Amit Kaushik

My research examines how Dalit communities—historically marginalized by caste and living inside the core of the newly established Veerangana Durgawati Tiger Reserve in Central India—navigate the intersecting pressures of conservation-induced displacement, caste-based exclusion, and predator-human conflict. Located in the drought-prone highlands of Bundelkhand, this dry-forest region is home to both apex predators like tigers and wolves, and to Dalit groups long relegated to the peripheries of the “village society.” As more than 60 villages face relocation, this project investigates how Dalits negotiate with the state and conservation actors, assert their claims to forest-based livelihoods, and reconfigure their lives in the face of conservation policies. Drawing on evolving theoretical and methodological frameworks of Dalit ecologies and multispecies ethnography, I explore how caste hierarchies and conservation regimes intertwine, shaping how people and predators coexist both before and after displacement. Through participant observation, archival research, and interviews with Forest Department officials, conservation scientists, and Dalit villagers, this project traces how compensation schemes and conservation practices reproduce spatial and ecological exclusions rooted in caste. By foregrounding Dalit experiences of living with and beyond predators, this research rethinks the everyday politics of caste, displacement, and more-than-human life in India’s conservation frontier.