“Buying vegetables is a luxury for us. I do my best to ensure my children have a normal meal at least once a week. Rest of the days we eat roti with chutney or salt,” says Phoolvati, 34, a widowed mother of three in Shivpuri, Madhya Pradesh.

Phoolvati grew up in Balarpur, a Sahariya Adivasi hamlet inside the Madhav National Park. In 2000, the entire settlement of over 100 families was shifted to Budi Barod panchayat in Shivpuri. Reason? The state government wanted to create an “inviolate zone” for wild animals. It also planned to introduce tigers in the park, but none was ever brought.

The government had promised to compensate the displaced families with land and money, and ensure basic civic amenities in their new settlement, called Naya Balarpur. Twenty years later, save for the allotment of land to some of the families, the promises remain unfulfilled.

Robbed of their traditional sources of sustenance, the men in Naya Balarpur went to work in Shivpuri’s stone quarries. At least 30 of them didn’t survive the mines, falling to such afflictions as silicosis and TB, and leaving behind what’s come to be known as the “village of widows”. Phoolvati’s husband was among them.

“My husband died of silicosis six years ago and our life has become more difficult since,” says Phoolvati. “We didn’t have money for his treatment.”

Her family now lives on Rs 600 she receives as widow pension and subsidised foodgrains from the Public Distribution System. She does odd jobs when she can find any. Still, it is only rarely she makes enough to buy vegetables for her children.

“All this happened because of the displacement,” Phoolvati says. “When we were in the forest, we had everything in abundance. My husband would not have died working in stone quarries.”

Phoolvati often reminisces about her life in the forest, about how content they were. “I spent my childhood in Balarpur. It was so nice there. But my children have to live in poverty here,” she says, referring to her two boys aged 12 and 10 and one girl who’s seven. “We are surviving on my widow pension and subsidised foodgrains from the ration shop. I also work as a labourer but we get work for only about 10 days a month. We are paid Rs 150-200 per day, which isn’t enough for a family of four to survive on.”

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Most of the 102 families in Balarpur were Sahariyas, who have been notified as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group by the Indian government. In their traditional home, they cultivated small patches of land, reared livestock and collected forest produce. That was all they needed to have “flourishing lives”, the displaced villagers said.

Then, on a chilly afternoon in November 1999, a group of forest guards arrived in Balarpur and told the villagers they could not live on land their ancestors had settled generations ago. “Start packing, you are moving to a new settlement,” the villagers recall the guards ordering them.