People have to be placed at the centre if conservation has to make sense universally. What makes things even worse, is that these so-called protected zones allow commercial activities to go almost unchecked- Ravleen Kaur The earth is cracked and the horizon bare.The deathly silence is broken by the occasional whirring of crude-oil pumps.Women, going about their daily life in bright mirror-work lehangas, add a dash of colour to an otherwise arid background. This tough terrain has dominated 50-year-old Shantabhai Maganbhai Bamania's life since he was 10. Shantabhai is an Agaria, a salt worker. The Rann of Kutch in Gujarat is his home to him and his family for eight months a year, from September to April. The remaining four months they spend in Kharagoda. Not just Shantabhai, the Rann of Kutch is home to more than 100,000 workers like him for eight months a year, who come from villages 30 to 40 kms away. Their livelihood has been under threat ever since the Little Rann of Kutch (the Rann is divided into the Little Rann and the Great Rann) was notified as a wildlife sanctuary in 1973 to protect the wild ass. In 2006, the salt workers were served eviction notices. The saltmaking Agarias do not understand why they are being asked to go, leaving behind an occupation they have been involved in for centuries. Where is the conflict, they ask. According to a Gujarat forest department sponsored study conducted by the Gujarat Ecological Education and Research Foundation (GEER), Ecological Study of the Wild Ass Sanctuary, the total area leased out for salt pans in 1995 was 13,357 ha, about 3 per cent of the sanctuary. The report notes that the area under salt production went up from 6,948 hectares (ha) in 1982-84 to 13,357 ha in 1995. At the same time, the wild ass population also went up from 720 in a 1976 census to 3863 in 2004. The report says "a minimum population of about 2,500 wild asses in the area would be a safe level to achieve the objective of conservation." "So where then is the conflict?" asks Harinesh Pandya, secretary of Agaria Heetrakshak Manch (AHRM), a forum that fights for the rights of Agarias. "The animals can often be found drinking water from the Agaria tanks. Never has a salt worker harmed a wild ass," says he. The forest department agrees there has been a healthy increase in the wild ass population of the area. It ascribes the rise in the number of wild asses to good rainfall in the past six years. "Wild ass mating gets disturbed by movement of salt trucks," says M A Chawda, Divisional Forest Officer of Dhrangadra. This is a classic case of speaking through the hat. Mating and breeding of wild asses begin in April and extends up to October. Trucks move into the area only in March and April when the salt harvest is ready. "The GEER report also suggests that there is no threat to wildlife from salt making. It only recommends the administration designate paths for trucks. It's a management problem, not an ecological one. Why punish Agarias if the government hasn't acted on this recommendation?" asks Vinay Mahajan of the Ahmedabad-based independent research institute, Sandarbh Development Studies. The government clearly follows a dual policy: act tough with the poor and be soft towards the powerful. It wants the Agarias to vacate the three per cent sanctuary area used for salt production. On the other hand, proposals for an oil and gas pipeline, from Oil and Natural Gas Commission and Cairn Energy, are now with the government for consideration. This pipeline, if approved, will pass through the Little Rann. The Narmada canal, which too will pass through the sanctuary, has already been given the go-ahead. The Agarias' vulnerability stems from the fact that they have no land deeds. No survey has ever taken place in the Little Rann of Kutch since independence; it does not figure in government revenue records. Revenue department records in fact refer to the area as Survey Number Zero. The forest department often asserts that Agarias have no document to prove their claim over the Rann. But Pandya contends, "There is mention in documents of the colonial state of salt extraction in the Rann of Kutch." His organization has recently ferreted evidence from Mughal times that shows that salt-making in the Rann dates back to more than five centuries. Down to earth feature