Written by, Aug. 27 -- Kishor Kr Kalita, Mahesh Deka

Kaziranga: At the back of a house near Dhansiri Mukh in Assam's Kaziranga National Park, wild elephants still wander up to the door most evenings. Families continue to set out broken rice, chaff and medicinal herbs for them - a ritual passed down from grandparents who farmed this land before it was folded into a protected forest.

"So many parts of our livelihood are intimately connected to the environment around us," said Ritupurna Doley, a local youth, describing a relationship with Kaziranga's wildlife that predates the park's official boundaries by generations.

That relationship is now colliding with a different kind of claim on the same land - five-star hotel leases, an elevated ...