No, Prime Minister

Either abolish environment laws or follow them—undercutting them is not an option for the Prime Minister's Office

Open, 23 Feb, 2011

In this season of scams and rhetoric, we must credit the establishment for coming clean on at least one front. The government has finally done away with the façade that it is serious about saving the environment. After much posturing, the Ministry of Environment and Forests has cleared Posco and Lavasa. No Opposition party has found these fait accomplis worth even a customary dharna. The Planning Commission has slashed the budget of the green ministry. And the Reserve Bank has singled out ‘environmentalism’ to blame for a one-third dip in foreign direct investments. The Prime Minister has cautioned that green regulatory standards might bring back the dreaded licence-permit-quota raj.

To those who follow the growth-versus-green story, this is a welcome development. All these years, many have wondered why successive UPA governments have not delivered on their lavish green commitments. After all, has not there been a Sonia Gandhi, the supreme commander of the Congress, who took personal interest in saving India’s wilderness? Now that the licence-permit-quota-fearing Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister who is barely audible unless he really means business, has spoken, we finally know why.

It was difficult not to be torn between expectation and experience when Rahul Gandhi, the PM-in-waiting who mobilised parliamentarians to set up a short-lived tiger caucus five years ago, rushed to support the Niyamgiri tribals against Vedanta. But the surrender before Posco and Lavasa came as a cold snub to all those unduly optimistic about a bania system that still makes a rubber-stamp ministry approve 99 per cent of projects.

Then again, minister for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh, who never tires shooting his mouth against poachers, encroachers, developers and cabinet colleagues alike, was swiftly capturing the anti-establishment space by winning the trust of even some of the rabid green. Now that he has saved his job by meekly following his masters’ order to allow mega sell-outs, Ramesh will probably stop flailing his recyclable tin sword in polluted air. If he does not, it will anyway look rather quixotic after the RBI snub.

Indeed, it was not easy to decide whether to take Montek Singh Ahluwalia seriously when the suave planning commission deputy chairman (who, last year, publicly committed himself to the cause of “preserving” tigers) approved, in principal, Rs 5000 crore for resettling families from core tiger reserve areas across the country over the next five years. Now that he has slashed a Rs 1,100 crore proposal for the same to first Rs 700 crore and then less than Rs 50 crore, there are no honest doubts about his sincerity.

So the gloves are off and the masks, torn. It is so much more comforting to know who stands where and for what. If diplomatic interest cleared Posco, political interest pushed Lavasa. The Jaitapur nuclear power project in the coastal Konkan got through in the national interest; so did SAIL’s mega mining projects in Saranda’s elephant forests. No wonder Ramesh has already conceded many a mile in negotiating no-go areas with his counterpart in the coal ministry. After all, the spectre of a green licence-permit-quota raj is haunting his Prime Minister.


But, frankly, what does Manmohan Singh have in mind when he airs such apprehension? Does he mean he has inherited particularly unwieldy green laws? If that were the case, his party and government could have easily got those amended in a Parliament that does not have any environmental lobby. Why, whenever there were opportunities, successive green ministries watered down ministerial regulations (from the norms for coastal regulation zones to restrictions on industrial pollution).

Incidentally, thanks to former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, India’s two fundamental green laws—Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980—are remarkably robust and candid. They deny easy excuses for tweaking or room for confusion. The third major law that impacts developmental projects was enacted by the government headed by Manmohan Singh.The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 was a longstanding electoral commitment of his party. Surely, the prime minister is not resenting what his party pitches as one of the biggest achievements of his government?

So is it the Prime Minister’s case that these laws are not applied fairly, leading to a long-drawn approval process? Unfortunately, facts tell a very different story. If India’s green laws were applied fairly, bulk of the projects would have been summarily rejected. But since the establishment wants to get every project cleared, it drags on the clearance process by instituting panel after panel until the facts get lost in a maze of referrals and finally a go-ahead is obtained.

Worse, many projects take off without due diligence, trusting the establishment to clear those as fait acomplis after a suitably long clearance drama. The latest on that list is Jindal Steel and Powers. The company started construction at its Angul plant in Orissa without obtaining clearance on the forest land and was served a notice by the divisional forest officer in July 2009. Last week, Ramesh signalled all-clear to Naveen Jindal, his colleague in the party and in Parliament.

Intriguingly, many development projects incur huge cost escalation due to such delays and, in effect, end up spending much more than what would have cost the developers to address environmental concerns at the conception stage. Take the Navi Mumbai airport project, for example. In 2004, the project cost was Rs 4,700 crore. After a prolonged drama over green clearance, the project refused to retain the current course of the Ulwe river, arguing that construction on stilts etc. was not financially viable as that would cost an additional Rs 4,300 crore. In August 2009, the promoters claimed the delay had already escalated the project cost by 40 per cent. Finally, when the project was cleared in November 2010, the escalated cost was estimated at Rs 9,000 crore. Had the project authority opted for the environmentally sound plan in 2004 itself, the modifications, discounting for inflation, would not have cost more than Rs 2,300 crore. At Rs 7000 crore, the new airport would still have come Rs 2,000 crore cheaper and four years sooner.

Deliberate and organised attempt to bend laws is behind the delay in the environmental impact assessment process. Therefore, to fast track the clearance process, the Prime Minister should know, every project must factor in the environmental costs at the conception stage instead of resisting legally binding green safeguards later. More importantly, both government and private developers should stop eyeing projects in areas that are legally out of bounds. It is unfortunate enough that many such illegal projects manage to get approval after repeated environmental assessments and sustained doctoring of facts.

Now if the Prime Minister wants even such projects to be cleared forthwith, he should, if he can, get the green laws abolished in the House. Or he should step down. Provocation does not become the country’s highest office.

Lies, more lies, and green lies

It is one thing to watch the nation’s best forests plundered, quite another to be asked to feel good about it

The Bengal Post, 17 Feb, 2011

Steel Authority of India is a maharatna company – one of the government’s crown jewels. Its existing and future expansion plans are supreme in the national interest. The operational mines of the steel major in the eastern region have almost exhausted their ore stock. So the company sought mining leases for Ajitaburu, Budhaburu and Sukri-Latur in Saranda’s Chiria iron ore field, the only “compact deposit” which can sustain large, mechanised mining with an annual yield of 30-50 million tonnes over the next 50 years.

So Environment and Forests minister Jairam Ramesh has overruled the Forest Advisory Committee's recommendations and cleared the proposal. Of course, he cited 13 conditions even though his ministry has no infrastructure to monitor any.

Environmentalists briefly ranted over the sacrifice of Singhbhum’s elephant forests, a decision which will also have serious repercussions for the herds of the Keonjhar district in Orissa. But national interest cannot be questioned too loudly and it was business as usual.

Then SAIL decided to celebrate. After all, nearly 40 per cent of the company's iron ore requirement would be met from Chiria mines in the next five decades. It announced that Rs 5000 crore would be pumped in to develop the mines in Chiria and that the company would start mechanised mining in the next three years to feed its plants in Bokaro, Burnpur, Durgapur and Rourkela. It added that the company had already begun work on development of mechanised mines in Chiria, initially with a capacity of seven million tonnes per annum and appointed Australia’s Hatch Associates for preparing a detailed project report.

Then, SAIL delivered a gem. The company declared that it would leave no stone unturned to ensure mining in Chiria left no mark on the environment. In order to ensure environmental protection, SAIL will carry out only mining and crushing activities in the mines. The iron ore will then be taken out of the forest area through a conveyor system. Installation of the most modern type of conveyor system, with very low-level of noise and without the need for a service road for maintenance activities, has been planned. According to SAIL, such a system will ensure that impact of mining on flora and fauna in the area is zero. Yes, zero; you read that right.


The once virgin sal forests of Saranda, its evergreen undergrowth and two perennial rivers (Karo and Koina) – home to one of the country’s most promising elephant reserves -- have already been decimated by SAIL and others in many parts, such as, Gua, Kiriburu, Chiria or Noamundi. More than one-third of Saranda’s canopy cover is already history, thanks to iron ore mining since the 1920s. Most of Saranda’s elephant herds are fragmented or are cut off from one another. With their traditional migration routes blocked and elephants seeking out new areas in Hazaribag (even Orissa and Chhattisgarh), conflict with the local population is steadily on the rise.

Yet, SAIL wants us to believe that their new, mechanized technology will have “zero impact” on the environment.

This is not the first time a developer or an industry has sought to ridicule the intelligence of India’s citizens. Only a couple of months back, former chairman of Atomic Energy Commission Anil Kakodkar supported the Jaitapur nuclear power project, saying it would have no harmful impact on the environment, water, air or bio-diversity. Needless to say that the green ministry already cleared the power project after 1,000 ha of land in the coastal Konkan was acquired for the plant.

Likewise, the Tatas claimed that Dhamra port does not harm Gahirmatha’s sea turtles. Kashmir’s famed Mughal road refused a minor compromise of its alignment but proposed to launch a Markhor (endangered mountain goat) Recovery Project at a cost of Rs 11 crore. Argument for a proposed thermal power plant in the fragile Sompeta swamp in Srikakulam is reassuring because based on environment impact assessment done in the peak summer months, the swamp is not much of a wetland. The list is long.

The bottomline, however, is clear. Whatever the green laws of the country, ministerial discretion rules when it comes to application. The prime minister’s office has been involved so many times in influencing the environmental clearance of projects that the idea of transparency and an equal playing field seems pretty much a joke.

Environment and Forests minister Jairam Ramesh enjoys the confidence of a huge green constituency. Many were excited after the minister had ruled against Vedanta and when PM-in-waiting Rahul Gandhi rallied in support of the Niyamgiri tribals. But the abject surrender before Posco and Lavasa underlined how the system makes a rubber-stamp ministry approve 99 per cent of development projects.

It is difficult to tell when the joke becomes a snub. When the ministry cleared Posco and Lavasa to appease ‘multinational’ and ‘political’ interests, respectively, no Opposition party in India finds these faits accomplis worth even a mock protest. After approving, in principal, Rs 5000 crore for resettling families from core tiger reserve areas across the country over the next five years, the Planning Commission has in fact slashed the budget of the green ministry. To top that, the Reserve Bank of India has blamed Jairam Ramesh and his environmentalism for a 36% dip in foreign direct investment. The prime minister himself has warned that green regulatory standards might bring back the licence-permit raj.

In the hierarchy of power, it is becoming increasingly evident where the greens stand. At the wrong end of a bulldozer and with an earful of assurance: don’t worry, this won’t hurt one bit.

Sex, Lies and Pugmarks

For decades, foresters have relied on pugmarks to tell the gender and identity of tigers. But pugs often lie, as they did in Corbett recently. Open tracks a few alpha males with ‘female’ footprints

Open, 5 February, 2011

Six deaths in 10 weeks, terrified villagers and angry mobs, a shrill media and shriller conservationists, harried forest staff and their nervous bosses—even by Corbett’s vintage standards, it was a classic recipe for chaos.

The tug-of-war began three months ago after the first human death on 12 November. Wildlife activists dubbed the first two attacks accidental and blamed the victims for trespassing on the forest. But the kills were partly eaten on both occasions. So when a third victim was consumed on 29 December, it was difficult for the forest authorities to ignore public pressure. The next day, Uttarakhand’s Chief Wildlife Warden, S Chandola, issued shoot-at-sight orders.

The sharpshooters, however, were told to go easy, and trap cages were set up to capture the maneater alive. Barring the second killing, the attacks had taken place within a 6 sq km area adjacent Sunderkhal village where two male and three female tigers roam. By now, rumours were flying thick and fast. Many started blaming a tiger couple for the killings. Otherwise solitary animals, tigers do come together while mating, but it was highly unlikely that they would pair up for two long months and forge a partnership to bring down the unusual prey.

No wonder Ranjan Mishra, field director of Corbett Tiger Reserve, thought the theory deserved some wry humour: “What kind of couple would look for human flesh in the mating season? Is it an aphrodisiac or what?” The tense drama was beginning to border the absurd.

All hell broke loose on 8 January when a male tiger walked into one of the trap cages. UC Tiwari, now warden and an old Corbett hand, had been scanning the sites of the attacks and felt some pugmarks near the kills indicated a tigress at work. It was only a possibility, and not a man to speculate, Tiwari had kept it to himself. But now that a young male tiger faced life imprisonment in Nainital zoo, the warden decided to answer the media.

By the time newspapers confirmed the Sunderkhal maneater as a tigress, on 9 January, the captured male had been tranquillised, and against the pressures of local strongmen, released 40 km inside the reserve in the Dhikala zone. (This was hardly the best option for the male that found itself in another male tiger’s territory. But that is another story.)

The very next day, the maneater struck again near Sunderkhal. By now, the villagers had no patience left for theories. They refused to accept the body and insisted that the tiger be shot when it returned to its kill. Two machans were set up: one overlooking the kill and another a little away on an approach path. The animal showed up in the evening and took a bullet. Surprisingly, the shooters were using .315 rifles—a weapon vastly inferior to the .375 Magnum, the minimum calibre prescribed for shooting a tiger. The injured tiger charged at its adversaries, but broke away when shooters from the other machan fired to cover their men. All that remained was a blood trail and samples for a forensic test.

In the days that followed, the media hammered the forest establishment for leaving an injured maneater tigress at large. Trackers combed the forest in vain. Finally, on 26 January, the maneater made a comeback. On a trip to visit his relatives, 25-year-old Puran stopped his two-wheeler on the highway and stepped a few yards inside the forest to relieve himself. All that was found of him the next day was a piece of leg.

The village turned into a wild mob. Stone pelting and road blockades spurred the gunmen. Within hours, they found a big cat near the spot where Puran’s remains had been found. Desperate, they sprayed bullets from all vantages. It took about 30 rounds to bring down the maneater of Sunderkhal. But when the gunners cautiously retrieved the dead cat, it turned out to be a male!


News spread fast. On the web, conservationists and activists started wagging fingers. After all, this was not the first time a ‘wrong’ maneater had been shot. In 2007, Tadoba’s maneater of Talodi was supposed to be a tigress but a young male was gunned down. In 2009, a Pilibhit tiger was blamed for a series of attacks on people, but when shot, it turned out to be a female.

A dead tiger on their hands, the Corbett brass rushed to the spot. Among them, Tiwari kept his fingers crossed. It was he who had told the media that going by the pugmarks, the maneater was a tigress.

Reading pugmarks has been the most traditional method of tracking tigers. Nearly eight decades ago, A Somerville noted that a male tiger’s toes were square while a female’s were more rounded and slender. In 1934, JW Nicholson of the Imperial Forest Service used pugmarks to count tigers in Palamau. In the 1960s, Saroj Raj Choudhury developed it into a field technique at Simlipal.

Subsequently, many noted tiger experts, including biologist C McDougal and former Chief of Project Tiger HS Panwar, observed that ‘the whole hind pugmark of a male tiger fits into a square frame whereas that of the female fits into a rectangular frame’. They also noted that ‘a female’s toes were slender and elongated compared to a male’s toes which were oval and more circular’ (see above graphic: Tale of Two Paws).

These thumb rules have been the most widely used (and misused) field method to ascertain a tiger’s gender. As late as in 2003, a paper co-authored by Dr Y Jhala of the Wildlife Institute of India confirmed that pugmarks ‘can be used to acquire sex-ratio data of tiger populations’.

An old-school forester, Tiwari trusted his eyes. Now he was cursing his luck that the gunners had probably got the wrong tiger. Then something struck him.
In 2004, a tiger created panic near Mohan in Corbett. It had attacked people and stalked villages. It had even injured a patrol elephant. Tiwari had had a tough time tracking the tiger and was relieved when it died.

While villagers celebrated, Tiwari recalled, he had spotted something unusual about the dead tiger. Its hind pads were shaped like a female’s. I remember the story. But in 2004, I was more interested in the tiger than its paws. So was Tiwari.

Two months ago, when the Corbett maneater was still on the prowl, Tiwari came across puzzling pugmarks again. He was following a fresh tiger trail on his jeep. Everybody in the team expected a female walking ahead, but when they caught up with the cat, it turned out to be a male. In a moment of intrigue, Tiwari recalled the Mohan tiger, and drove on.

But this time, in Sunderkhal, he went for the dead tiger’s hind paws. Déjà vu.


The next day, Chief Wildlife Warden Chandola explained to the press that the dead male’s hind pads had the characteristics of a female, adding that the bullet of the failed shooting was found lodged in its flesh. Whether the dead male tiger was indeed the maneater will be clear in the coming weeks if the attacks stop. But conservationists, eminent experts among them, have already dismissed the claim of “a male with female pugs”.

To confirm this, I sent a photograph of the Sunderkhal male’s rear pad to Brigadier Ranjit Talwar, an author of many field guidebooks for WWF-India. He wrote back saying he was ‘fairly sure’ it was ‘a hind left pad of a female’.

This cleared the gender confusion. But how rare are such exceptions? Five years after the Mohan incident, I was in Corbett to investigate the deaths of four tigers in the winter of 2009-10 (‘Who’s Killing Corbett’s Tigers’, Open, 13 February 2010). The first casualty occurred near Mota Sal at Dhikala. That dead tiger too had hind pads with female characteristics. I thought at the time it was a freak occurrence, and focused on the bigger story at hand.

Corbett field staff have stopped taking media calls following an order from Chandola. So I called up the boss himself. He resolved another mystery that dates back to 2009. Chandola recalled how he had gone by the female characteristics of its hind pads and reported a dead tiger (killed and partially eaten by another tiger) as a female in March 2009 at Dhela in Corbett. During post-mortem, the penis was found inverted inside the flesh and the animal turned out to be a male.


Do these five instances make a case? Dr Rajesh Gopal, member-secretary, National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), thinks they do. “Pugmark reading is not a reliable field tool for individual or gender identification. That is why we have moved on to better technologies. Yes, pugmarks can indicate tiger presence and possibly direction of movements. Demand anything more and we get into the realm of uncertainties.”

But is there a fool-proof way to identify maneaters and deal with them? Dr Gopal recommends camera traps: “Used intensively and at innovative angles, cameras can tell the gender of a tiger. But to be certain that we are eliminating a maneater and not a wrong animal, there is no other option but to target it at a human kill. We must also use the right weapon so that the animal does not escape hurt. We need professionalism in handling such situations.”

Chandola agrees that the right weapon should be used, but defends his field staff’s decision to go ahead with what was available in an emergency. “The first time they tried to shoot the tiger, the operation was carried out at night with the help of searchlights. They had to go ahead with whatever weapon they had. Also, it is not easy to shoot accurately under such conditions,” he explains.

The larger issue, however, is the triggers for such conflict. Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh has already written to Uttarakhand Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhariyal Nishank for speedy rehabilitation of Sunderkhal village to ease pressure on a key forest corridor. Sources in NTCA have claimed that a new tourism policy would soon deal with the walled resorts that block movement of wildlife.

Corbett field staff refuse to comment on village relocation and tourism pressure. Field Director Mishra says there are policy issues involved that are beyond his span of influence.

But will the killing spree stop for now? Can Sunderkhal sleep peacefully before it decides on relocation? Tiwari answers the questions with a deadpan “wait-and-watch”. But the warden has learnt a new field lesson: never again will he take tigers at pug value.


A tiger’s paw has a pad and four toes. A fifth toe commonly called the dew claw, is placed high on the front limbs only. Front pugs are larger than hind pugs. The pad is three-lobed at the rear end. Pugmark Length or PML is the measurement from the tip of the farthest toe to the base of the pad along the line of walk. Pugmark Breadth or PMB is the measurement between the outer edges of the first and last toe. In a front pug, the forwardmost points of the two middle toes are almost at the same level. In hind paws, the forwardmost points of the two middle toes are distinctly at different levels. In male tigers, the PMB of the front pug is mostly greater than its PML. The pugmark of a male almost fits into a square. In contrast, typically, the pugmark of a female fits into a rectangle. The shape of a male’s toes is more rounded. The shape of a female’s toes is elongated.

(Source: ‘Reading Pugmarks: A guidebook for forest guards’)

Man Bites Dog

…in a manner of speaking, that is. For it is the irresponsible behaviour of pet owners that is to blame for the menace and misery of street dogs

Open, 5 February, 2011

First, some figures. The Indian pet dog industry has long crossed the Rs 100 crore mark and is eyeing a projected market worth Rs 350 crore by 2012. We have an estimated 10 million pet dogs in India (3.6 million in six major cities). The country’s pet dog population is growing by an estimated 26 per cent, a rate second only to Japan’s. There are dog restaurants (Bow Wow, Gurgaon), dog parlours (Scooby Scrub in Delhi, Fuzzy Wuzzy in Bangalore and Tailwaggers in Mumbai), dog insurance (Bajaj Allianz General Insurance) and dog yoga (doga).

Now, some more figures. India has more than 25 million stray dogs. Few of these strays survive disease and vehicular accidents to die natural deaths. Nearly every second, someone is bitten by a dog. That amounts to more than 20 million bites a year, of which 30,000-40,000 turn out to be fatal. Dogs spread more than 60 diseases to humans. Rabies alone claims three human lives every hour. More than 80,000 quintals of dog shit and 3.3 million gallons of dog piss is discharged on Indian roads and fields daily, causing major health and environmental hazards.

The second set of data testifies to an alarming state of affairs that you can correctly blame on a callous society. But before you seek hope in the first set of data that speaks of how man’s best friendship is growing by the day, think again. The plight and menace of stray dogs in India are a direct consequence of irresponsible pet rearing.

Before the animal lover in you contests the statement, consider why we have not succeeded in controlling India’s stray dog population. Historically, we tried to reduce the number of strays by killing them, and we killed enough before giving up in frustration. Much before it became an animal rights issue, it was evident that killing, unless done en masse, could not bring down the numbers. With increasingly abundant resources (such as food in garbage dumps), the partial elimination of a population only reduces competition for resources and boosts breeding.

From killing, we moved on to sterilisation. Since 1992, the Government and NGOs have been carrying out Animal Birth Control (ABC) programmes in several cities. But unless at least 70 per cent of a canine population is sterilised within a six-month window, ABC drives fail to have any stabilising effect. Left to a few NGOs, no Indian city has yet achieved this target that requires neutering 600-800 stray dogs every day over six months. But even if we expand capacity and manage to hit the target, the stray dog population will continue to swell.

To understand why, we have to look beyond the apparently happy picture that dog owners and their pets present. In India, dog owners are not required to register their pets. It is not mandatory to get one’s pets sterilised or vaccinated. Owners simply do not need to be responsible for their dogs or their dogs’ pups. So every day, hundreds of unwanted pet dogs and pups are abandoned on Indian streets. Also, thousands of pet dogs are allowed to roam or break free and romance the strays.

The result? Governments and NGOs keep neutering a few street dogs while the country’s pet dogs, thanks to callous owners, keep adding to the stray population. It is like an attempt to mop the floor, to quote activist and researcher Meghna Uniyal, while leaving the tap open. It is commendable to adopt and shelter strays, but it is useless if these animals are not confined or sterilised.

Besides, the so-called Indian street dog has very little Indian about it. The stray population is mostly mongrels of various crossbreeds. Uniyal emphasises that ABC drives must target pedigreed pets with high breeding frequency. Like in Taiwan, the Government could offer incentives to owners to get their pets sterilised. To ensure that the carrot comes with a stick, a steep tax can be levied on breeding pets.

But reckless pet owners are responsible not just for the growing population of stray dogs. They must also take the blame for most dog attacks on people.

In The Ecology of Stray Dogs, possibly the most authoritative work on the subject, Dr Alan Beck observed: ‘Loose or straying pets and stray (feral) dogs are different. True stray dogs form somewhat stable packs… are more active at night and cautious about people. In general, straying pets have smaller home ranges and (are) active when people are.’

Merritt Clifton, editor of Animal People, observes that ‘street dogs are relatively non-territorial because they do not have any particular home or anyone to defend except their own pups. But dogs that are often kept in homes and fed by specific individuals at specific places tend to become territorial and protective’ and lose inhibitions.

In simple terms, pets and abandoned pets roaming free on roads are likely to be less fearful of people than strays are. Around its owner’s house, such a dog is likely to act strongly territorial and aggressively protective.

And then there is petting outside the home. We all know our neighbourhood good samaritans who feed a few stray dogs outside their homes or workplaces. This has the same effect as petting, turning stray dogs territorial and aggressive. Such feeding has also created monsters of monkeys in many parts of India. Be it religious or compassionate, Indians are never short of inspiration to feed feral animals. Why, even the Union Ministry of Culture in 2001 doled out Rs 10 crore to various organisations on Mahavir Jayanti for feeding stray animals.

Barely two weeks ago, amid demands for culling stray dogs responsible for killing 18-month-old Prashanto in Bangalore on 13 January, all media reports glossed over a vital detail. After the death, the police arrested one Gonti Yadav around whom the stray dogs lived. Apparently, Gonti used to routinely feed them and they followed him to the victim’s hut when he visited the child’s parents that night. Responsible for the killing or not (no scratch mark was found on the partially mutilated body), the stray dogs in question were not, to borrow from Dr Beck, ‘true stray’ dogs. Indeed, animal welfare is not as simple or straightforward as it sounds.

Merritt makes a compelling point when he offers medical statistics from the US where the last street dog disappeared sometime in the 1970s. But a 300 per cent growth in the number of pet dogs between 1950 and 2010 resulted in an 800 per cent rise in cases of dog bites requiring hospital treatment. In a
country without any stray population, then, 4.7 million people are still bitten by dogs every year.

An impromptu survey of 20 friends in different Indian cities tells me that nine of them have been bitten by dogs. Strays were responsible in only two cases. My family’s last dog died when I was eight. She bit me once. I was too young to follow the don’t-disturb-during-meal rule.

Irresponsible pet owners are the species’ biggest enemy. There are few sights more pathetic than orphan pups scrounging on the roadside. Tokenism in the name of animal welfare only increases the population of strays. It gives dogs a bad name as aggressors. It creates an environment of hate that seeks to justify culling. I am not sure if environmentalist Edward Abbey saw it coming, but yes, when man wants to be seen as dog’s best friend, the dog has a problem.

Why It Need Not Be Such A Lonely Battle

Conservation, as a cause bandied about by the elite few, has alienated its most natural and powerful ally: the marginalized millions

The Bengal Post, 3 February, 2011

What is the biggest challenge facing conservation? Over the years, I have been asked this question many a time. Borrowing from the experts, I have peddled most stock options -- development rush, population boom, vote politics etc – to offer perspective. Today, when I ask this question myself, I realise I have been always naïve with my answers.

Market economy will always try to maximise growth, just like all life forms are programmed to multiply and colonise more bio space. It is in the nature of every being to be earnest to its purpose. We do not resent a conservationist seeking out a patch of welcome green in a high-rise complex. So why should we blame a miner for seeing only prize minerals in a lush forest?

In any natural order, counter-forces maintain the balance. Likewise, in the real world, conservation concerns are supposed to force the checks and balances in a fair competition with the GDP rush. We know that has not happened. Even under Jairam Ramesh, the green ministry has been clearing 99 out of every 100 development projects. It is hardly a contest. No wonder the frustrated greens are reduced to branding the GDPwalas evil, blind or suicidal.

But how has the growth-versus-green contest become so one-sided? The answer is scary.

India is a vastly unequal society. Our growth machine has little pretense of being inclusive. Businesses make profit for a privileged few. Industries thrive on cheap labour. Development projects displace the poor almost at will.

India is also a democracy. Big money may still rule us by proxy but the rulers are careful not to appear autocratic. The power of the people, the poor majority, still decides a lot. Elections often spring surprises. Mass movements are never easy to quash.

Simply put, India’s economic growth has failed to substantially benefit most Indians. In fact, this growth is at the cost of many Indians. Also, much of this growth is at the cost of conservation. So why do we not have mass participation of the marginalized and the poor in the green movements against unscrupulous projects? Surely, that would have made a huge difference in a democracy.

Unfortunately, if “inclusive growth” has been a false promise, “inclusive conservation” is just an oxymoron. From online discussion forums to top government panels, conservationists are full of contempt for the poor, marginalized majority of India. Left to them, these encroachers or poachers should be “thrown out”, “put in jail” and even “shot at sight”.

About five years ago, the tiger-versus-tribal debate generated heated exchanges. I remember many big names that claimed only guns-and-guards could save the tiger. To be fair, the other camp was pushing for a free-for-all. With no middle ground in sight, saving the tiger soon became yet another upmarket fad and the tribal the biggest threat to conservation.

A few of those gun-toting conservationists have subsequently shown the courage to accept that conservation needs people’s support. The rest still continue with their shrill anti-people tirade. Such shocking elitism has completely alienated the green lobby from the marginalized. Little wonder the moneybags, and the crumbs they throw, find enough takers among the poor. Their choice, if any, is simple. GDPwalas may dupe them; conservationists just deny them.

Though unfortunate, this elitism is not surprising. Synonyms of welfare include aid, assistance and dole. This idea of charity has a noble aura that suits the elite. But for the average Indian, the one conservationists snigger at, acceptance of the wild has always been a way of life. While the sparsely populated West eliminated much of its wildlife, many species of large, potentially dangerous animals still survive in a crowded India.

Yet, conservation as we practise it here is a Western concept, with over-emphasis on protected areas. Is it possible to insulate free-ranging elephants and large carnivores in a country of a billion? We surely need undisturbed wilderness but much of our wildlife will keep dying outside those pocket reserves if we antagonise the people.

Our greens have already done everything possible to ensure this fate. They stay in walled resorts and blame open villages for obstructing wildlife corridors. They do not push the tourism industry to share profits with the communities but condemn villagers for entering forests to collect firewood. They refuse compensation if cattle are killed inside a reserve but persecute livestock-owners even if a wild animal is found dead outside reserves. They dismiss six human deaths in 10 weeks as insufficient ground for shooting a rogue tiger. And they also want the poorest and their subsistence economy to bear the cost of conservation.

The same lack of inclusiveness makes our so-called conservationists stonewall new knowledge. Almost none of them ever had anything do with wildlife or conservation sciences. Their expertise is built on anecdotes and experiences. Naturally, they are too insecure to make room for scientific or technical inputs. As a result, our green movements are mostly all action and no direction.

The biggest challenge facing conservation today is rescuing the green cause from this exclusivity. The community of Page3 conservationists and their followers on the web appears ridiculously out of depth against the mighty GDPwalas. Our green movement urgently needs some substance – the quantity of mass support and the quality of scientific guidance – to stand up and play a balancing role against our growth rush.

For that to happen, we urgently need a paradigm shift in thinking. Few experts evolve with time and none comes with a sale-by date. So, to break new ground, a fresh green leadership may exclude some old (and not so old) baggage.

PS: This is by no means a call for group retirement. What may not be good conservation can always be good television. The doting members of so many green groups on the web will still be watching.

Shattered Windows And Leopards In The Alley

Why memories of mean, paranoid neighbours banning galli cricket may help us understand the real factors behind increasing man-leopard conflict

The Bengal Post, 20 January, 2011

If you grew up in Calcutta like I did in the 1970s, you would remember those heady days of galli cricket. For us kids, this was serious business. We knew that Sunil Gavaskar could perfect his trademark straight-drive thanks to a Dadar alley that offered little incentive for cuts and pulls. We were no Gavaskars, and we took cuts and bruises fielding on blacktop ground to ensure that no batsman pretended to be one.

It was also a competition between the decibel level of pesky neighbours (who refused to appreciate a few broken window panes as sporting milestones) and our dogged insistence to free our arms. Nevertheless, our dubious skills flourished between intermittent injunctions and temporary ceasefires. On days, we also enjoyed an indulgent fan following in the balconies overhanging the makeshift pitch.

Not that there were no playfields nearby. In my neighbourhood, we had two dusty squares where the college boys played. They did not let kids play with them. On rare occasions when they did, they considered us dudhe-bhate (inconsequential) which was hardly acceptable to any boy of honour. Anyway, we found them too big to handle. Even holding an occasional side game, on days when they were not having a match, was fraught with the danger of getting knocked out by a cork-and-leather ball flying from their practice pitch. It was only in galli cricket that young boys could come to their own.

In the early-eighties, those two playfields were being marked up for building apartments. The local youth clubs, backed by community elders, tried to reason with the builder. But compelling financial logics won the argument. But do I recall any of the builders ever suggesting that the big boys of the sporting clubs could do without those fields and take to galli cricket after the kids? I do not. Such a suggestion would have anyway led to violence.

Did the game of nerve intensify along our alley after those sporting fields were lost? It did, actually. No, not because the big boys with bigger back-lifts and stronger swings replaced us kids in the alleys. A couple of them joined bigger sporting clubs. The rest simply hung up their keds and concentrated on management courses.

What eventually drove us out was the increasing hostility of the neighbours. Quite a few families had already moved into the newly built apartments. Earlier, cranky aunts and uncles would go ballistic every time a ball sought out a window but everything would be forgotten the next day once we offered an impish apology with a casual promise that it would “never happen again”.

But the new neighbours were strangers and too protective of the glass panels in their posh apartments (or an occasionally parked car in the afternoon). Some of them even found us too noisy. When they started petitioning our parents too frequently, the more notorious among us broke a few eggs in their letter-boxes. Needless to say, cricket was soon banned in the galli.

I am not feeling nostalgic. Last week, a friendly conservationist asked me to accept that deforestation was the reason behind the rising human-leopard conflict. It has been conventional wisdom. But it is outdated and too simplistic. I tried to explain that increasing intolerance, and not deforestation, has been the biggest trigger for the recent escalation in conflict. After a prolonged exchange over three days, the noted expert called off the discussion. I was at a loss. If my technical case failed to move an expert, why trouble my readers with it?

So I felt some childhood memories might illustrate the point. Be it in sugarcane fields or village alleys, many leopards have been living close to and even among people, feeding on smaller domestic and feral prey, far away from forests. They have been doing so historically without causing major conflict.

Why do leopards stay close to people? Because wherever we have protected forests, we have or aspire to have tigers. Leopards usually do not share space with tigers. In the winter of 2004-05, presence of too many leopards in the Sariska valley was the first sign for me that the tigers were missing. In many places, leopards are fringe forest animals that make frequent forays into villages. Elsewhere, leopards use any vegetation cover available to stay close to villages.

It is ludicrous to suggest that anyone can misuse the fact that most leopards live in non-forest habitats to justify deforestation. There are enough animals -- like tigers or elephants -- that cannot survive outside forests. But we know that tigers disperse. So we need buffers. We know that elephants migrate. So we need corridors. Even leopards that live in fringe forests need such wilderness protected. They also need vegetation cover in their natural non-forest habitat intact. But what they need most is acceptance -- of the fact that a mere sighting of leopards near a human settlement is not a sign of danger, that the animals have been around us for a long time without harming any, that we need not rush to capture or kill them.

I have known many old-timers who testified how leopards have always been a part of their life, how they overlooked losing occasional livestock, knowing well that leopards would never harm people unprovoked. What has tipped this balance recently is the intolerance of the younger generations that wants neighbourhood leopards killed or captured (and released far away) for their perceived safety.

Yes, with growing population and shrinking space, chances of accidental face-offs have grown over the years. Yes, occasional problem-leopards will have to be culled. But instead of securing us, random killing and capture-translocation only fuel conflict. Unless we accept that leopards have been and will always be around us, that they do not harm us if left alone, our fight against deforestation alone will not be able to secure the spotted cat.

Back in the mid-80s, we lost our alley to increasing paranoia of new neighbours. Around the same time, the mecca of galli cricket was also weaned off this tradition. Though organized coaching nets have mushroomed in every available ground of the city since, no great Mumbai batsman has followed in the footsteps of the great galli icons Desai, Gavaskar, Vengsarkar or Tendulkar in the last two decades.

But who cares for nuanced batsmanship in the time of cheerleaders?