The Bengal Post, 23 December, 2010
How much do you think is a forest guard’s salary? I popped the question when a fellow delegate at a neat little film festival on tribal arts in Bhubaneswar paused for a breather last week. She was lamenting the sorry state of our forests and wildlife and wondering if corporate-media initiatives were the last hope to save the wilderness.
I stood nodding for a while and when she sounded positively pained by the plight of poor forest guards, asked my first question. “Salary, well,” she said, “could not be more than three-four thousand for sure.” I told her that a forest guard, depending on seniority, took home Rs 10-18,000 a month. “Oh, I see,” she instantly wondered, “that’s quite a lot more than what we pay our driver.”
Now, for the first time, she seemed to be thinking. Surely, with that kind of salary, those forest guards did not require any charity. But then, she asked me, why was conservation still in such a mess? What was the problem?
The evening nip in the air was comfortable for northerners and we could go on discussing the issue. But artist Jatin Das, the one-man army organising the film festival, walked by. Like most artists of his stature, Das commands a lot of attention. As the delegates craned to hear him talk, the issues changed fast.
But the question returned with my fellow delegate later in the evening. Over a smoke, in a corner of the tastefully landscaped plot owned by Jatin Das Centre for Arts, I tried to find her answers.
No, forest guards do not need charity if they get their salaries on time (which does not happen in a few states like Bihar or Maharashtra). They earn enough to afford two uniforms, a jacket, a torch or even a tiffin box. But they are too few. In most states, vacancies are huge and the new recruits are mostly hired on contract for a maximum of Rs 3,000 a month. Corporates and NGOs can buy these temporary staff this and that. But they will still lack the authority and, more importantly, the accountability of a bona fide forest guard.
So one problem is the unwillingness of the states to fill in vacancies and ensure a workforce of well-paid regular forest guards who have a career and a pension to look forward to. Temporary ground staff can still be hired seasonally to supplement this workforce and to keep the local communities involved.
The second part of this problem is the states’ refusal to bear the recurring costs of conservation. A recent corporate-media telethon raised some Rs 5 crore to buy some sets of vehicles and an assortment of equipment for some tiger reserves. The Centre spends hundreds of crores for tiger conservation and makes such one-time purchases at a simply incomparable scale. But even if the Centre buys a jeep for each range officer and a motorbike for each forest guard, the fleets will need fuel to run on -- a recurring cost the states are supposed to bear and, in most cases, refuse to.
If the number of regular staff is one problem, the unreasonable workload is another. Forest staff must focus on protection. They should not be burdened with tourism duties, including facilitating VIPs, or relocating villages or doing research. Regular tourism duties make them corrupt. They become servile handling VIPs. They are often highhanded in negotiations and usually bad researchers. We need specially trained and specifically assigned personnel at different levels for such work. The regular sanctioned staff strength of a forest should do only what they are supposed to: watch over the forest and its wildlife.
The next problem, I told her, was of training. From a guard to a conservator, everyone must be trained adequately before serving at a wildlife area. The long-term solution is to create a wildlife service, perhaps a specialised short service, within the IFS. For now, we need specific and practical field courses tailor-made for all levels. We also need to churn out a bunch of good wildlife veterinarians to be deployed as regular/contract staff in each of our wildlife units.
This brought us to an even bigger problem: the sensitive issue of political will. Committed and performing field officers are always rare. Time and again, those few who actually make a difference are shunted out for offending powerful interests. But even state-of-the-art kits will rust if we do not have officers to lead from the front in an hour of crisis. Take the recent example from Ranthambhore. Range officer Daulat Singh was not mauled because he did not have adequate equipment. He suffered injuries because he was forced to act unwisely by his seniors. Availability of a few fancy kits may only encourage such foolhardy bravado in the absence of able and informed leadership.
The last on my list of administrative problems was the issue of mishandling losses suffered by local communities. Be it crop or cattle loss or restriction on livelihood practices, compensation has to be reasonable, transparent and prompt. At present, the process brings more agony than relief. In case of crop/life loss, assessment of damage should not be a bureaucratic (hence corrupt) process. For the larger issue of livelihood losses, benefits of tourism must be shared generously with the communities. Locals should also get preference for jobs with the forest department.
No, this list of problems, I told the now-exhausted delegate, did not include pressure of development (for profit or survival) and population. Those are almost philosophical debates nobody can win. However, redressing the administrative issues listed above is very much within our mortal scope. Yet, corporate-media spectacles are happy to donate some clothes and a few cars. Why, they could at least buy single-premium insurances to cover all forest guards in the country.
It was probably a giveaway and the keen delegate asked me if I had anything against a certain telethon. On the backfoot, I ducked, kind of. The media’s job is to correct public policies. The corporate’s job is to make profits out of ethical businesses. If both had even limited success in their primary jobs, the crisis they joined hands to fight so spectacularly on live TV would not have existed.
She dismissed me. “That’s a different thing, haan. We know how the real world works. But, at least, they did something, no? Spread so much awareness, no?”
I could see they really did. I nodded. She shuffled on her feet. Jatin Das walked by with an announcement. The bar was open.
