unfortunate because the theme this year was significant – “Celebrating Mountain Life”. Pressures of modernity put too much stress on mountain lifestyles, and what is worse, the ‘development’ model of the plains is being increasingly imposed on Hill People. This strains the careful balance that hill communities have evolved after generations of living with the environment as against the mainstream civilisation’s exploitation of natural resources. The demand for resources abundant in the mountains has always been there, but the pressure has increased in the past half a century or so; a coercive pressure which the mountain communities have not been able to resist or manage too effectively. The disintegration of mountain environments has accelerated as more and more hill communities converted to lifestyles which distanced them from the land which was earlier integral to their livelihoods and survival. This is not to suggest that hill societies should be discouraged from aspiring for and acquiring modern luxuries and amenities and slotted away denied as museum pieces. The rush of modernity has however been too quick and the rootedness to the land which defines all rural populations [which most hill societies were until very recently] was snapped too suddenly in the hills. The crossover not being smooth, the communities find themselves maladjusted and this is obvious in the crumbling urban infrastructure and desolate rural scapes which define mountains at least in our country. The celebration of International Mountain Day on the theme “Celebrating Mountain Life” would have thus presented an apt opportunity not only for the plainsfolk to learn about how things were in the mountains [and continue to be in some pockets], but also for the Hill People to begin the process of anchoring their identities and responsibilities with more purpose.
The day this year also marked the 10th anniversary of the International Year of Mountains as designated by the UN, and IMD was projected to “achieve a stronger engagement of actors/institutions and the civil society in sustainable mountain development”. This approach, tied with the theme for the day this year, would have been best served if sustainable mountain development programmes were based more on traditional arrangements of the hill people instead of the power-point presentations by resource persons speaking in generalisations which strike no resonance with the ‘stakeholders’. Although mountains cover approximately one-quarter of the world’s surface, it is home to barely 12% of the human population. The voice of the hill people does not thus carry very far when it comes to framing policy and establishing priorities. Thus far they have been spoken on behalf of, sometimes by well-meaning and informed well-wishers and sometimes by opportunistic issue mongers. If the world body accepts that Mountain Life is worth Celebrating, it is perhaps time that the mountain people were allowed direct access, a voice that is truly representative of what is at risk not only for them but also the rest of the world if the mountains, its ecological balance and its people are allowed to crumble away...