Pastoral Politics: Shepherds, Bureaucrats, and Conservation in the Western Himalaya

Vasant Saberwal explores the origins of the alarmist rhetoric on land degradation in the western Himalaya, an alarm unsubstantial by empirical evidence and repudiated by ecological theory. The author suggests that the century-old inability of the Forest Department to enforce its most restrictive policies, owing to sustained intra-governmental conflicts of interest, in effect `forces' the Department to adopt an increasingly alarmist rhetoric.