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Dr. Siddhartha Krishnan
The story so far- Doctoral, post-doctoral and post that
Doctoral
I have trained in Sociology. Have a Bachelors degree in Sociology from Loyola College, Chennai (1992-95). I then completed a Masters degree in 1997 at the Sociology department, University of Madras. 
In 1998 I registered for a PhD there. The plan was to specialize in Environmental Sociology, an emergent sub-discipline at that time. Its incipient conflict framework suited the research topic of peasant resistance and planter litigation over a largely forested Zamindari estate in the Nilgiris, I then had in mind. I stuck to the plan and topic. I defended my thesis in late 2004.
Post Doctoral
In 2005 March, I joined ATREE as a post doctoral Fellow. I was asked to join the Conservation and Livelihoods Programme (C&LP) team. The C&LP sought to reconcile conservation with sustainable exercise of forest rights. During my three year stint with the C&LP, the Recognition of Forest Rights Act (RFRA) emerged as the principle legislative medium through which the C&LP attempted reconciliation. The RFRA’s parliamentary career from a Bill to an Act was controversial; its initial draft coinciding with the tiger crisis. As rhetoric and polemic suffused debates and lobbying by conservationists and tribal activists, I often found my post-doc fists, clenched and reddened, gesticulating in the air. But I did manage to eventually pull my hands down, unclench my fists and run my fingers over the keyboard. Some essays on conflicts around the RFRA, and possible differences in the way ‘conservation’ and ‘protection’ were used in the RFRA, resulted. I have since chosen to live an academic life with my fists at ease. Cultural and symbolic aspects of interactions with nature, besides the material, are now beginning to interest me. Meanwhile in 2007 I also became part of the Community Environment Resource Center (CERC), Allapuzha. This is an ATREE initiative, involving Priyadarshanan Dharmarajan, Kiran M C, Jojo Thomas and Latha Bhaskar, to act upon pollution and degradation that the Vembanad wetlands experience.
Post that
In June 2008 I was appointed as Fellow, social sciences. As of today I am involved in three studies. The first two are on human-wildlife interactions and are part of a larger Indo-Norwegian project. The first human-wildlife conflict study, along with Nitin Rai, is in the Billigiri Rangaswamy Betta Temple Wildlife Sanctuary where the Soliga experience frequent crop loss due to wild boar raids. We are trying to understand how provisions of the RFRA can mitigate Soliga suffering.
a pastoral penchant
Second, in the Nilgiris, I am studying the cultural and material consequences that the pastoral Toda experience due to tiger and leopard depredation of their sacred and secular buffalo stock. This study also partakes in a comparative initiative involving sociologists and anthropologists in Norway. I have also begun some pastoral conversations with Sam who works with ATREE, Darjeeling and is researching pastoral livelihoods especially in the context of climate change.
land, water and livelihoods
The third study is on water crisis and social conflicts in two agrarian regions. One is the Malaprabha river basin and the other is the Vembanad coastal estuary. This study is being initiated along with Mohan Seetharam, Shrinivas Badiger and Bejoy Thomas. Together we form team LWLP ( the Land, Water and Livelihoods Programme).
Teaching, travel, review and coordination
I also teach basic sociology and qualitative methods. Will soon offer an elective in environmental sociology. I occasionally do peer paper and project proposal reviews. Have attended conferences and workshops in India, Norway, Sweden and China. Also coordinate a doctoral and post doctoral student driven project on biodiversity conservation and climate change that ATREE and NORAGRIC (environment and development department) of the University of Life Sciences, Norway collaborate upon.
What’s been written?
Peer
Krishnan,S. ‘Of Land, Legislation and Litigation: Forest Leases, Agrarian Reform, Legal Ambiguity and Landscape Anomaly in the Nilgiris: 1969-2007’.2009. (in press with Conservation and Society 7(3)).
Menon, A., Hinnewinkel, C., Garcia, C., Guillerme, S., Rai, N. and Krishnan, S. 2009.'Competing Visions: Domestic Forests, Politics and Forest Policy in the Central Western Ghats of South India', Small-Scale Forestry, 8, 515-527.
Open Access/Editorial Reviewed
Krishnan, S (Eds). 2009. ‘Perspectives on the Forest Rights Act’. Current Conservation.
Political Monthly
Krishnan, S. 2009. ‘Fighting over Forests’, Himal SouthAsian, January
Popular
Krishnan,S and Priyadarshanan, D.R. 2008. ‘Travails of a Waterscape’ Down To Earth, April.
Krishnan, S and Purushothaman, S .2008. Value of Deforestation? Down To Earth. August.
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