Divya Kalathingal is currently teaching at the Sree Sankara University of Sanskrit, Kerala. She has been working on indigenous people’s resource rights for more than a decade. She was involved in facilitating the forest rights act 2006 implementation in the Vazhachal Forest Division, Kerala. She finished her MPhil at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. That was was on how the state legislations have come in conflict with the lives of Kadar and how the interfaces happened. She is currently pursuing her PhD on the topic, ‘ tribal self-rule in Kerala’. Her research interests are generally on development questions such as indigenous rights, self-determination, decolonising conservation, ecology and human geography.