When camera traps were put into use in forests to monitor animal habitats and learn more about the animals, it was not imagined that they could be used as traps for women. After interviewing 270 villagers, including women, who live around Jim Corbett National Park and enter the forest to gather produce, researchers found that their normal practices have undergone a change because they know they are being watched. For these women, ironically enough, the forest was a safe place where they went not only to forage but also for some relief from the conflicts at home. This was a man-free area. Here they bonded with one another, talked and sang, loudly enough to keep away elephants and tigers. But technology meant for conservation and learning is being used by local officials and men from the villages for surveillance of the women without their consent, even when they go to relieve themselves in some cases. Such monitoring means that the man-free space is now penetrated with an overall male gaze. Not sure of who is watching, women are no longer free, talking and singing softly, and thus laying themselves open to attacks from predators. One of the women in the interview was later taken by a tiger.

The research exposes the tragic nature of gender inequality in India. No space is protected from male control, whether by rules, social norms or simply the gaze. Necessarily, in such a situation, women become the objects and men one comprehensive subject. From this point of view, what is happening in Jim Corbett National Park is symbolic of women’s position. Women are denied their ‘naturalness’, their feeling of transitory freedom, their window of occasional escape. More, they are made vulnerable to predators. It is a kind of psychological imprisonment; the women are caught between men’s surveillance and beasts of prey. The men’s actions argue a distortion that comes from a sense of unchecked entitlement: they affect the women’s physical safety, mental health and behaviour. It must also be asked how men from the village are allowed to watch the feed from the camera traps and whether forest officials are doing their actual duty of watching animals and protecting them if they are monitoring the women. Obviously, technology for the best purposes can be perverted to truly damaging uses.