Few news are good news for conservation

Last weekend seemed to have given green brigade hope but the brazenness of our political masters grounded it soon enough

The Bengal Post, 28 Oct, 2010

The week closed with good news and it came from the horse’s mouth. At a small gathering organized by tiger author Valmik Thapar last weekend, minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh shared the news that his government was about to double staff allowances across the board in all Project Tiger reserves. After approval from the Planning Commission, the Finance Ministry has cleared the file this month and formal announcement is due any day.

A major boost for the forest personnel who work under extremely tough conditions, this was the first piece of good news of the evening. A few minutes back, plan panel head Montek Singh Ahluwalia had inspired a few chuckles by earnestly pledging to “preserve” the tiger. Surely a slip of tongue but I distinctly heard a young lady in a smart black dress mutter behind my shoulder that she did not know they also taught the art of pickling tigers at the IMF kitchen.

So we all laughed when Ramesh asked his senior colleague (plan panel head is a Cabinet post) if he would commit Rs 5000 crore over seven to eight years for relocating 50,000 families from our forests. An assurance from Ahluwalia could have topped the other good news but his turbaned head ducked the bouncer. Nobody, however, seemed to mind: Rs 5000 crore appeared quite a lot of money to be bargained over at a public place.

Meanwhile, Ramesh was trying to score a few political points by branding the GDP-wallahs as a bigger threat than poachers. Between his lines, we could quickly read a range of names, from Kamal Nath to Shekhar Gupta. And much as I fault the green minister for double standards and media fetish, he sounded genuinely brave for a moment. But Ramesh changed his tone soon enough. Why not? His numerous fans love that angst of a martyr-to-be when he speaks these days.


Just when I thought the good news bulletin was over for the evening, Wildlife Trust of India veteran Ashok Kumar briskly waved at me. Yes, the West Bengal forest department had finally engaged WTI to find a solution to the problem of recurring elephant deaths on the railway tracks between Siliguri and Alipurduar, he told me with a confident smile.

Unlike some of his influential colleagues at WTI, Ashok-ji is usually candid with me. He told me that speeding might not be the real issue and that no overnight solution was expected. I learnt that his WTI team took about six months, through a trial-and-error process, to come up with effective recommendations that have stopped the killing of elephants on the railway tracks that cut through Rajaji national park to keep Dehradun connected to the rest of the country. Since a solution for north Bengal would naturally have to be site-specific, it could take as many months to figure out.

I travelled along that track -- from Malbazar to Alipurduar via Rajabhatkhawa -- during this Durga puja. It seemed that the idea of pinpointing a few parts of the corridor was futile as elephants could walk across the track almost anywhere along that stretch. If one wanted to limit speed, trains would have to ply slow throughout and Siliguri to Alipurduar would take double the time. It required more realistic solutions. Frankly, I did not think six months was too long a window if that was all it took a WTI team to find ways to stop or minimise the killings.

Reality struck soon enough after the closeted feel-good evening. Over the next two days, Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot ruled out revoking mining leases around Sariska and his Madhya Pradesh counterpart Shivraj Singh Chouhan refused to notify buffer zones for Panna.

These were simply amazing turns of events because these are the two reserves that had lost all tigers in the recent past, severely embarrassing the respective state governments. But few ground lessons seemed to have been learnt since, even after relevant laws have been amended with much thoughtfulness and the Supreme Court has issued several harsh judgments.

Busy finding legal loopholes to circumvent binding commitments, if the chief ministers were to deny the basic prerequisites of conservation, what was the point in launching high-profile repopulation drives by flying in tigers from other reserves for Sariska and Panna? Good publicity, perhaps?

What was more appalling was the way the chief ministers made their statements in public. Through an overdose of populist grandstanding, the message came out loud and clear: no question of tiger conservation at the cost of the people. Really? Even after the majority of villages concerned around Panna have already consented to buffer notification?

Did you say our chief ministers were playing in the hands of the mining mafia? Take a walk. Mines employ people and certainly all our leaders had in mind was the livelihood issue of such labourers.

Indeed, sanction for anything seems to come easy in India, "in public interest". That is why we can silently lose all tigers from national parks, fly a few in with much fanfare, and arrogantly decree that we do not mind losing them again.

What happens if you dare question public interest? The money-media-mandate troika will simply play the ultimate trump – an one-weapon-arsenal that enables the economy to plunder, the media to solicit, and the government to silence. So let forests be cleared for many more mines, factories, dams, highways, airports, anything in the name of “national interest”.

Preserve the tiger, indeed.