Think out of the forest

The SC is likely take a call on wildlife tourism, but the solution doesn’t lie inside the forest but around it

Sunday Economic Times, 4 Dec, 2011 (a shorter version was published)

The stakes are high. At least five million tourists visit India’s forests every year. The polarisation is stark. Conservationists, forest officials, even scientists, are on opposite sides of the battle line. The question before the apex court: Should India’s best forests, made inviolate by shifting local communities out, serve as tourist hubs?

To understand why the premise of this debate is misleading, let’s try a few simpler questions.

Can wildlife be saved in protected forests without the support of local communities? Wild animals do not follow manmade boundaries and are bound to use unprotected areas where their wellbeing depends solely on local goodwill. Where people are hostile, wild animals get killed.

But can we expect people, who pay almost the entire cost of conservation, to be sympathetic to wildlife? Commercial extraction of timber and forest produce is not allowed in a sanctuary. Regular crop raids by wild herbivores frustrate agriculture and predators kill livestock. Green laws restrict industries or mines, limiting opportunities for local employment.

So, can the local economy around forests be boosted without compromising the wilderness, or better still, while creating incentive for conservation? Only eco-tourism can do the trick. Even converting agricultural fields into tourist camps is a win-win deal: the farmer’s liability – an invading herd of deer – is the hotelier’s asset to flaunt.

So why the debate? Is it because the government is shifting poor villagers from critical tiger forests and the ethical dilemma of entertaining rich tourists in the same space weighs heavy on some minds? But conservation is a scientific, and not an ethical, concern. Shifting villages out ensures less competition for natural resources inside forests because villagers use water, wood, forest produce and, on occasion, kill wild animals in retaliation or for food.

But does the equation change if tourists lodge inside the same forests? For example, Corbett’s Dhikala tourist complex is bigger than most forest villages. It is sheer hypocrisy to shunt villagers out and allow tourists to squander the same resources.

But do wildlife safaris take a similar toll on forests? Safari tourists are not allowed to alight from their vehicles or elephants. Yes, the dust kicked up by vehicles is an irritant; as is crowding of the wild. But since there is no scientific study yet on the true impact of such disturbance, jungle safaris should be acceptable in any part of the forest within a set of strict common-sense regulations.

The real danger of tourism is not inside the forest but around it. The mushrooming hotels and resorts pump out scarce groundwater, often to fill swimming pools, dump garbage indiscriminately, burn forest wood in their kitchen, even quarry local stone for construction. These walled properties allow little access to animals and anyway their floodlit lawns and noisy discos drive wildlife away.

There are some economic spin-offs, in ancillary services, of having so many hotels. But, in the absence of local capacity building, outsiders fill most of the lucrative positions – from the front desk to the kitchen. The locals who do benefit from tourism are only a small part of the population. More than two lakh people live in the 96 villages and two towns adjacent to Ranthambhore. Just about 5000 are directly employed in tourism.

A recent proposal by an MoEF panel to make these hotels share a steep 30 per cent of their turnover with local communities is a no-brainer. What we need are targeted regulations for tourism facilities within a 5-km-radius of our best forests. For example, they should compulsorily maintain a certain built-up to open area ratio, limit use of resources such as water and firewood, discard artificial fencing, halogen lamps and amplifiers in the open, and follow a safe garbage disposal policy. Hotels must also invest in local capacity-building and recruit two-thirds of workforce locally (paying them an equivalent proportion of the total wage) in a phased manner.

Many existing properties have little open land. While those blocking key wildlife corridors have to be demolished, others can compensate by purchasing equivalent land adjacent to forests and leave it for wildlife and forest regeneration. This could be the first step towards the development of vibrant buffer forests where the government wants to shift the pressure of tourism.

Many quasi-wildlife tourists demand swimming pools and night clubs close to forests. Likewise, there are some who would sacrifice most creature comforts for an authentic wildlife experience. So while recreational resorts may be allowed beyond a reasonable buffer, two-room forest rest houses even deep inside tiger forests should be open to tourists who can make do with a hard bed, a basic toilet, a two-course meal and lights out after early dinner.

Corrupt officials in the forest department and the district administration frustrate any attempt at reforms. But the onus is also on the industry. Those players who follow good practices should form a self-regulatory body to ensure responsible and inclusive practices. Tourism has a future in the wild only if the tiger and the tribal do. The courts in their wisdom will give directions, but the cleansing must begin at home.

The Man, the Forest, the Animal

Corbett national park turns 75. A tribute and a critique

Sunday Economic Times, 20 Nov, 2011

June, 2005. Dhikala was abuzz and under evening curfew. A few months ago, a tigress had given birth to four cubs in neighbouring Sarpduli. Mother and cubs had subsequently moved along the Ramganga river to Dhikala and made for easy sightings. Soon, over-enthusiastic tourists started combing the Sambar road with elephants to pin down the family of five.

Dumps of canteen leftovers invited a good number of scavenging herbivores to the tourist complex boundary every night. The mother tigress stalked those easy preys to feed the family. The arrangement worked reasonably well till a sub-adult cub made an error of judgement. In the last week of May, a canteen worker was mauled outside his quarter late in the night.

As the news spread, the tourist tide swelled further. Sambar road was closed to tourists after the mishap. With curfew on, nobody, including the canteen staff, was allowed to venture out after 7.30 in the evening and dinner was served early in the room. But behind windows, people stayed up long hungry nights for that glimpse of a lifetime.

5 TIGERS, 1 BULL ELEPHANT

On the last day of that tourist season, the sky was sulking since afternoon. Soon after the vehicles and elephants returned from the evening safari, the wind gained strength, and a storm snapped the power supply.

Within minutes, the sun vanished like it does in the hills and the sky sent down early warnings of a heavy downpour. The darkness and the pitter-patter was enough to drive the crowd crazy. Then, the clouds thundered. In a split second flashed five tigers, scaling the complex wall from the riverside.

It was mayhem. The clouds continued to roar intermittently, lighting up the lawn and returning it to pitch darkness again. And in those brief moments, the tigers could be seen, each time at different spots, walking among the people. Children and women shrieked, men yelled, many scampered in the dark. Within minutes, the big cats disappeared in the forest. Nobody suffered a scratch. One forest official broke a leg running for his life.

Corbett is full of such surprises, and delicious scares. Few wild experiences compare to the numb thrill of taking a narrow road, flanked by a gorge and a steep slope, at an hour when elephants do the traffic duty. Returning one late afternoon from Khinanauli (with special permission, due to an emergency), I was stared down by a mighty bull at 15 feet, who stood guard for what seemed an eternity while his herd climbed up from the river and walked across. No, this giant did not even mock charge, the chill his cold, composed eyes spread was enough.

THE YOUNG JIM

But Corbett is more than its spirited animals or its splendid collection of birds. Very few places compare with this reserve's ever-changing horizons. The moist terai and rocky, porous bhabars at the margins of the Shivalik in the southern parts, the mixed forests dominated by Sal trees around Bijrani, the amazing savannah of Dhikala, the riverine bounty along Ramganga, the frosty heights of Kanda - there are so many Corbetts to surprise one.

After all, this is the stage of that "small boy armed with an old muzzle-loading gun... kept from falling apart by lashings of brass wire" roaming the jungles, "sleeping anywhere he happened to be when night came on...wakened at intervals by the calling of tigers..."

That boy grew up to kill 33 maneaters, 19 of those tigers. Hunter Edward James Corbett. Then he met Frederick Walter Champion, a forester who would be one of India's first naturalists. The hunter became a conservationist. Together, they ensured this spectacular Kumaon wilderness was protected as Asia's first national park, named after Lord Malcom Hailey in 1936. Post-Independence, the park was renamed after its lifeline, the Ramganga river, in 1954. Next year, Jim Corbett died in Kenya. In his honour, the park was re-renamed in 1956. When India launched Project Tiger, the world's most ambitious conservation programme, in 1973, it was only fitting that Corbett was the chosen venue.

COST OF SUCCESS

Today this reserve is one of the few high points of Project Tiger's success and also one of the world's top wildlife destinations. But the tourism boom has exacted its cost. More than 100 small and big hotels flourishing around Corbett need 20 per cent occupancy to stay in business. That amounts to 2.2 lakh double bed rooms or more than 4 lakh tourists. Even after increasing the park's carrying capacity, it cannot allow entry to more than 2.4 lakh a year.

Clearly, hundreds of thousands of tourists, who apparently do not even enter the reserve, crowd Corbett for extended sessions of corporate unwinding or rowdy weddings. To accommodate them, more and more multi-star hotels come up behind high walls, block wildlife corridors, add to sound and light pollution, drain vital resources like water, and leave behind tonnes of garbage in ecologically fragile areas.

LOCALS VS ANIMALS

At the same time, with little benefit of conservation or tourism being shared with the local communities, the level of intolerance towards animals is rising. In the recent past, a number of Corbett tigers were removed as so-called maneaters; some others died mysteriously. Without benefitting the local stakeholders, no celebration will help secure Corbett's future.

The efforts to save this marvel of Kumaon wilderness began long before Jim Corbett by the likes of Major Ramsay (1870s) or ER Stevans (1900s). But Jim's true legacy lies in understanding the wild, and its most awesome mascot, the tiger. In increasingly conflict-ridden times, we should not forget that little boy, who once crept up a bush while stalking jungle fowl and saw "the bush heaving and a tiger walking out on the far side and, on clearing the bush, turning round and looking at the boy with an expression on its face which said as clearly as any words, 'Hello, kid, what the hell are you doing here?' and, receiving no answer, turning round and walking away very slowly without once looking back."

The Madness in Her Method

A desperate Bengal ousted the Left, seeking ‘poribarton’. Six months on, Mamata Banerjee is as vocal as she was while lavishing poll promises, yet ‘change’ looks elusive as ever. So, what’s holding back poribarton?

OPEN, 19 November, 2011

Popular wisdom often cliché. And Charles Darwin, if not Alphonse Karr, is well known anywhere in the world. But in Bengal, they are still quoted routinely to drive home a point.

Yes, it took three-and-a-half bleak decades. But when eventually Bengal bit the bullet, it was all about poribarton— from a regressive, anachronistic government and an all-encompassing ruling party. So this May, after defying anti-incumbency for 34 years, the longest serving elected Left government fell to the English naturalist’s theory, its failure to adapt finally catching up with it.

Today, it is the turn of the French novelist. West Bengal has become Poshchim Bongo; Tagore songs are adding to the noise at Kolkata’s traffic signals; and former Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has gone into a permanent sulk. But six months after the momentous regime change, things in Bengal remain much the same.

But a fondness for cliché is hardly something to write home about.


BIG ASK, NO INTENT
It was never going to be easy to turn Bengal around. Even in its rout, the Left secured 41 per cent of the vote. The party is deeply entrenched in the state’s social and administrative systems: from cultural icons to teachers to bureaucrats, the majority was either co-opted by the party or were bona fide Left cadres. They cheerfully toed the party line for personal gain. It is practically impossible to replace this corrupt and defunct system. It is one thing to have defeated the Left, but bringing about change at the grassroots (literal translation of Trinamool) was always going to be a tall order.

The state’s infrastructure is in tatters and rebuilding it will need heavy investment. The Maoist conflict and unrest in Jangalmahal in Purulia district or Lalgarh in West Midnapore were horribly mismanaged by the Left to flashpoints. The hills in the north are suffering from a longstanding conflict. Political control over public affairs, blinkered populism, poor work ethics and the subsequent loss of industry, jobs and capital have reduced Bengal to a socio-economic blackhole.

Given the odds, few would have expected Mamata Banerjee to fulfill her lavish electoral promises. Yet, after handing her a generous mandate for a turnaround, her voters have reason to doubt her very intent. Consider these:

» Admitted, Mamata inherited empty coffers. But the early euphoria over the ouster of the Left would have allowed Mamata to come up with a few tough fiscal measures to raise funds. A former journalist close to the new CM says she has not lost her pre-election populist reflexes—she has even scrapped the water tax Buddhadeb levied under the Centre’s Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission.

Mamata is dealing in symbolism that does not cost money: the law to return Singur land to farmers; the visit to Darjeeling and Sikkim; the tough posturing on Teesta waters; and playing the media on Jangalmahal and Gorkhaland. All this while hoping and looking expectantly at the Centre for a bailout, and embarrassing herself with bargains on the fuel price hike.

» Cashing in on the Left excesses at Lalgarh and Jangalmahal, Mamata had promised to punish the guilty, stop police atrocities, withdraw false cases and open dialogue. But once in power, she did a volte-face, say organisations working in these areas. Nobody was released; in fact, fresh arrests were made; the joint forces simply changed strategy to create an illusion of a ceasefire and focused on targeted operations; those guilty of mass murder and rape walked free.

An activist of the Nari Ijjat Bachao Committee offers an example. At Chanpadoba under Belpahari police station, the village commons had built a health centre in 2008. But the joint forces fighting Maoists soon occupied the building. After the much-anticipated regime change, villagers tried to inaugurate the health centre on 14 August. The new administration and its forces did not allow them.

Instead, Mamata is promising development and 10,000 temporary jobs as special police officers. But there are few takers for “symbolic development without democratic rights” among the locals, who dismiss the job scheme as Mamata’s ploy to trigger a fratricide among tribals. What made matters worse was the involvement of the Bhairav Bahini (an armed gang backed by the TMC) in the operations of the joint forces.

In the run-up to the polls, Mamata rushed to stand by every victim of alleged police/Left atrocity. However, in Jhar- gram to address a rally on 16 October, she refused to visit a woman in a nearby hospital who had consumed poison the day before after being assaulted at her Belpa- hari home by cops on the lookout for her husband. The victim’s husband says the CM turned away the locals who met her, saying “Jangalmahal women lie a lot”.

» The TMC’s command structure is far from robust and too many goons who had earlier served Left interests have simply changed sides, as have some renegade Communists. While some of these new entrants are taking on old-timers in their new party, others are busy settling old scores with the comrades they deserted.

Mamata’s own conduct undermines her promise of restoring the much-politicised state police to a professional, independent force. The Chief Minister made national headlines on 9 November by storming a South Kolkata police station to free a couple of goons from her own city neighbourhood who had been detained for vandalising the police station.

“No Left cadre would have publicly assaulted a police officer. No Left minister or even leader would have gone to a thana to release hooligans. Of course, they would have ensured the same results without getting personally involved,” says a veteran IPS officer.

» With every Mamata loyalist and his uncle turning up for their share of the spoils, former incumbents in key posts (some even deserving) have been summarily removed. Members of the TMC education cell, many of them with a Left history, have been handpicked to head bodies such as the School Service Commission, the Primary Education Board and the West Bengal Board for Secondary Education. Even non-Left factions in different university and college teachers’ unions complain that the new government’s attempts at reform are as arbitrary and unilateral as its predecessor’s. The new government has also redrawn the lawyers’ panels for all its departments.

»The new Chief Minister faces an acute shortage of people she can depend on to get the job done. She got elected many nondescript carpetbaggers who can contribute little as MLAs or ministers. And of the few who can, she doesn’t seem to trust any.

As a result, she takes decisions for all ministries, talks to the media on all issues (often incoherently) and even decides which sofa goes where in the secretariat. Six months into the job, there is no government spokesperson and no second-rung leadership in the party. And there is only so much a one-woman government can do, even if Mamata often puts in 18 hours a day.

TALE OF TWO CMS
Since she entered politics, Mamata’s biggest success has been to stand up against the Left bullies and show that it is possible to do so. But her three-decade-long fight could still not have brought about this regime change but for a metamorphosis she had no role in. The new CM has good reason to learn from her predecessor’s failings. Consider these:

» In 1993, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya resigned from the Jyoti Basu government. Frustrated with the rot in the Left movement, he wrote a candid play—Dussamay (Bad Times)—to record his disapproval. A staunch idealist, he flaunted his anti-capitalism credentials, at times rather naively, by refusing to attend functions hosted by industrialists.

Cut to 2006. Buddhadeb has won his first poll as Chief Minister and the first person he meets after taking oath is Ratan Tata. Eager to resurrect the state economy and create his own legacy, he starts wooing capital, and, recalls a former bureaucrat, makes new friends in a hurry. So dramatic is the switch in loyalties that he unceremoniously dumps one of his most trusted aides, a bureaucrat-turned-friend, for cautioning him about a dubious businessman. Said businessman has already won over the new government by modifying investment plans on the thousands of acres he was promised by Buddhadeb.

Years before she became Chief Minister, Mamata stood by an upright Muslim IPS officer who took on the Left government. She went so far as to put it in writing that she would appoint this officer the Commissioner of Kolkata Police if she came to power. Soon after she became the Union Railway Minister in the second UPA Government, Mamata called him to Delhi to work in her ministry.

Cut to 2011, and the new Chief Minister has appointed as Kolkata’s Commission- er of Police RK Pachnanda, a “Left stooge” whom she accused of tearing her sari and biting her during a protest rally in 1998 and vowed to punish once she became CM. Having in fact superseded the IPS veteran she once backed by appointing Pachnanda, she kept the officer out of the police force and offered him a posting in the CMO that he has since declined.

The U-turn is apparently a fallout of the good cop’s refusal to toe her line in the Railway Ministry, where Mamata sat on his report against a top security officer from the UP cadre. The new CM, claim sources, decided in favour of a more “pliant officer to ensure smooth functioning of the government”.

» Buddhadeb at the helm also did away with the regular line of command. For instance, no top cop could ever approach Jyoti Basu directly in any crisis. He would go to the home secretary (HS), who, if required, would consult the chief secretary (CS), and it was up to the CS to decide if he wanted to refer the matter to the CM. At whatever level a decision was taken, it was communicated down the hierarchy. In effect, a top cop would never know if a decision came from the HS or CS or CM.

While independent judgement at different levels would make for a better decision, the CM could distance himself from any decision gone wrong. But Buddhadeb sat with top bureaucrats and cops in his office and discussed issues like club buddies would. A few candid IAS and IPS officers could still have salvaged these debates, but the CM increasingly handpicked yesmen who rarely interrupted him.

Most of Mamata’s decisions too are unilateral with little input from the bureaucracy, cabinet or party colleagues. It’s not a coincidence either that none of her top ministers—former home secretary Manish Gupta, former Andrew Yule HR executive Partha Chatterjee or former FICCI secretary general Amit Mitra—has a political footing. The only senior Congress leader in the cabinet, Manas Bhunia, handles irrigation. Even Subrata Mukherjee, Mamata’s political mentor who gave her the ticket to contest her first Lok Sabha election in 1984, has been assigned an insignificant portfolio.

She went out of her way to accommodate a few officers from the Union Railway ministry not because of their record, but simply because she prefers, say sources in her own party, officers who will carry out orders.

» Buddhadeb has a tendency to take hasty decisions. In the early 1990s, recalls a senior police officer, the legendary owner-editor of the Amrita Bazar Patrika-Jugantar group, nonagenarian Tushar Kanti Ghosh was admitted to a Kolkata hospital. “I received an arrest warrant against Ghosh for irregularities in the employee provident fund. It was out of the question arresting him in that condition. I informed the Commissioner (of Police), who decided to consult Buddhadeb, the minister in charge of police affairs.”

When Buddhadeb heard the officers, he ordered Ghosh’s immediate arrest. “Alarmed, I pointed out that we might have to arrest the hospital bed as well. But the minister insisted, saying the Ghosh family were traditional Congress supporters. When I requested him to think over his decision, he left in a huff for the CM’s room.” Within minutes he returned and asked the officers to sit on the warrant. Jyoti Basu was apparently furious that Buddhadeb even thought of arresting someone of Ghosh’s age and stature in his condition.

Mamata’s political reflexes smack of the same impulsiveness. Playing the same partisan card the Left favoured, Mamata went to the extent of showing a number of cultural icons—writer Sunil Ganguly, poet Shankho Ghosh, playwright Mohit Chattopadhyay and actor Soumitra Chatterjee—the door in different government committees in favour of juniors such as Arpita Ghosh or Shaoli Mitra from the TMC camp.

POWER RUSH
There is certainly a pattern to Mamata’s recent utterances and action (or lack of it) in crises, ranging from the Maoist standoff to infant deaths in city and district hospitals. Sample these:

» “There are no Maoists-Phaoists in West Bengal.”

» “I’ll give you one last chance. How many jobs do you want? How many roads and hospitals? I will provide everything you want if you drop the gun.”

» “I am concentrating on industry. On infant deaths, if you still have some queries, ask my health secretary. Please don’t disturb me.”

» “Most of the babies who were admitted to the hospital weighed around 300 grams.”

At a recent function in Kolkata, where a road—Sindhu Kanu Dahar—was named after two heroes of the Santhal rebellion, she repeatedly enquired from the stage if Dahar’s descendants had made it to the inauguration. Dahar, in Santhali, means road.

Claiming that 90 per cent of her poll promises to minorities had already been fulfilled, she announced regularisation of 10,000 madrassas. Only, she never bothered to check if there were indeed 10,000 madrassas in the state.

But gaffes and outbursts may yet do little damage beyond headlines the morning after. In any case, Mamata doesn’t seem to care, having reached the seat of power that has been a lifetime’s work.

It was no mean feat for a lower middle class, godfather-less woman, all of 21, to become general secretary of the Mahila Congress in 1976, but her government’s official website, banglarmukh.com, will have you believe that she accomplished the feat as early as in 1970, as a 15-year-old!

Now that she is CM, she will need more than her natural flair for exaggeration to deliver poribarton.

বাঘ বৃত্তান্ত

আনন্দবাজার পত্রিকা, ১২ নভেম্বর, ২০১১

অমাবস্যার সন্ধ্যা । খাটো, রোগা গাছগুলোর ঝাঁকড়া জঙ্গলে পথ করে নিতে রুক্ষ কাঁটাজমি ছেড়ে খোলা জিপ হঠাৎ নেমে পড়ল এক পাথুরে নালায় । বছরের এসময়টা জল থাকার কথা নয়, নেইও । কিন্তু পেল্লাই-সাইজের সব বোল্ডার আর এবড়ো-খেবড়ো চাট্টানের ‘রাস্তায়’ জিপসির পিছনে দাঁড়িয়ে ক্যামেরা হাতে নিজের ব্যালেন্সের আর মারুতির অ্যাক্সলের পরীক্ষা নিতে নিতে একবার মনে হল এর চেয়ে নেমে পড়লে হয়ত হেঁটে-বেয়ে এগুনো সহজ হত।

পাথর কেটে জলের যেমন খুশি বানানো এই পথ বেশ গভীর হলেও তেমন চওড়া নয় । ছাগলছানার মত এলোমেলো লাফাতে থাকা গাড়ি এগোচ্ছে দুপাশের দেওয়ালে ঠোকর খেতে খেতে । ইঞ্জিনের মরীয়া শব্দের কারনেই কিনা জানি না, জঙ্গলটা কেমন যেন অদ্ভুত নিঃসাড় । ততক্ষনে সূর্য ডুবেছে । নালার ভেতর থেকে দেখছি মাথার দুধারে গাছতলায়, বেড়িয়ে থাকা শেকড়ে জমছে অন্ধকার । অনেকটা ওপরে কালো ডালপালার ফাঁকে আকাশটা দ্রুত বদলাচ্ছে ঘন বেগুনী থেকে আরও ঘন বেগুনীতে ।

হঠাৎ কানের পাশে বাঁদিকের জঙ্গলটা খানখান হয়ে গেল একটা প্রায় অশরীরী চিল-চিৎকারে । ভালুকের ঘোঁত-ঘোঁত আগে অনেক শুনেছি, কিন্তু গলা ছেড়ে তার এমন আর্ত ডাক-এর অভিজ্ঞতা সেই প্রথম । কি কারনে ভালুকভায়া এত বিচলিত সেটা ঠাউরে ওঠার আগেই ওই তারস্বর চমকে দিল আরেকবার । আমাদের উপস্থিতি নিরাপদ কিনা ভাবছি, ডানদিকের জঙ্গল থেকে, যেন প্রত্যুত্তরেই, হেঁকে উঠলো এক গমগমে বাঘ । ক’মুহূর্তের নীরবতার পর আবার সেই স্নায়ু পঙ্গু করে দেওয়া হা-লু-ম, এবার আরও কাছে ।

বাঘ-ভালুকের এমন কানফাটানো যুগলবন্দিতে ফ্রন্ট-রো সিট পেয়ে যাবো কে জানত । দুই মেজাজি ওস্তাদের মাঝখানে এভাবে কতক্ষন কেটেছে খেয়াল নেই (পরে হিসেব করেছিলাম মাত্র মিনিট পনের) ।

একসময় সওয়াল-জবাবের একটু বিরতিতে খানিক সম্বিত ফিরতে দেখি গাড়ির হেডলাইটের চৌহদ্দির বাইরে সব মুছে দেওয়া ঘুরঘুট্টি রাত ।


অন্ধকারে শুখা নালার বোল্ডার ডিঙিয়ে জিপ্‌সি তখনও এগোবার ভণিতা করছিল। হঠাৎ পাথরে জবর ঠোক্কর খেয়ে ইঞ্জিনে একটা করুন গোঙানির শব্দ আর গাড়ি বেমক্কা পিছলে সামনের দুচাকা আকাশে । একহাতে আঁকড়ে ধরা খোলা জিপ্‌সির হুড-বাঁধার রড-এর জোড়-ঝালাই খুলে এল গোটা শরীরের ভারে ।

প্রায় পঁয়তাল্লিশ ডিগ্রী-তে খাড়া হয়ে যাওয়া জিপ্‌সির হেডলাইটের আলো নালা ছেড়ে উঠে গিয়েছিল মাথার ওপরের জঙ্গলে । চিত হয়ে পড়তে পড়তে আমার চোখ-ও স্বভাবত ছিল আকাশে । জানি না কোন কোরিওগ্রাফার-এর পক্ষে এতগুলি ভিন্ন মুহূর্তের এমন অলৌকিক সমন্বয় সম্ভব । অসহায় চিৎপটাং হতে হতে মাথার ওপরে দেখলাম লাফিয়ে নালা পার হয়ে যাচ্ছে বাঘ, গাড়ির আলো ঠিকরে পড়ছে তার দুধ-সাদা জোয়ান পেটে, গাঢ় অন্ধকারের প্রেক্ষাপটে ঝলসে উঠছে সোনালি-কালো ডোরা-র ইঙ্গিত । ওই একটি-দুটি মুহূর্তই, কিন্তু স্মৃতিতে রয়ে গ্যাছে স্লো-মোশানে, যেন নালার এপার থেকে ওপারে হাওয়ায় ভেসে পার হচ্ছেন জঙ্গলের রাজা ।

এ গল্পের বাকিটা না-বলা থেকে যাওয়াই ভাল । ঘাড়ের ওপর বাঘ আর কাছেপিঠেই ভালুক নিয়েও আমরা ওই পাথরে লটকানো জিপ্‌সিটিকে শেষমেশ নালাছাড়া করতে পেরেছিলাম । বেঁচে যে ফিরেছিলাম সেটা তো বোঝাই যাচ্ছে । কপালজোর বলে কথা! না হলে অমন বাঘদর্শন লেখা থাকে?

তা বলে ভাববেন না যেন নিয়মিত জঙ্গলে যাই বলে বাঘেরা পক্ষপাতদুষ্ট বা তাদের খুঁজে পাওয়ার কোনও মোক্ষম ফর্মুলা আয়ত্ত করেছি । অনেক ছোটবড়, দেশি-বিদেশি ওস্তাদ-কে জানি যারা বছরের বেশির ভাগটাই বনে-বাদারে কাটান । তাদের কাউকেই কখনও আজ-বাঘের-দেখা-পাবই এই গ্যারান্টি দিতে শুনিনি । আমার নিজের রেকর্ডও কিছু আহামরি নয়, পাঁচবার বাঘবনে গেলে হয়ত একবার দর্শন জোটে ।

অবশ্য বুঝি, বাঙালির এ ব্যাপারে একটু অভিমান স্বাভাবিক । যে বাঘকে তামাম দুনিয়া বাংলার নামে চেনে, তার ওপর বাঙালির এতটুকু অধিকার থাকতে নেই ? বাংলায় দু-দুটো টাইগার রিসার্ভ, তবু বাঙালিকে কিনা রয়্যাল বেঙ্গল টাইগার দেখতে ভিন্‌রাজ্যে যেতে হয়?

বিশ্বায়নের যুগে ঘরের-বাঘ-ঘরেই-দেখব এই গোঁ ধরা যায় না। তবে ঘর ছেড়ে বেরোলেই যে দর্শন মিলবে, তারই বা গ্যারান্টি কি? নইলে সরিস্কা থেকে কাজিরাঙ্গা আর রাজাজি থেকে পেরিয়ার –- অবাধগতি বাঙ্গালী ভ্রমণার্থীর অযুত ক্যামেরায় ওই গাইড-প্রতিশ্রুত সোনালি-কালো ডোরা কি করে বছর-বছর অধরা থেকে যায়?

আবার এর উলটো দিকটাও ভেবে দেখুন । তেনার মর্জি হলে, আপনাকে সম্পূর্ণ অগ্রাহ্য করে তিনি হেঁটে যেতে পারেন একেবারে নাকের ডগায় । এমনকি টাইগার রিসার্ভের বাইরেও ।

এবছরই মে মাসের কথা । কলকাতার এক পুরনো বন্ধু সপরিবারে দঃক্ষিন ভারত ঘুরতে যাবার আগে বি আর হিলস আর বান্দিপুরে বাঘ দেখার অনেক সুলুকসন্ধান জেনে নিয়ে গেল । কিন্তু দু-দুটি নামজাদা টাইগার রিসার্ভে হপ্তাখানেক অনেক সাফারি হাঁকিয়েও যখন শিকে ছিঁড়ল না, দার্শনিক-গোছের মুখ নিয়ে বাক্স-প্যাটরা গুছিয়ে তারা গুটিগুটি রওনা হয়েছিল বান্দিপুর থেকে কুর্গের পথে। পথে নাগারহোলে ন্যাশনাল পার্কের কাবিনিতে খাওয়া । লেট লাঞ্চের পর একটু ঝিমুনি মত এসেছিল বোধহয় । তন্দ্রা ছুটে গেল ড্রাইভারের উত্তেজিত গলায় । চোখ খুলতেই গোধূলি আলোয় রাস্তা পার হয়ে অলস হেঁটে যাওয়া বাঘ ।

আমার বন্ধুজনের মধ্যে এমনও দেখেছি যারা কুড়ি-পঁচিশ বছর নিয়মিত জঙ্গল ঢুঁড়ে ফেলেও বাঘের ন্যাজটি অবধি স্পট করতে পারে নি। আবার এমনও ক্ষণজন্মাদের জানি যারা কপালে যেন বাঘ লিখিয়ে এসেছিল, না হলে জীবনের প্রথম সাফারি-তেই দশ মিনিটের মধ্যে বাঘের ক্লোজ-আপ ফটো ? তাও আবার করবেটের ঝোপঝাড়ে চোখ চলে না এমন জঙ্গলে?

এই অনিশ্চয়তাই আপনার বাঘের খোঁজের আসল রোমাঞ্চ । এ যে শুধু চোখের দেখায় সীমাবদ্ধ তা-ও নয় । রাজস্থানের রনথম্বর টাইগার রিসার্ভের শুখনো, খোলামেলা পর্ণমোচী বনে বাঘ দেখার সুযোগ অন্যান্য টাইগার রিসার্ভের চেয়ে অনেকটাই বেশি । কিন্তু এই আসাধারন জঙ্গল থেকে শুধু ট্যুরিসম জোনে সকাল-বিকেল সাফারি করে ফিরে এলে, বাঘের দেখা পান বা না পান, জঙ্গলের অভিজ্ঞতা সম্পূর্ণ হবে না।

তার জন্য জিপ্‌সি ভাড়া করে একবেলা চলে যেতে হবে বানাস-এর কুলে । নদীতে বা পাড়-ঘেঁষে দেখতে পেয়ে যেতে পারেন চম্বলের বিখ্যাত মগর কুমীর । না পেলে, অপেক্ষায় বিকেল গড়াবে। বানাস-এর ওইপারে জঙ্গল-মোড়া আরাবল্লীর বুক থেকে খসে পড়বে অবসন্ন দিন, গহন সবুজ ধীরে নিভে যাবে এক স্বর্গচ্যুত, শিরশিরে সন্ধ্যায় । কান পাতুন, হয়ত দূর থেকে ভেসে আসবে ক্রমে আরও দূরে চলে যেতে থাকা কোন নিঃসঙ্গ বাঘিনির অধৈর্য ডাক । জঙ্গলে এমনটা হয়ে থাকে।

Bengal’s New Battle: Didi vs Her Demons

Mamata Banerjee’s feckless response to recent hospital horrors in Bengal and her political threats over oil prices are symptomatic. Her paranoia is affecting her priorities. And the Left’s lying in wait

Sunday Economic Times, 6 Nov, 2011

Change, said Heraclitus, is the only constant. But over 34 long years in West Bengal, the Left proved many wise men wrong. Mind you, Bengal did change under Left rule -- but after the early euphoria of land reforms, mostly for the worse. The May 2011 verdict was as much against lost opportunities of development, job, enterprise, capital, you-name-it, as it was against a systemic takeover of the administration and basic democratic rights by the party. So when Bengal finally voted Mamata Banerjee in, only one emotion overrode relief: hope for a turnaround.

Six months on, sample this. “I am concentrating on industry. Regarding infant death, if you still have some queries, ask my health secretary. Please don’t disturb me,” chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who holds the health portfolio, told reporters on the death of 47 babies in a week in three hospitals in Kolkata, Burdwan and Murshidabad. Two days later, a newborn in Murshidabad died on Wednesday when the doctor used carbolic acid instead of dettol to disinfect. The CM’s response hasn’t changed since a similar crisis in July: the Left is to blame for the pathetic medical infrastructure in the state.

But inertia is no excuse, given the expectations. Last month, my elderly aunt, having seen many a cynical autumn, dismissed my indifference towards ever the same festive crowds with an unusual prod: “Are you sure you want to miss this (Durga) pujo – the first after poribarton?” It struck me that I was in kindergarten when the Left Front came to power; that not much of my memory dates back beyond 1977. Could this be the reason why I, belonging to the first of many so-called Left generations, found pujo and much of Bengal the same ever all these years?


Potholes, Pujo. ‘Liberation’

The potholes, the winding jams, the rickety, smoke-spewing buses were all in place. So were the noisy, tireless, pandal-hoppers. Just when I was wondering if Rabindrasangeet wafting from select traffic signals was the only change I would encounter in Kolkata, Mamatadi held out a few surprises.

The parks in Kolkata have been reclaimed for the bhadrolok (gentry). Families now enjoy evening walks without being intimidated by drug-addicts or hoodlums. Pity, the municipal workers lock the premises soon after sundown; the move, I am assured, has nothing to do with moral policing. There are just too many homeless in the city.

Pujo too was different. It is a multi-crore industry, and the organisers — clubs, big and small — were mostly controlled by the Left. This year, several “Left pujos” had Trinamool challengers. Elsewhere, the control over organising committees changed hands. While scores of pujos organised by Left workers shrunk in scope, those under Trinamool Congress (TMC) patronage saws a 300-700 per cent increase in their budgets.

The pujo backed Mamata’s close aide and Bengal industry minister Partha Chatterjee used to be a modest neighbourhood affair until recently. This time, the idols were brass-and-mahogany, and everything else was as lavish.

Even during the festive season, a highly polarised local media had played up reports of sporadic political violence. But to her credit, Mamata had sent out a message for peace immediately after assuming office. A veteran IPS officer recalls the bloodshed across the state the Left had ended a long, almost uninterrupted Congress rule in the late 1970s. “From that experience, we were prepared for another bloody transition. But by and large, Mamata has succeeded in keeping TMC workers on leash.”

Left leaders play victim in public. In private, many of them sound relieved. “We expected much worse. Whatever (violence) is happening has a pattern. In areas where we did not allow any opposition, our cadres are facing the backlash. Elsewhere, they (TMC) are giving us some space.”

But the command structure of TMC is far from robust across the state and too many musclemen who earlier served the Left interest have simply switched sides. A good number of “renegade” communists have joined in too. While some of these turncoats are taking on the old-timers in their new party, others are clashing with the comrades they deserted.

On the margins of politics, the newly “empowered” are struggling to handle their “liberation”. On the first day of this pujo, the officer-in-charge of south Kolkata’s Garfa Police Station asked a few TMC-affiliated auto-rickshaw drivers to stop drinking in public (actually the reasonable man suggested that they move their party from the main road to a nearby alley). He spent the pujo in hospital with several fractured bones.

But Has the Left Gone?

So is this what turnaround is about? And if indeed the earth did not shake and little blood flew, why did it take Bengal so long to dislodge the red brigade?

During an adda (an informal, often wasteful, discussion), an old acquaintance reminds me of Martin Seligman. In 1967, the American psychologist made a startling observation. When dogs were confined and subjected to random electric shocks, after a while they refused to run away even when not in harness. Seligman called the condition “learned helplessness” – a mental state when making any effort to end misery seems useless.

Over the years, Mamata’s biggest success has been to stand up, often alone, against the Left bullies and demonstrate that it is possible. She even risked physical injury to find acceptance among the bhadrolok voters who sniggered at her lower middle class upbringing, non-ladylike demeanour and shrill theatrics. But as Mamata persisted against all odds, ridicule slowly gave way to admiration, and her antics morphed into courage.

The balance finally tilted with Singur and Nandigram. Mamata stunned the Left in the 2008 Panchayat and the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. The writing was on the wall. The Left government hung on, limp, inactive for two years – a sad waste even by Bengal’s standards. Six months after the inevitable Assembly poll outcome, Mamata’s voters are still so thrilled to have ousted the Left that they refuse to judge their didi yet.

But even in its rout, the Left secured a 41% vote share. The party is still entrenched in the social and administrative systems. From bureaucrats to lawyers, teachers to union leaders, artistes to police, most were either bona fide Left cadres or co-opted by the party. They blatantly benefited theparty for personal gains. It is one thing to defeat the Left but quite another, to quote an MLA who teaches at Jadavpur university, to change “this morally and professionally corrupt way of life” they institutionalised.

Not surprisingly, the so-called Left way of life – of rewarding loyalty over merit – is reflected in a number of Mamata’s early decisions. Everyone who can claim to have helped Mamata’s campaign feels entitled to a share of the spoils. Considering the previous regime packed most key posts with cadres, some purging was inevitable. But her education minister Bratya Basu makes it clear that “one cannot be both Left and deserving”. So the same us-and-them syndrome that divided the intelligentsia under Left rule is being practised by the new regime.

A number of cultural icons of Bengal have been shown the door in different government committees in favour of juniors from the TMC camp. Members of the TMC education cell, many of them with a Left past, have been handpicked to head different education boards. Even non-Left factions in various university and college teachers’ unions are unhappy that the new government’s attempt at education reforms is no less arbitrary and unilateral. The new government has also redrawn the lawyers’ panels for all its departments. The list of such partisan shake-ups is long.

There are other worries: The Left was trying to withdraw outdated, polluting vehicles from Kolkata’s roads. Mamata has allowed these to ply. Before the Assembly polls, Park Street footpaths were freed of hawkers. Now, they are back. Mamata scraped the water tax Buddhadeb had levied under the Centre’s Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. While she is working late evenings, there has been no visible change in a system where the right political affiliation entitles government staff to “pension-on-the-job”.

Mamata’s HR Problem

So does change have a chance at all?

The CM has inherited empty coffers. If she cannot raise funds due to her populist compulsions, she cannot invest in infrastructure development yet. So looking to the Centre for a bailout -- and now using the fuel price hike issue for a better bargain -- she is mostly dealing in symbolism without the overheads: the law to return Singur land to owners; the visits to Darjeeling and Sikkim; the tough posturing on Teesta; and playing the media on on the issues of Maoists and Gorkhaland. But by setting childlike deadlines for resolving longstanding conflicts, she might have set herself up for early scrutiny.

Mamata also faces an acute shortage of quality human resources in TMC. She got many nondescript carpetbaggers elected; they contribute little as MLAs or ministers. In a cabinet sorely lacking in administrative experience and capability, Mamata has saddled herself, and a few chosen ones, with too many remits. The few bureaucrats she trusts also have their hands too full.

It’s not a coincidence either that none of her top ministers — former home secretary Manish Gupta, former Andrew Yule HR executive Partha Chatterjee, or former FICCI secretary general Amit Mitra — has a political footing. The only senior Congress leader in the cabinet, Manas Bhunia, is irrigation minister. Even Subrata Mukherjee, who gave Mamata the ticket to contest her first Lok Sabha election in 1984, has been assigned the insignificant portfolio of public health engineering.

Call the Mamata a control freak or insecure or both, she decides for all ministries, addresses the press on all issues (often several times a day) and even picks the furniture for the Writers Building (secretariat) corridors. A debilitating trust deficit does not allow her to promote a second rung leadership in TMC or even assign a government spokesperson. She may have been toasted for single-handedly winning 227 seats, but an all-Mamata ruling party and an only-CM government cannot deliver, even if didi frequently clocks 18-hour workdays.

Soviets Vs Bengal

When Soviet communist states crumbled, the party was razed to the ground, making regeneration possible. In a democracy, the defeated survives. The Left now argues that its average vote share has been 49 per cent and it ruled all these years due to divisions in opposition vote. Had Prakash Karat not insisted on withdrawing support on the nuclear deal, paving way for the TMC-Congress alliance, they claim, the Left could still be in power.

Clearly, the red brigade is in no mood for any introspection or change within. They will be back in their elements if voted back any time soon. So Bengal’s hope for a turnaround rests solely on Mamata’s ability to deliver. For that she must first fight her own demons.

To change Bengal, Mamata must change herself.

Playing God

Who are we helping by keeping old tigers alive with regular baits? Or, by releasing hand-raised cubs back to forests? Welfare is often a selfish motive. Practised in the wild, it defeats the interest of the animals and the very purpose of conservation

Sunday Pioneer, 30 Oct, 2011

First, a disclaimer: I am not given to anthropomorphic tendencies. Animals, wild or not, are animals. But still, it is difficult to think of her as it.

Her disregard for crowd and camera can shame any film icon. Over 14 years, she has been spotted by more than 100 million tourists. A few days every year, tens of thousands of pilgrims walk all over her territory on their way to Ranthambhore’s famed Ganesh temple. She hardly cares.

Her composure and confidence can humble the most efficient single mother. Despite being almost always surrounded by crowds, she has deftly raised nine cubs in four (some wrongly claim five) litters to adulthood between 2000 and 2008. She never compromised her little ones’ safety but rarely charged people even when they ventured too close for comfort. She has some nerve.

Her courage and determination make her a remarkable survivor, particularly by her species’ dodgy standards. She repeatedly took on deadly marsh crocodiles bigger than her and overcame them. Even after those mortal combats cost her two canines, she not only continued to hunt and support herself but also fed five cubs in two litters. Physical handicaps starve even dominant tigers to death over weeks. She won most of her battles in the mind.

Her far-reaching contribution can dwarf many game-changers we idolise. With crores of tourists cherishing how they photographed her, she has been the biggest advertisement for tiger conservation. In 2009, when she was awarded for lifetime achievement at the British Ambassador’s residence in New Delhi (no, she was not there), it was rather conservatively estimated that she had already generated $10 million for the local economy through tourism. But that’s not all.

Almost singlehandedly, she has defended India’s fragile westernmost population of tigers through an ominous decade. Including those nine cubs from three males, her bloodline has so far produced at least 38 tigers in Ranthambhore, including two females sent to repopulate Sariska. Of the 38, 31 are alive today and constitute 60 per cent of Rajasthan’s present tiger population.

She is the tiger legend: T16 alias the Lady of the Lake alias Machli.

When I first saw the young tigress at the turn of the century, I did not even know she had a name. Afterwards, I watched, photographed and filmed the reigning queen of the three majestic lakes near the craggy fort at the heart of Ranthambhore many a time. As tigers disappeared from Rajasthan with poachers striking at will in the first half of the last decade and hollow promises crumbled all around, the very sight of Machli — strolling, stalking, ambushing, raising still more cubs or just minding her own business — was one of the few reassuring constants. We sought to spot her every time we passed by her territory, as an omen of sorts.

It was a miracle that Machli raised her fourth litter at a ripe age and without two canines. However spectacular, all things, even George Harrison knew, must pass away. So three years on, now Machli has lost all but half a canine, a little patch of her once vast territory, and some of her indomitable spirit. She still makes occasional kills. But without the baits the forest department has been offering her for two years now, she would have long been dead.

Except in photos clicked every season by tourists on Machli pilgrimage, I have not seen her after 2009. I refuse to watch an amazing wild tiger reduced to a pathetic spectacle.

For generations fed on the 1966 blockbuster based on Joy Adamson’s Born Free, the idea of ‘helping’ wild animals, particularly big cats, is one of the loftiest goals of conservation.

Machli is not the only victim of our compassion. Life support was also offered to her contemporary and partner T2, the ancient Anantpura male. The big daddy fathered many tigers, including three sent to repopulate Sariska. By 2010, he was too weak to kill even chained buffaloes and finally died this year. In April 2009, a young Ranthambhore male (T29) was operated upon for an injury and set on his feet. It is another matter that Ranthambhore’s tiger population is showing a skewed sex ratio, with too many males around and nature must eliminate a few to restore balance.

Yet, across the country, old and injured tigers are being baited and treated, and orphaned cubs are being brought up in “natural enclosures”.

Not to mention the smug celebrations every time a maneater is packed off to a zoo, instead of being put down.

But animal welfare is an ethical and not an ecological concern. At best, these efforts have no bearing on wildlife conservation. At worst, they defeat its very purpose. In nature, the weak and the injured must perish so that the fittest may flourish. So an aged tiger dies of starvation or at the hands of a young adversary.

The reign of Charger, revered as the mightiest ever of all Bandhavgarh tigers, ended in a deadly fight with one of his grandsons in 2002. Of course, the forest staff tried to feed the mauled, half-blind veteran but he did not respond. Had Charger survived thanks to human benevolence, his young grandson would have had to get into another fight to kill him, thereby inviting fresh injuries or jeopardising his own future as a dominant male.

Yet, we treat the wild like pets.

In September 2008, Ranthambhore’s Guda tigress died of suspected poisoning, leaving two sub-adult cubs, about 16 months old. The forest department promptly stepped in and handed out routine baits to the T36 male and his sibling T37 female.

Raised on calves, the brother-sister duo possibly lost, or did not get to acquire, much of wild survival skills. The sister has a better chance since females seldom face deadly challenges from other females. The brother’s luck gave out when he ran into a probing male in October last year. The adversary was just three years old. The natural advantage should have been with T36. But it was an unequal battle between a raised tiger and a wild one.

Once he was orphaned, 16-month-old T36 would have died of starvation. Or, maybe, necessity would have made a wild tiger out of him. But by offering him baits, forest officials consigned him to an inevitable end. Poor T36 was dead the day he became a raised tiger in the wild.

Another brother-sister duo, orphaned when Ranthambhore’s Berdha tigress died in April 2009, enjoyed regular baits from the park officials. In July 2010, Simba, the three-year-old brother, seriously injured himself attempting a wild hunt. He was spotted in a sorry shape during the monsoon, suffering from deep wounds inflicted by porcupine quills. Then, he disappeared.

This blinkered welfare motive is not limited to cubs and the elderly though. For example, sending a “man-eater” to a zoo does save its life but, in terms of wildlife conservation, the effort is no better than shooting the animal dead. In both cases, the result is one animal less in the wild.

Our excitement about saving “man-eaters” shifts the focus from the real problems — absence of buffer forests, faulty land use around forests — that push predators to chance encounters with people and create “man-eaters”. If these root causes are not addressed and if we do not learn to differentiate between accidental and deliberate attacks, we may soon be left with empty forests, once we have happily rescued all the tigers as “maneaters” to zoos.

The more obvious fallout of Born Free is our aspiration to return orphaned cubs to the wild. But cubs raised in captivity have rarely succeeded in the wild. They lack in hunting skills and fail to defend themselves. Also, bereft of any fear of humans, they tend to get into conflict.

Captive females do stand a chance since wild males accept them as mating partners. For a hand-raised lioness, such acceptance even compensates for her lack of hunting skills as she gets to feed with the pride. After rehabilitating Elsa the lioness, Adamson successfully returned two more hand-raised cats to the wild. Not a coincidence that Pippa the cheetah and Penny the leopard were also females.

In India, Billy Arjan Singh experimented with four hand-raised cats. Tigress Tara and leopardesses Harriet and Juliette had cubs in the wild, but the whereabouts of Prince, the male leopard, remained uncertain. The attempts had led to conflict and subsequent poisoning of Harriet and Juliette.

In Karnataka, Gajendra Singh released two leopards near Bandipur in 1999. While the male was killed soon after while attempting to hunt a sambar stag, the female survived. Emboldened, Singh repeated the experiment this year with three orphan leopard cubs. Around the same time, Bangalore-based NGO Vanamitra was allowed to release three hand-raised cubs in Bhadra. Within months, the cats killed two villagers and injured many, forcing the State forest department to remove them from the wild and ban such experiments.

An excellent guideline issued by the Ministry of Environment and Forests in 2010 is unambiguous on the issue: “A cub without its mother usually does not need ‘rescue’ as the mother leaves the cubs when she goes hunting. Equally, cubs released without its mother have poor survival probabilities. If cubs are found alone, a watch must be kept for their mother without disturbing them. Cubs are not to be ‘released’, but only require ‘reuniting’ with their mother. Reuniting should be attempted immediately in the night in the same area, from where they were picked up.”

“Cubs that are hand-reared in captivity have a negligible possibility of future release back to the wild. Lifetime care is the only suitable option for such cubs, since their release in the wild even after a long-term rehabilitation process may only worsen the already existing conflict situation.”

Yet, three orphaned Tadoba cubs are being raised in an enclosure in Maharashtra’s Bor sanctuary since September 2009. The forest department and a Nagpur-based NGO, Shrusti, are adamant that they are fit to be released in Pench tiger reserve. While Wildlife Institute of India has deferred a final decision, it will be the worst advertisement for tiger conservation if these cubs are set free and they run into conflict with the villagers.

Our romanticism blinds us to the lessons we should have learnt by now. Even before the sordid Karnataka experience, a hand-raised leopard, Lakshmi, was released on the outskirts of Ranthambhore in 2009. Soon, the people-friendly cat ran after local villagers, spreading panic. Lakshmi is now confined to an enclosure deep inside the reserve, much to the annoyance of the wild resident cats of the area.

A similar welfare drama is playing out in Bandhavgarh. When the Jhurjhura tigress was run over by a vehicle in May last year, the future of her three small cubs in the wild was sealed. One of the cubs was killed by a male. Still, the other two cubs are being raised in an enclosure at the heart of the reserve. In all these cases, instead of taking the cubs to zoos — to quote wildlife photographer Aditya Singh — we are deluding ourselves by bringing zoos to the forests.

Welfare is often a selfish motive.

We want to return the Bor cubs back to the wild or keep Machli alive because it gives us an emotional and moral high. It is not them but merely our perception of them that we want to protect and preserve.

Not many Ranthambhore regulars talk about the Sultanpuri tigress (T14) any more. For many years, Machli’s sister was the prize sighting in Zone 1. Then, she was challenged by T13, one of her three daughters, in 2009. Soon, the mother surrendered her territory. T13 became the new Sultanpuri female and has already raised three cubs of her own.

Machli was lucky to hang on to about one-fifth of her territory after she was dethroned by her dominant daughter, T17. When the forest department begun baiting her under public glare, sister Sultanpuri was stumbling away to Bhaironpura where she took refuge at the edge of the national park. Though she was exactly Machli’s age (from the same litter), nobody lobbied to keep her alive. Away from the tourism zone, Sultanpuri made occasional kills and scavenged some more. Her last known big kill was a buffalo this February. It is already six months since she was last spotted sometime in April.

Sultanpuri’s lonely, helpless end may sadden us. But unlike her sister, she was fortunate to have been left alone. The biggest disservice millions of Machli fans could do to her was to treat the fierce fighter as destitute. If we agree that the wild are born free, we must learn to respect that freedom, in life and death.

The writer is an independent journalist

Ten lessons of the fortnight that was

Kafila.org, 30 August, 2010

The 13-day blockbuster— peddled as the second freedom struggle, panned as irresponsible blackmailing, and a lot in between — is over. Anna Hazare accepted honeyed coconut water from two little girls, introduced to the crowd as a dalit and a Muslim, and went on to recuperate in one of India’s most expensive hospitals, one branded after Hindu spiritual literature at that.

News TV is still fighting the vacuum by flogging the debate – so much so that seasoned correspondents are chasing a rather dismissive Dr Naresh Trehan to unravel the mystery of Anna’s endurance. Biker gangs have gone into a sulk and roads at India Gate are looking safer for traffic and women (which is not saying much in Delhi). What is more, India has started taking note that too many Indians have meanwhile drowned in floods.

The show is over; at least for now. There is suddenly time (with deadlines no more literal) and space (the grounds again look big) for holding a thought or a few (though the calls to action, and only action, still haunt). Post mortem is perhaps a sensitive term in the context – Anna has survived some of his more obdurate team members, his movement is obviously alive, and some of the Protest TV still aching to go live. Yet, the torrent of emotion has somewhat ebbed and it is possible now to read the alluvial fan for signs of both hope and anguish.

THE GAINS

THE BIGGEST GAIN of the Anna show is the emergence of a section of people on India’s streets and in its political equation. The Anna supporters are not quite the aam aadmi, they mostly come from different layers of the urban middle class with a few not-so-poor (by rural standards) from villages. Not all of them are new to agitation. For example, lawyers agitate so frequently that it does not even make news every time and Gujjars have mastered the art of crippling the economy by blocking road and railway arteries across north India.

The difference this time is the significant presence of the tax paying middle class (TPMC) in a popular, street movement. Yes, many of them formed picnic groups seeking novelty and some younger ones enjoyed a wild spin on the wheels daddy bought. But undoubtedly, a large number of the TPMC Indians were out there to simply register their protest.

This is a huge plus because so far, the power equations of our political class factored in only the so-called upper class, both urban and rural. Big corporate interests are always protected, just like landed farmers are guaranteed subsidy. The rest did not really matter. The majority of Indians -- from the landless farmer to the marginalised tribal, the real aam aadmi – are still taken for granted just because it is possible to deal that way with the utterly disempowered. Yes, the poor do have the numbers and the politicians know how to tap them before every election with diktats (muscle/caste/religion) and ingenious promises.

While this aam aadmi remained far removed, physically and otherwise, from the Anna show, it has been fascinating to see the other taken-for-granted section of the Indians shed the very characteristic that often makes them fall off the political radar. Till now, the TPMC talked about their grievances among themselves but rarely got any political traction. They remained a resigned lot – too inconsequential to lobby and too inhibited to rally. The Mandal agitation was an exception, and largely a youth movement.

At the Anna show, however, the retired walked alongside the employed, the between-jobs, the unemployed and the student. As a rallying point, the figure of a largely apolitical Anna with an assortment of Gandhian symbols finally offered the TPMC a comfortable platform to vent their long-nourished frustration. They might still not be the majority in Anna’s rainbow crowd; but the fact that they have finally ventured out of their “status-quoist” bubble to hit the roads (with many others they instinctively hold in suspicion), may eventually help them emerge as a political interest group to reckon with.

THE ANNA MOVEMENT has shown Palaniappan Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal – arguably India’s two most insufferably arrogant politicians – their place. As the union Home Minister, Chidambaram was supposed to bring all that Shivraj Patil could not to this key office. Since the Maoists still ambush almost at will and terrorists remain fascinated as always about Mumbai, perhaps the only way our Home Minister can stamp his authority is by shooting his mouth.

Sibal’s perpetual smugness, however, is harder to understand than RP Singh’s smiles in the Oval test. No wonder that even the apex court found his dismissal of the CAG report on the 2G Scam objectionable. One can only hope it will be a while before the ministers recover their voice, and style.

The Anna movement also jolted our MPs who determine what Parliament is on any given day. If the callous waste of public money and, more importantly, delay in legislation is not enough, the honourable members have long conducted themselves in a manner that even pushed a succession of well-meaning Speakers to occasional profanity.

Institutions are abstracts that manifest themselves through the mundane. Not without reason has the impression of Parliament in the public psyche been reduced to a stage where even Kiran Bedi’s scarf act, or a certain Sreesanth’s antics, might not be quite out of place. The “challenge” from the Anna movement did not come a day sooner for our legislators. It was certainly reassuring to witness how the political class fought its divisive inertia to get a mature, sincere show of statesmanship going.

FOR MANY, THE civil society has been a villain this fortnight. What probably went unnoticed was that a large segment of the same civil society provided the necessary dissent to a discourse that often threatened to plummet in the realm of a dictatorial with-us-or-without-us. These dissenting voices from the civil society also refused to cross the lines of decency even as their counterparts undauntedly did so.

Even more heartening was the unusual courage and generosity displayed by some of these dissenters in the face of popular hostility. Aruna Roy, for one, was dubbed a “traitor”. It did not stop her from climbing Anna’s stage to lend her support to those clauses of his Bill that she agreed with or to the fundamentals of Anna’s movement.

AT A TIME when two of the country’s most senior politicians appear to have lost much moral authority even within their parties, Anna Hazare, a plebeian of limited education and worldview and hardly a leader of masses till a fortnight back, has set a rare example.

Why is LK Advani a spent force? He appears to have lost his presence in the party and Parliament ever since he practically gave up on his ambition for the PM’s office. Dr Manmohan Singh is an honest politician but the biggest of scams happen on his watch. Why does a man, who could be a monk, repeatedly claim ignorance as a defence?

At 74, Anna is younger than both Advani and Dr Singh. Tutored or not, Anna’s belief in the Jan Lokpal’s panacea-like utility maybe naïve. His method of fasting may be questionable. But once the man was convinced of the purpose, nothing, not even fear of death, seemed to move him.

This ability to stand up for one’s conviction is altogether missing in politics today. What it says is that our leaders have much more at stake than their principles. That is why Dr Singh carries around A Raja like an albatross and Advani refuses to come clean on B S Yeddyurappa. Ministers like Jairam Ramesh even make a virtue (“mature flexibility”) of the compromise involved in clearing “ill-advised” projects “under pressure”.

In an uneasy prospect for our political class, Anna has restored the lost standards: one is not a worthy leader of people if his or her professed stand (not necessarily on Bills but on principles) is negotiable.

THE WORRIES

THE ANNA MOVEMENT is too much about Anna. This has drawn sections of the hitherto absentee TPMC to roads but such reliance on individual appeal puts a movement on shaky ground.

For the record, the Team Anna -- Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi and Prashant Bhushan -- were already a team when they approached Anna because they needed an icon to sell their cause to the media and the people. Once convinced, Anna inspired a popular movement (with ample help from eager TV channels and a fumbling government) in a matter of months.

But busy hardselling Brand Anna, Team Anna, by its own reckoning, has stuck to playing Hanuman to Anna’s Ram. They have not shared Anna’s grace, his sense of proportion or the moral authority (none of them even broached the idea of going on a fast). Take Anna away and this movement will disintegrate or spiral out of control.

TENS OF LAKHS of Indians support Anna’s movement. But India is a country of thousands of lakhs. So when Team Anna wanted to force the Parliament’s hand on behalf of the country, it was a case of dangerous misrepresentation. Movements against a dam, a factory or a nuclear plant either oppose misuse of certain laws or demand that certain laws be upheld. Moreover, these movements draw on large-scale participation of local populations who have every right to force local issues that affect them more than anyone else.

Yes, Irom Sharmila’s fast is to demand the repeal -- just like Anna’s for enactment – of a law. But an overwhelming majority in the North-East is against the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) which is not a pan-Indian law and applies only in the region (and later Jammu and Kashmir). So Sharmila’s fast or the anti-Posco movement derive “legitimacy” from their specific, limited context. But when a handful of activists from Team Anna want 1.2 billion Indians to accept a law that they have drafted and a few lakhs (or crores) support, they violate the fundamentals of a democracy.

TEAM ANNA HAD more than a million ears over a fortnight for at least 12 hours a day. For a movement built on values and morality, the Anna show wasted this enormous opportunity to build an informed constituency and mostly engaged in harangues. Yes, they called it Anna ki pathshala but very little education or debate happened on the Ramlila stage. Educators-cum-entertainers sang eulogies of the 21st century mahatma or incited crowds in a language very much identifiable with the political class they were lambasting.

This is particularly worrying because most of Anna supporters have the convenient holier-than-thou approach. Anna’s high moral ground that calls for introspection and purification of the self found little echo with his colleagues and supporters who simply played victims of bribery. What Anna clearly envisions as a movement for a better society has so far failed to aspire for anything more than changes in laws and institutions.

TO GARNER PUBLIC support, Team Anna has promised the moon. While peddling their miracle Bill, they even quantified the impact of the Lokpal in percentage terms. In this necessarily simplistic and often vague euphoria, unreasonably huge expectations have been created among the Anna supporters. If the Lokpal does not deliver a miracle, and we know it will not, natural cynicism may relapse. It took roughly 35 years from JP to Anna. If this wave peters out, we maybe in for another long wait.

TESTS AHEAD

FROM THE RAMLILA stage, Anna and his team have spoken of taking up the fight on electoral reform, farmers’ rights, land acquisition etc. The first leg of the movement has capitalised on a largely urban concern for corruption that is limited to bribery. Now the movement has its choices. For example, it is not difficult to sell the idea of “right to recall” that instantly appeals to the middle class. But garnering popular support for non-middle class causes, such as displacement of tribals, is not easy. It is still more difficult to bring the two Indias – aam and still more aam – together in this movement. These choices will test the intent, strength and pull of Anna’s movement.

For all its saffron undertones, this movement has fiercely defended its apolitical credentials till now. Though the key Anna lieutenants have so far dismissed calls by the critics who wanted them to fight elections and directly join the legislation process, the growing clout of the movement may eventually embolden them to test the electoral waters, either by jumping into the fray themselves or throwing their weight behind candidates or political formations. At all such times, they will have two choices: remain true to the movement or get co-opted in partisan politics.

TEAM ANNA HAS repeatedly acknowledged how the movement was as much the media’s as it was theirs. News TV, in particular, has been credited for a “social revolution”. While cynics and politicians have pointed fingers, alleging that the movement and live TV were tailormade for each other, channel heads have defended their editorial prerogative to play up what they felt was a genuine people’s cause.

They have not, however, bothered to explain why the same news TV rarely turns to the far corners of India (or makes do with hit-and-run coverage) where people fight gruesome battles to defend their livelihood and lives. Are those movements less genuine because they do not clear the TRP-vs-expenses tests?

The only way the media can put such doubts to rest is by being a little less choosy. If the media is indeed keen on social justice, as it should be, the cameras should now, like Anna’s movement itself, travel outside the bribe-stricken cities and towns to the much larger India out there and address issues far more complex. Journalism is not about convenience. Neither is revolution.

Everybody Loves a Good Protest

Dissent is a casualty at the Anna show where his rainbow coalition of supporters eats, drinks and makes protest before the camera

OPEN, 27 August, 2011

Retired Director General of Maharashtra Police SS Virk, who knows something about dealing with Anna Hazare and his fasts, has this story to tell. “In 2009, he was on fast, demanding an inquiry in a criminal case. I called him up and said, ‘Anna, everyone on your stage is not a saint and you should not put your life at risk for people who don’t really care if you die.’ He agreed. I quickly ordered an inquiry at my level and he called off his fast.”

The former top cop pauses for effect. “I told him his life was precious and he must live to fight for bigger causes. A simple, reasonable man, he responded graciously. But this time he has big support. This Ramlila protest… how is the mood there?”

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It’s carnivalesque, at first glance, with nearly everyone in sight clicking away—a few with DSLRs, many with point-and-shoot variants, the rest with mobile cams. The crowd is only occasionally in focus. Mostly it forms the backdrop as they shoot themselves, posing with the tricolour or with the more colourful characters around. Three boys and a girl from Sultanpur video-recorded themselves “being interviewed” by this lowly reporter. Being here, a part of this grand spectacle, is like being in the movies they’ve watched.

But isn’t it about anger, about righteous indignation, about protesting against corruption? You might spot them too, if you look past these hormonally charged youth with their frozen wide grins — there are enough scowls on grim faces. It is easier, though, to spot the signs of a ‘popular protest’ around the dozen or so platforms occupied by the news channels. Handheld cameras for vox pops or crane-mounted for panorama, the TV cams are everywhere. So many of them and so eager that after a point people actually get choosy.

Cameras and anger (canned and real) are not the only, or even the most defining, elements of the rally. A couple of protestors who on Friday complained that they were not being allowed to fast alongside Anna assured me on Sunday that the free meals were “good for a rally”. Biscuits and bananas are plentiful. And, true to the spirit of Anna’s cause, strict volunteers threw some school students out of the queues on Saturday for collecting and “hoarding” more than they could possibly eat.

Some Class XI students of a government school from Sangam Vihar were more interested in the ice candies that were not going free. So a vendor did bulk business. Candies put away, a few of them spoke to me reluctantly: they supported Anna; this was their first visit to the Ramlila ground; they had saved on bus fare by travelling without tickets.

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Print journalists are cynical by training, just like their TV counterparts are hysterical. I was trying hard to suspend instinct. Particularly because I hadn’t met the girl who, asked if she had read the Jan Lokpal Bill, apparently said she was a science student and did not know much about civics, or even the young MNC worker who blamed corruption for high tax rates.

Late Sunday night, a news channel was beaming yet another corruption special. Citing an example of the corruption he’d faced, one young man said he’d had to pay to get a building plan sanctioned since he or his father could not have possibly visited the government office over and over to fulfil all the requirements. The next one spoke of a cop who hid behind a tree to catch people jumping a traffic light. Why was the cop hiding, asked this ‘victim of corruption’; he’d jumped the signal only because he couldn’t see the cop.

I try to find some answers in the Ramlila throng. Asked why A Raja was in jail, four young men from Yamuna Vihar said it was because the minister had stashed away money in Italy. I also drew three blanks and nine correct answers. Then a young girl claimed that Raja had bribed the Prime Minister.

It must be a reflection on my reporting skill that I did not find a single person in the crowd below 35 who had heard of the JP movement, which drew the biggest crowds by far to these grounds in 1975. A dapper Gurgaon youth, who wouldn’t divulge his profession, thought I was referring to JP Morgan. “Jaypee group? Constructionwala?” shot back another protestor, who had brought his six-year-old boy along.

Few had heard of Posco or Vedanta or Jaitapur either. And fewer said they would stand by their fellow citizens in the villages in their fights. Only one, a spare parts dealer in East Delhi’s Laxminagar, was candid: “It is the media that brings people. We watched Anna on TV and we are here. How can I rally against Posco if I don’t know about it?”

People here don’t like being asked if they’ve read the Jan Lokpal Bill. Till Team Anna started educating the crowd from the stage on Monday, few had any idea of the Bill, except that it will “police the PM, the Judiciary and will end corruption”. Asked who will choose the Jan Lokpal, people either name Anna or say the janata will decide.

But didn’t the same Parliament and political parties and NAC (National Advisory Council) pass the people-friendly RTI Act two years ago? A lively group of young musicians jamming at the site were venturing some answers when the crowds intervened. Soon, a few exchanges like “Kaun hain yeh jo sab poochh rahe hain” (Who are these inquisitors?) and “Congress ne agent bheje hain” (the Congress has sent agents) ended the debate. A lot of wagging fingers and a little shoving around settled it—Anna’s Jan Lokpal Bill was the only means to end corruption. I was told to write it down. I did.

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There is strength in numbers and numbers add easily at the Ramlila ground. A sizeable anti-Congress, pro-BJP crowd is conspicuous. There are school students in uniform and the youth have come prepared with face paint and flags, much like they would for an IPL match at the Ferozeshah Kotla stadium not far away.

And there are the others. I sit down with a group of five friends and they smell of alcohol in the afternoon. All smiles, they tell me they do nothing and were getting bored whiling away time in their Shastri Park bylanes. “Idhar music hai, masti hai. Bas hit gana suno, aur ladki dekho” (It’s fun here. Just sit back, listen to the music and check out girls). On cue, the loudspeakers blare yet another Rang De Basanti number.

Many young couples have walked in too; one can tell because they avoid the cameras. Families are regulars in the evening and also after dinner. The police should take credit: it’s their host-like graciousness that has made this middle-class family entertainment possible. With so many of them deployed here, mob aggression is naturally under check, though one constable did get slapped around (nobody was really sure why) till his colleagues rescued him.

Then there are the rally and trade fair regulars—pickpockets among them, for whom this must be a bonanza. Also, there has been the usual spike in business in the red light quarters on GB road; a 25 per cent increase, reported a daily, is standard every time there is a big rally at the Ramlila maidan.

Yet, this crowd is unlike any other that gathers at the Ramlila. Lanky Shahnawaz stands in his tattered kurta and watches proceedings intently. At a distance, an over-enthusiastic protestor accidentally steps on the tricolour while posing with it. Shahnawaz springs into action, pulls out the flag, wipes it clean, and gives the man a stare. And then returns to his watch behind the swelling crowd.

Shahnawaz does not talk, but many say they trooped in simply because an arrogant government refused them space for dissent. Kapil Sibal is villain No. 1. An autodriver from Shahdara says he felt humiliated by the way the minister spoke on TV: “Woh kya kya bolte hain aur kis tareeke se bolte hain TV pe? Woh hamare malik hain kya?” (See what he says on TV and how. Does he own us?)

For the majority, the methods of Team Anna do not matter. Musicians Bhavesh, Akansha and Ram are protesting for Anna from the day he was arrested. They do not know if Anna’s prescription will work. But they will take anything if that means “a shift, a change from the present system”.

Many also admit that they would not be here if it weren’t for Anna. Sweta Kumar and Basanti Sharma have come from Chhatarpur with their husbands and children. “What will he (Anna) get out of it? It is rare to find a selfless man,” says Basanti’s husband Devender, who works at Customs clearance and knows “how bad corruption can get”.

For the less privileged, though, corruption is an abstract and the real issue is runaway inflation. While paying Rs 5 for a cup of tea, an elderly protestor from Faridabad said he could get one for Rs 2 not so long ago. Stay-at-home women in particular rue how their household budgets have gone for a toss.

The Gandhian angle of Anna’s protest has also drawn thousands of senior citizens to Ramlila. Yet, some like Vaje Singh from Haryana never need much prodding. “I have been protesting since 1965 when the movement for a separate Haryana state was launched. I protested during the JP movement, during the Emergency, with Bansi Lal, with Vajpayee and I was here when Baba Ramdev held his dharna,” gushes the 69-year-old.

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Kiran Bedi can add drama to routine health bulletins. “Anna’s BP is 80-130. Aap aur humse achhe hain (Better than you and me),” she roars from the stage on Sunday. The crowd roars back. “Heartbeat is 78. Better than you and me.” Another roar from the crowd. Dr Naresh Trehan, arguably India’s most expensive doctor, appears in the evening to check all’s well with the mascot.

On Monday, though, it seems even Anna’s stage has some room for dissent. Bedi tells the crowd that Anna’s BP is fine but his kidney is infected. Soon, Arvind Kejriwal denies any infection. But much as a few SMS jokes describe Anna as Kejriwal’s Nathha (remember Peepli Live?), the veteran faster, Virk recalls, knows his body and is no puppet.

On Sunday again, Bedi lauds the PM in the morning. “He has done such a commendable job with the Nuclear Bill. I appeal to him to support the Jan Lokpal Bill.” In the evening, activist Akhil Gogoi from Assam blasts the PM, calling him a fraud and accuses him of selling the country to the US.

Away from the stage, I meet two disgruntled Anna associates, who shared the stage with him during his fast at Jantar Mantar. The movement’s growing popularity and clout has drawn many new faces and apparently sidelined the duo. “A few people sharing the stage with Anna are so corrupt that I fear for him,” alleges one. So why did they not warn Anna? “You think it’s easy to reach him these days?” snaps another. So will they spill it to the media? “The media is in no mood for anything anti-Anna now.”

Walking out, I found Shahnawaz outside the ground. This time, he talks. “I am from the LNJP colony across the road. I work at a butcher’s shop. Yesterday, I was at the protest. Today I managed Rs 500 and brought these flags to make some money.” He hopes to finish off his stock if the crowds keep pouring in.

Shahnawaz takes out a bidi and asks for a light. As I search in my pouch, he warns me of pickpockets. I tell him that, according to a daily, crime rates have dropped since Anna began his fast . He laughs, “Police darr gaye, chor nahin (the police have got scared, not the thieves).”

I recall that the cop who came home this morning for passport verification didn’t ask for a bribe. Could it be the Anna effect? Or was I just being cynical as usual and doubting an honest cop? I may never find out.

Act Responsible At the Top

Much of human-carnivore conflict is supposed to be either accidental or caused by old/injured animals, but how do we explain deliberate attacks on people by healthy, mature carnivores?

Current Conservation, Vol 4, Issue 4

Big carnivores scare many of us. They are nature’s most efficient killers. But the “threat perception” seems disproportionate to the threat. A very conservative estimate of the big five—tigers, lions, leopards, wolves and crocodiles—will put their collective population at 10,000.

Each of them makes a kill every week. There are about 15 crore people living in 1,70,000 villages around India’s forests, offering the biggest prey base to pick and choose five lakh kills from every year. Yet, how many people are killed by carnivores? Even accounting for those that go unreported, the numbers do not add up to the 200 mark.

Indeed, the numbers tell interesting stories. In India, more than 30,000 people die of rabies due to dog bite each year. Venomous snakes claim about 50,000 victims. No less than 80,000 die of injuries caused by road accidents. And yet carnivores are considered a far, far greater threat to human safety. On one hand, people are known to overestimate rare and dramatic events. On the other, maybe it is because carnivores consider us food.

So, are we wrong? The etymology -- carne (flesh) vorare (devour) -- is a giveaway. Obligate carnivores live exclusively on meat. They prefer herbivores but are not fussy about other meat. Technically, that makes us, omnivore humans, carnivore food; just like all omnivore primates are in the wild. Surely, whatever be the numbers, quite a few people still do get devoured by carnivores across the world.

But contemporary science tells us that carnivores do not consider us food. The figures cited above support the claim. Almost three-quarters of a century back, Jim Corbett was quite unequivocal in his Man-eaters of Kumaon: “A maneating tiger is a tiger that has been compelled, through stress of circumstances beyond its control, to adopt a diet alien to it. The stress of circumstances is, in nine cases out of ten, wounds, and in the tenth case old age-human beings are not the natural prey of tigers, and it is only when tigers have been incapacitated through wounds or old age that, in order to live, they are compelled to take to a diet of human flesh.”

To the list of old and injured carnivores, wildlife biologists add inexperienced or alarmed animals as potential mankillers (not man-eaters). A chance encounter with a carnivore, particularly a young one, may result in accidental attacks but such kills are not usually consumed. Some attacks are blamed on mistaken identity when a squatting person is taken for a four-legged prey. Experts have identified another condition—significant loss of wild prey or habitat or both — as a trigger to conflict.

Some biologists, pioneer among them Vidya Athreya in India, have recently pointed out another manmade aspect of conflict. Their research shows that the policy of capturing and trans- locating so-called problem animals exacerbates, and even creates, conflict because such displaced carnivores, traumatised after prolonged captivity, try to find their way home and encounter people on their way.

Clearly, the consensus is that carnivore attacks on humans are not natural and happen only under a set of exceptional circumstances. Otherwise, given that so many of us are around, the human casualties would surely have been many times higher. But do these arguments settle the issue?

Not quite. Records show that on many occasions, perfectly healthy, undisturbed carnivores in their prime have been killing and feeding on people. So if a few individual carnivores are eating human flesh, and since potentially all of them can, what keeps the rest of them away?

Also, the contemporary assertion — that carnivores, under normal circumstances, do not consider us food — is, well, contemporary. The great apes were very much part of carnivore menu. So were the early humans. Carnivores continued to attack and kill scores of people throughout recorded history. The contemporary assertion gains ground only because few such cases occur in recent times. Of course, the trend is unmistakable. The frequency of attacks on people by carnivores has been reducing steadily with time. Could it be because large carnivores are getting fewer by the day? Or is it because they have been undergoing a behavioural change?

Loss of population does not quite explain it. If we go by the notional number of 40,000 tigers at the turn of the last century (plus easily 100,000 leopards, wolves etc) and the corresponding scale of reported conflict (up to 10,000 in the 18th century), it becomes clear that even 200 years back, carnivores had limited dietary interest in us.

Can we, therefore, attribute the historical trend of consistently reducing conflict to a changing attitude in carnivores that had considered early men as natural a prey as anthropoids but slowly learned to drop modern man from the list? If we can, it is important to understand the factors that triggered this change in carnivore behaviour over so many thousand years. It is even more important to explore if such factors can get locally or temporally reversed. Because such reversal may explain why certain individual carnivores that do not fit in the exceptional category (old, injured, alarmed, prey-less or translocated) still go for human prey today. Or why certain areas (eg Sunderbans) record consistently higher casualties or certain pockets (eg Tadoba) suddenly become conflict-prone.

In most human societies, carnivores are not considered food. Early man hunted carnivores mostly to protect himself. From human fossils and cave paintings to scriptures and folklore, there is evidence that carnivores were one of the prime threats to human life. The mighty animals’ larger-than-life presence frequently transformed them into gods and demons alike—entities considered almost as powerful as other great natural forces.

Things were probably slightly more complicated on the other side. As hunter-gatherer humans emerged as a predator species in their own right, it was not easy for carnivores to negotiate with them as just another competitor. Three factors that made (and still make) carnivores wary of us are numbers, tools and motive. Humans hunted in groups. They also used tools. The first factor is traditionally respected in the wild. A solitary large cat, for instance, rarely takes on a pack of wild dogs or an elephant herd. Tools turned the balance of power upside down. Initially, tools substituted for canines and claws. Then tools became technology. From slingshots to catapults, bows-and-arrows to guns, better guns and the arms race was over soon. We all know that story.

In any human society, a carnivore hunter was always a hero. The pride and thrill involved in hunting soon turned it into a popular sport. Game hunting upturned the fundamental laws of the wild where animals kill either for food or for protection. Over time, the carnivores had to learn how to deal with a species that often killed arbitrarily. This learning process continues and it has not been particularly kind.

As humans became increasingly organised and technologically evolved over centuries, these factors probably made carnivores adopt a “no risk” policy vis-à-vis people over time, so much so that it became normal for most to walk the other way when humans were in sight. Many shikar accounts relate how tigers or leopards did not risk charging people unless disturbed or threatened.

But a lonely, unarmed human is still the easiest prey for any large carnivore. To stretch the elephant analogy, we know that tigers, otherwise wary and respectful of elephant herds, do occasionally kill isolated calves. I have known instances of tigers successfully defending kills against smaller wild dog packs, something they will not usually attempt against bigger packs.So, is it possible that even healthy, mature carnivores may seek out lonely, unarmed persons for food? If it is, given that there is still no dearth of lonely, unarmed persons in and around our forests, why are such attempts so few? Probably because a wary carnivore never attempts a human kill unless a meticulous risk assessment assures it of a certain safety threshold.

So what factors determine this safety threshold? Do carnivores balance the risk of attacking humans against the availability and their own ability to get other prey? On one hand, hunger (due to injury, inexperience or lack of wild prey) can push carnivores to target high-risk prey. There are instances of desperate carnivores targeting people in broad daylight in crowded places. But this rule is likely to apply only to certain individual animals in distress and not to a population as a whole. There is no example of a large number of carnivores turning on people even in the most degraded, prey-deficient forests. On the other hand, it is possible that even healthy carnivores will prey on people when they can assess the risk itself to be particularly low. This may explain occasional, deliberate attacks on people by carnivores that are not hungry or injured.

Most instances of sporadic conflict seem to have a few factors in common. First, the victims ventured inside or very close to a forest. Second, they were alone. But many others do so every day and some carnivores, like leopards, even share space with people. Perhaps, a third factor decides the tipping point. Perhaps, the careless victims “unmindfully” allowed the predators enough undisturbed time to stalk, observe and be sure.

But what explains the high conflict zones like Sunderbans or Tadoba? Perhaps, numbers do. Compared to other forests in India, more people venture into Sunderbans (fishing, honey collection etc) and Tadoba (for bamboo). In both places, they also spend a long time inside the forests. Most fishing, honey-collecting or felling expeditions inside Sunderbans last more than a week. Thanks to a recent state law that makes bamboo products legal, villagers around Tadoba not only enter the forests in thousands but also spend long hours cutting down the bamboo to thin strips which are then carried out of the forests.

This means more opportunities for carnivores to stalk, observe and be sure. With more practice, comes more experience. Corbett’s Champawat maneater reportedly killed more than 400 people (a random assessment only indicative of the long killing spree) and in the process learnt to single out victims in groups. Probably for the same reason, tigers have been reported to have attacked the last persons in groups walking single file in Sunderbans —a strategy that defeats the security of numbers.

Moreover, while there is little scientific evidence of so-called maneaters developing a taste for human flesh, it may be possible that they learn to appreciate the relative ease with which a human can be hunted down if the risk (numbers and arms) is low. This may explain those cycles of attacks in crowded forests (many potential targets) as very few villagers stay closeted in groups or carry guns (minimal risk) while making forays.

Of course, other manmade factors have created what Jim Corbett called “stress of circumstances” at both Sunderbans and Tadoba and may partially explain such high conflict. Poaching leaves behind orphaned, inexperienced or, injured carnivores. In the past year, five Tadoba tigresses have disappeared—feared poached. A number of faulty interventions like capture-release are rampant in Sunderbans. But, such interventions do not happen on the Bangladesh side where conflict is acute. But then, too many tigers are poached (both for revenge and profit) in Sunderbans which might have created a highly disturbed population.

Ultimately, each local conflict demands to be understood in terms of local factors. We have little data to draw any sound conclusion anywhere and thorough ground research is long overdue. Human-carnivore conflict has always evoked strong emotions. There are greater pressures at play today but we had better act responsibly. We have our right to safety, but that is not secured through exterminating other apex species. It is certainly not safe being alone. Not while walking in the wild. Not at the top of the food chain.