Outrage is overdue but anger alone won’t discourage rape

We need to rethink our demands because lynch mobs cannot make a city rape-proof. Women will not be safe as long as they are judged for virtue and contained by a long list of don’ts.

FirstPost, 23 December, 2012

Nothing will stop rape. Not even harsher penalties.  Murderers get death but thousands still get killed. Rape, like all crimes, can only be discouraged (read here). But demanding castration or death for rapists will not achieve that.

Fear of punishment is the most effective deterrent for any crime. Rapists enjoy better than an even chance because of the low conviction rate. Unless prosecution improves, judges who rarely find grounds for awarding jail terms will be less inclined to hand out stricter punishment. While fast-track courts are a must to cut judicial delay, they will serve no purpose without prompt investigation and sound prosecution.

For that, the process needs to be overhauled from stage one. At present, cops usually do all they can to intimidate and dissuade victims. So, all FIRs against rape should be lodged in-camera and every rape-related FIR should be referred to a special gender cell set up in every police district. These dedicated cells should monitor all rape investigations to help build sound prosecution cases.

The laws must be strengthened but only the rarest of rare rape cases should be treated on a par with murder. Blanket death penalty will only encourage rapists to kill their victims. The definition of rape must include all kinds of penetration and not only penile. Laws should also drop terms such as teasing or modesty. Determining an act of rape cannot have anything to do with a victim’s morality which is anyway a subjective consideration.

Not only our cops ( see why they need to change their attitudes here), society itself seeks justification when a bar dancer or a sex worker is raped. We rightfully debate the character of a sexual assault victim to determine the veracity of her charges. As long as the majority, women included, discriminate among victims on the basis of perceived virtue, some rapes will appear less unacceptable than the rest. In an increasingly less “virtuous” society, that only amounts to condoning rape.

Rights activists are against having any misuse clause in rape laws, lest it further inconvenience genuine victims, but the perception that women frequently use rape charges for blackmailing hurts victims more. With checks in place, cops will not have the excuse to prejudge every rape charge. The onus will be on the judiciary which knows better than to penalise a complainant for the prosecution’s failure.

It may sound like a distraction at this emotive hour but while we talk of the big bad cities, sex crimes are more common in villages where under-reporting is near absolute. Rural women are often rape fodder for settling political scores or family feuds. They are also raped when they seek or find a voice. When such cases do rarely surface in the media, they do not shock the candle-happy urban middleclass.

The outraged crowd at Delhi’s India Gate is not obliged to fight for women it cannot identify with. But even within an urban environment, the focus of this anger is on sexual assaults committed by strangers, which are less than 10 per cent of all reported cases. Will the demand for death penalty cover marital rape? Can all the fathers, uncles, husbands, brothers, cousins, teachers, friends and colleagues be policed 24×7 inside four walls?

Also, do we ourselves make it easier for strangers to sexually assault women? We teach every girl since childhood those charters of safety: how they should dress and behave, where they should not go without male escorts, which places they should avoid altogether. These commandments have become the benchmark for propriety. The moment a woman breaks or is forced to break these rules, it sends signals to predatory men: she is either vulnerable or of loose morals.

Imagine Delhi or any Indian city without these safety codes. The so-called provocative clothes stop being so when too commonplace. No unescorted woman appears easy meat when too many of them are out in the late hours. But it is far more challenging to break these social stereotypes than to breach security cordons outside Parliament.

Of course, freedom always demands its price and both men and women pay for foolhardiness. But can we really demand a safe, gender-neutral society if the entries on a woman’s list of don’ts grossly outnumber those on a man’s? And is there any merit in continuing with this disparity since the woman is clearly not any safer for it?

What happened to the 23-year-old a week ago defies the vilest of imagination. Hundreds of sexual offences that occur daily, and mostly under the media radar, are rarely half as vicious. The anger at India Gate is justified but it should not miss the larger picture of almost routine sexual assaults that gnaw away at the very idea of womanhood.

Destruction of public property or lynch mobs cannot make any city rape-proof. Even if every cop on VIP duty is put on patrolling, there will never be enough boots protecting us on every road, lane and home. Making investigation and prosecution swift and effective requires not only training and capacity building but also a significant change in mindset. Our police cannot be very different from us.

Rape will really be discouraged only when no girl finds herself unprotected in a crowd, when no woman is asked why she was out in such company at such an hour. And while we are busy defining and deterring sexual assault, let us demand that stripping women in public be made a heinous crime. Thousands of disenfranchised tribal and dalit women who are routinely paraded naked will be grateful to their educated city-sisters.

A township inside Corbett

Tehelka, 22 December, 2012

FOR MILLIONS of tourists, Ramnagar is the gateway to Corbett tiger reserve. Most hotels and resorts are clustered around this town. It is the national park headquarters that issues permits. All major entries to Corbett — from Amdanda to Durgadevi — are on the Ranikhet road off Ramnagar.

Not much has changed in this stretch of Corbett in the past seven months since TEHELKA’s investigation (Corbett Now on Sale, 12 May). The animal corridors across the Kosi river are still blocked and construction of mega, walled properties continues. But conversion of agricultural land is difficult now. Angling has been stopped along the Ramganga river and private roads through the forest are closed.

But Corbett’s woes are bigger than the tourism mess in its eastern half. Merely 20 km west of Ramnagar is the Kalagarh town on the southern boundary of the reserve. Adjacent to it are the colonies of new Kalagarh, a mini township of 2,600-odd houses, a school, a college and an irrigation engineering academy. It has been thriving illegally for more than three decades on national park land.

These staff colonies, spread over roughly 150 hectares of Corbett, were set up during the 1970s and ’80s by the Uttar Pradesh Irrigation Department, which has not vacated the land despite a high court order in 1999. Curiously, the Uttarakhand government and the Corbett management seem to be in no hurry to break the status quo.



In August 1966, the Forest Department of undivided Uttar Pradesh handed over around 9,000 hectares of Corbett National Park to the Irrigation Department for the Ramganga hydel project on the condition that the “land to be transferred will remain reserved forest and revert to the Forest Department when no more required by the Irrigation Department, without any compensation”.

The Ramganga dam and reservoir drowned more than 81 sq km of the park. The Irrigation Department retained 358 hectares for operational purposes and returned 151 hectares to Corbett. But it also had another 346 hectares for housing its construction and other staff. After completion of the project, it claimed that 148 hectares would still be required for housing and started returning the remaining 198 hectares in phases.

But why does the Irrigation Department still require 1,560 houses spread over 1.5 sq km to house its staff? A site inspection commissioned by the Supreme Court in 2003 concluded that the project required only 187 staff in all. Factoring in the back-up staff, the number may add up to 300-400 or about 20-25 percent of the families residing in the colonies inside the national park. The rest are retired staff, encroachers or those who illegally bought the houses from irrigation staff when they left the site.

The Irrigation Department also built an engineering academy with hostels in 1982, much after the dam and the hydel project were completed, without obtaining any statutory clearances. Ironically, the department owns 36 hectares at Kalagarh outside the national park boundary and is losing much of it to encroachers. “There is no reason why they shouldn’t shift the few remaining staff and the academy to 60-odd acres lying vacant with them outside the forest and return the national park land,” argues Ashok Kumar of Wildlife Trust of India.

IN 1999, Ashok Kumar, who was then with the Wildlife Protection Society of India, moved the Allahabad High Court. Reacting quickly, the Lucknow Bench set a deadline of 15 December for removal of all encroachment, asking the Irrigation Department not to create third-party rights on forestland and retain only what was essential. Before the deadline expired, Uttar Pradesh was bifurcated and Corbett went to the new state of Uttarakhand.

The Uttar Pradesh Irrigation Department still controlled the Ramganga project but the case files were apparently lost in the chaos of setting up a new high court at Nainital. In 2003, the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) of the Supreme Court heard a petition filed by Pradip Gupta. By then, the subdivisional magistrate of Kotdwar passed orders in 177 cases of encroachment under the Uttar Pradesh Public Premises Act, but no eviction took place because the district magistrate and the superintendent of police failed to show up with the forces on the stipulated days.

The SC asked the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) to conduct a site inspection in 2003 and the CEC in April 2004 submitted its recommendations based on the BNHS report. It sought

• Removal of all encroachment within three months
• Shifting of all non-essential facilities such as the Engineers’ Academy, its hostel and buildings, workshops and other structures out of the reserve within six months
• Relocation of all non-essential operational staff to the irrigation colony outside the Corbett National Park within six months
• Demolition of all walls, fencing, garden furniture, etc, for unhindered animal movement

The case was stalled by the subsequent death of the petitioner till Ashok Kumar took his place. The Uttar Pradesh government has refused to state its stand before the court since. In late 2007, the then chief minister BC Khanduri held a meeting of top Uttarakhand forest officials and asked them to facilitate implementing the CEC recommendations. In 2008, the state filed an affidavit before the court, but no real progress was made on the ground.

While it is bizarre why a department of the government will refuse to vacate national park land, it is not only about reinstating 1.5 sq km of forest. The presence of this mini township inside Corbett and the unhindered movement of vehicles create law and order problems such as illicit entry, removal of biomass and even crimes against wildlife. The presence of domestic livestock spreads disease and has resulted in inter-breeding with wild species, particularly boars, while loudspeakers and firecrackers scare away the animals.

But the biggest worry for conservationists has been the blockage of elephant corridors. The Ramganga dam and reservoir, the 2003 BNHS report pointed out, have virtually divided the tiger reserve into two halves. As a result, the east-west movement of the elephants has been greatly affected and the herds have to either go north of the reservoir and climb the hills or move south below the Ramganga dam and the powerhouse to cross the river. The new Kalagarh colonies block this southern passageway.

While officials of Corbett National Park and the Uttar Pradesh Irrigation Department refused to comment on a “sub-judice issue”, Paramjit Singh, chief conservator of Kumaon, agreed that the “area is absolutely vital for wildlife and should be reclaimed for the national park as soon as possible”. But the 4,000-odd residents of Kalagarh are not worried.

“My parents moved in with many others in these empty quarters because they did not have the money to buy those big bungalows on the main road,” says a man in his 20s, who was born and brought up in a backlane of new Kalagarh. “Officials demolished some dilapidated houses nearby, but our homes are secure. It’s a lot of land. So many big people have stakes here.”

3 December 2013, TEHELKA

Vacate Illegal Kalagarh township inside Corbett reserve, orders SC

End of a decade-long impasse over encroachment to make Corbett’s wildlife safer

The Supreme Court has upheld the 2004 report of its Central Empowered Committee (CEC) to return the encroached New Kalagarh irrigation colony to the Corbett Tiger Reserve. TEHELKA investigated the brazen encroachment of national park land by a state agency in its report A Township Thrives Inside A Tiger Reserve (22 December 2012) by Jay Mazoomdaar. In a landmark judgment on 2 December, the SC has set a six-month deadline for the state government to ensure compliance and report to the court. Read more...

Will development planks ever sink in rotting, dying waters?

Be it Sheila, Modi, Jaya or Hooda, the growth stories our efficient, visionary CMs flaunt have a common blind spot: The death of rivers, and dearth of groundwater, in their rich states.

FirstPost, 18 December, 2012

Delhi will be the first Indian state to allow FDI in retail. Sheila Dikshit has already launched the Aadhar-based direct cash transfer scheme in her model state, declaring, rather unwittingly, that R 600 should be enough to feed a family of five.

For all his protestation in sync with the party line, Vikas Purush Narendra Modi has never refused any FDI (or any investment, for that matter) and is likely to open up retail once he bags the third consecutive mandate from the Gujaratis ostensibly on the development plank.

Delhi and Gujarat are not the only states run by “pragmatic, popular and efficient” chief ministers who don the image of CEOs who get things done in their states. J Jayalalithaa is another suave politician who rules one of India’s most prosperous states. The no-nonsense BS Hooda is the face of his government and Haryana’s so-called economic boom.

These powerful leaders belong to different political parties and their governance models, a generous degree of autocracy apart, are not exactly the same. But all of them are admired for their ability to deliver and credited with rapid development in their states. They also have in their custody India’s most polluted rivers.

The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has identified 35 most polluted river stretches of the country. The quality of water depends on its dissolved oxygen (DO) level that determines how much aquatic life it can support. When water is polluted, the organic waste in it is decomposed (oxidized) by bacteria and microbes. The level of pollution determines the biological oxygen demand (BOD) for the decomposition process. High pollution means high BOD which reduces the DO level, resulting in dead waters that cannot support life.

For human use such as drinking, bathing, washing and irrigation, the fitness level of water is measured by BOD levels which indicate the amount of sewage in it. According to the CPCB, “water bodies having BOD more than 6 mg/litre are considered as polluted and identified for remedial action”.

Discussing pollution in the Yamuna on TV a few years ago, a conservationist infamously crooned a parody of “Ram tera Ganga maili”, substituting the god-warrior with an “impeccably cultured” CM. His prime time etiquette may have been questionable but not the facts. The Yamuna records a BOD level of 32-70mg/litre in Delhi. While the river is dead for nearly 100 km from Panipat to Wazirabad, Delhi contributes 600 million gallons of untreated sewage to the river through its 18 drains every year.

Sabarmati records a BOD level of around 30mg/litre at Ahmedabad’s VN Bridge or Railway Bridge. A few miles away, the pollution level shoots up to 103mg/litre at Miroli village. Two other poison rivers -- Amlakhadi records BOD of 714 milligram/litre at Ankleshwar and Khari 320 mg/litre at Lali village – make Gujarat probably the worst Indian state in terms of river water quality.

The vibrant Gujarat image resonates with hundreds of textile, paper and sugar mills, distilleries, tanneries, dye manufacturers and other chemical factories that churn out pesticides, pharmaceuticals and petrochemicals. Together, these units have also caused the state’s many rivers to stagnate with pollutants and subsequently choke.

Along Chennai, Coovum records a BOD level in excess of 100 mg/litre due to dumping of industrial and municipal wastewater. The other Chennai river, Adyar, records a BOD level of above 40mg/litre near the boat club. Between them, the two rivers receive the bulk of the city’s 55 million tonnes of untreated sewage. Not too far away, a noxious Noyyal river laden with discharge from dyeing and bleaching units has turned the town of Tirupur infertile with scores of patients crowding IVF treatment centres.

The story repeats in Haryana where industrial and domestic waste is responsible for the 600mg/litre BOD level in Markanda river. The Western Yamuna canal in the state is also choked with effluents and show a BOD count of above 200mg/litre. Ghaggar is also packed with effluents in the industrial belt of Sirsa but it already carries loads of waste from Derabassi and Patiala in Punjab. Even rainwater canals of Chandigarh – Attawa and Sukhna Choe – record a BOD level of 50mg/litre due to discharge of sewage.

Haryana and Delhi are also the states that have been registering the fastest loss of groundwater in the country. While experts blame the dominance of water-intensive crops such as paddy in Haryana, the construction boom in an ever-thirsty Delhi has destroyed its water bodies and poured concrete on every patch of soil, stopping rainwater from percolating down.

In 2004, aquifers in 50 per cent of Gujarat were in semi-critical to over-exploited condition. Things have improved since in 60 tehsils, thanks to the government’s initiative to encourage check dams. But large areas in northern Gujarat, such as Banaskantha, Patan and Mehsana, are still parched. Worse, fluoride and nitrate levels in groundwater are above the permissible limit in most parts of the state.

Tamil Nadu also faces severe groundwater shortage as only five out of its 32 districts have reasonably healthy aquifers. With so little to dig into underground, one expected the progressive chief ministers of these prosperous states to zealously look after their surface water stock. Each of them engages in bitter inter-state battles over river water sharing. But that water itself has become poison under their watch.

Of course, rivers are dying across the country and Delhi, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Chandigarh are not the exceptions. Be it Gomti along Lucknow, Mithi in Mumbai or Bharalu in Guwahati, big cities are choking rivers with waste. Poverty is often cited as the biggest excuse for pollution. This makes the so-called prosperous states who claim to have done away with much of poverty more culpable.

Do the visionary images of chief ministers who brag about development in their states take a hit when they fail to notice how the lifelines of their people and economy rot, stink and choke to death? Or is it now per for the course to allow any industry anywhere without bothering about land use or waste disposal implications?

In the short term, such growth puts money in some people’s hands and makes politicians popular. Sheila, Modi, Jaya and Hooda have all been re-elected as chief ministers in the past. Tomorrow when they win again, they will want the world to believe that they are rewarded for their good work, bringing development to their states. There is no trial yet at the people’s court for murdering their most vibrant rivers.

Gateway to Hell

CoP 18 at Doha claimed progress by paving the way for future talks, but really showed how we may have already conceded the fight

Tehelka, December 13, 2012

EXPECTATIONS WERE low at Doha. But the 18th conference of parties (Cop 18) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change surprised even the cynics by legitimising a couldn’t-care-less doctrine. The bright side, if any, is that the masks have finally come off and much of the developed world stands exposed.

If a confirmation of the long-standing commitment of the rich countries to contribute $100 billion annually by 2020 to help the poorer nations cut emissions was overdue, Doha put it on hold for another year. it also slashed by half the promised $60 billion of fast-start finance for three years from 2013 to ’15. it is another matter that the developed nations have not made even the annual contribution of $10 billion assured since 2010.

America’s continued refusal to own up responsibility or open its purse is perhaps justified after Barack Obama gained rich electoral dividend from hurricane Sandy, which many experts believe was a manifestation of rogue climate. But only if we ignore the fact that the storm cost the US economy $50-60 billion and that such natural disasters will get more frequent.

The busiest participants at the Doha summit were the ones with market solutions to climate change. Many observers attributed the extension of the Kyoto pact (more on that later) largely to the lobbying by the multi-billion dollar carbon trading industry, which depends on this protocol as its legal backbone. While the price of one unit of Certified Emission Reduction (CER), equivalent to a tonne of carbon dioxide, fell from $10 to $3 this year, big corporations have a lot at stake in the revival of the industry.

But the carbon trade has remained mired in controversies over frauds, false claims and rights violations. it reaps huge profits for companies, legitimises burning of more fossil fuel and damages the economic system and environment of the developing world. initiatives such as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) can be equally damaging if ownership of land by local communities is not secured.

Meanwhile, the Kyoto protocol has been extended till 2020. But, with Japan, Russia and Canada withdrawing, the current signatories account for just 15 percent of the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The Cop has set 2015 as the deadline for thrashing out a new agreement that will make countries such as the US, China and India meet binding emission reduction targets for the first time. This treaty, if successful, will replace the now-defunct Kyoto pact in 2020.

Given the progress of climate talks where heads of states have stopped participating since the 2009 Copenhagen summit, these deadlines sound rather facetious. Kyoto itself took more than three years of parleys in the 1990s and waited for seven years after its adoption to come into force in 2005. Negotiations have only become inflexible since.

As per the IPCC projections, the global emission levels must peak by 2020 and slide thereafter to 50 percent of the 1990 level by 2050 if we are to contain the temperature rise within 2 degrees Celsius. it requires immediate international efforts to cut down on the volume of incremental emission annually if we are to actually reduce gross emission after eight years.

As things stand after Doha, 85 percent of the GHG emitters will now have no commitment to cut volumes and even the rest — parties to the extended-Kyoto — will be free to set their own targets. By 2020, new pact or not, the climate battle may as good as be over.

The signs of this fait accompli are evident as the focus of the climate negotiations itself is shifting. particularly since Copenhagen, poor and vulnerable countries are looking for doles to survive the effects of climate change rather than forcing a global consensus to reduce emission. Doha, of course, promised a generous Loss and Damage fund. But if we miss our outside chance of prevention today, money will be no cure for global devastation of an unnatural scale.

Why the secular can stop being shocked by the ‘Modi miracle’

Conscience vote is a myth. Just like the superman projection of Modi, or secularism itself. But the political opposition is to blame for missing its opportunities in Gujarat.

FirstPost, 10 December, 2012

Narendra Modi is likely to win again. And again the secularists will grapple in the dark for reasons. It is becoming a predictable routine.

In 2002, they called Modi a criminal fanatic and held his government responsible for scores of deaths. They were confident that the good sense of the majority of Hindus in Gujarat would prevail. They believed that the politics of hate never worked. But Modi could have lost only if a vast section of Hindus voted against him for the complicity of his government in the riots. They did not.

Demonised by the secularists, Modi gratefully recast that gift of a larger-than-life stature into a demi-god mould in 2002. It appealed to Gujarati pride. Many Hindus were sold on his Musharraf-versus-Modi dramatics. Others feared Muslim retribution for the riots in the absence of a pro-Hindu administration. Accounting for around 10 percent of the population, Muslims did not matter. They were anyway browbeaten.

Anti-incumbency, not secularism, worked in the poor regions of southern Gujarat such as Dangs, riot-unaffected Saurashtra, and the quake-hit, relief-starved Kutch where the Congress did well. But the riot-affected areas were swept by the BJP. The secularists were shocked as Modi romped home with 126 seats out of 182. But the mandate only proved that many in Gujarat felt vindicated by the anti-Muslim riots. Others were too busy surviving or plain scared to cast that conscience vote the righteous was confident would topple Modi.

The sulking secularists did not learn their lesson and went on claiming that the frenzy of Hindutva would not last long. But Modi never claimed it would, not on its own. So by 2007, he would project himself as the dedicated CEO of the state. On one hand, the ‘maryada purushottam’ image was bolstered as the iron man repeatedly told Gujaratis how he was ready to die for them and linked it to his anti-terrorism plank. On the other, Modi reinvented himself as the Vikas Purush.

The marriage of Hindutva and development appeared seamless with the easing of communal tension due to the shrinking space for Muslim resistance and fewer curfew hours helping businesses. At the same time, electricity and water reached many villages. Agriculture and real estate sectors flourished. It rained well throughout the term. But Modi’s development model was largely about incentivising the rich at the cost of the poor. But the opposition did not target this skewed growth model.

Instead, the Congress tried to correct its 2002 strategy when it had gone soft on the riots. It tried to take Modi on, attacking his secular credentials, but five years too late. Sonia’s Maut ki Saudagar barb helped Modi stoke the Hindutva fire. While the opposition harped on old communal records, Modi brandished his consistent success in curbing terrorism in the state. Worse, the Congress gave tickets to BJP rebels who had led riotous mobs.

While the secularists barked up the wrong tree, anti-incumbency still brought the BJP’s seats down to 117. Yet, for the second time, Modi rubbed it in. In 2002, the secular intelligentsia helped build his super-human cult and the secular opposition shied away from affronting Hindu sentiments. In 2007, they let Modi define the rules of engagement, helped him revive the Hindutva plank and failed to challenge his ‘vikas purush’ credentials.

If Modi wins this week as predicted, it should not shock the secularists yet again. He has shaped this election as a referendum on his cult that now has national aspirations. Yet, Modi has not fielded a single Muslim candidate lest the state’s disgruntled Hindu hardlinersmake an electoral issue of it. For once, he does not have major pegs to rev up Hindu sentiments and is desperate enough to harp on the apparent Congress plan to plant an “Ahmad-mian Patel” as CM in Gujarat.

His government’s performance has improved in the social sector, particularly in health and education as school dropout rates have fallen. The Vikas Purush brand, though, took a hit when lakhs of poor women lined up to collect forms distributed by the Congress across the state with the promise of a 100-yard plot and Rs 1 lakh loan for house construction if voted to power. A stumped Modi promptly promised in his poll manifesto to build 5 million houses at a cost of Rs 330 billion under Mukhya Mantri Gruh Samrddhi Yojana. For once, he looked shaky.

The Modi government has also failed to arrest the alarmingly high rate of female foeticide among the rich, take water to places such as Sabarkantha or set up quality higher education institutes in the state. The huge land stock with the government is being doled out to boost industries irrespective of its social and environmental consequences even in fragile landscapes such as Kutch.

These are not issues the secular opposition has highlighted during the election campaign. Little has been debated about Modi’s refusal to appoint a Lokayukta in a state where the political clout of industries, big farmers and real estate groups rivals that of the politicians. Among the contestants this year, across parties, there are 147 crorepatis and 104 with declared criminal records. No wonder the opposition’s demand for a watchdog has remained feeble.

Ironically, none of the factors that may actually hurt Modi this election is a secular issue. He faces resistance from hardliners in the Sangh as Leuva Patel leaders led by Keshubhai and friends-turned-detractors such as Pravin Togadia have come together in the Saurashtra-Kutch region. The support of the largest Gujarati community of Kolis is no more secure as their leader and Modi aide Purshottam Solanki has been accused in a multi-crore fisheries scam. Also, delimitation of constituencies has made Muslims votes the key in at least a dozen constituencies.

Chances are Modi will overcome these hiccups. None of these factors are likely to decidedly erode his vote bank, particularly among the youth, who want a ‘good’and ‘safe’ life irrespective of its immediate and long term human, social, economic or environmental cost. There is one myth bigger than Modi-the-superman, or secularism itself. It is about humanity and its inherent goodness and wisdom. The sooner we come to terms with that the better.

Two Faces of Public Good

Welfare of the wild should not compromise people’s safety. But our insensitivity is matched only by our administrative laxity.

Tehelka, 7 December, 2012

THE FLARE-UP over cattle-lifting by tigers around Kerala’s Wayanad wildlife sanctuary (Just How Many Is Too Many 08 December) led to the killing of a big cat this Sunday. The forest officials were trying to tranquilise the animal. But the presence of a raucous mob with sticks and cameras added to the tiger’s stress levels and it did not go down even after two darts were fired. So the officials shot it.
Legally, a chief wildlife warden can order the killing of a “maneater” if the animal attacks three humans in quick succession. The tiger in question did not ever attack people. Cattle-lifting is compensated for and not a justification for shooting a predator. It is inexplicable why the forest staff allowed an angry crowd to interfere with its operation and did not seek or get police cover.
The state has ordered an inquiry into the killing. But forest officials have already justified the shooting, invoking Section 11(1)A of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, as a self-defence measure to ensure public safety. In such cases, inquiries have a way of blaming mobs without holding the administration accountable for ceding control.

In neighbouring Karnataka, the high court constituted a task force to find solutions to the human-elephant conflict raging in Hassan and Kodagu districts. 
With less than 5 sq km of forest available in this 200 sq km patch, the elephants here depend entirely on the cropland. They number less than 30, but their presence in a crowded landscape means that, on an average, one person is killed every four months. The fragmented herd also causes extensive crop damage in 79 affected villages while frequently injuring people.
As a result, the growing hostility of residents towards elephants and a frustrated administration has created a permanent state of emergency. People seldom go out after sundown and in the early hours. The local forest staff has been attacked on occasion and a number of elephants have been killed.
The task force found that “the current population of elephants in the Alur region did not exist there 30-40 years ago, but is a dispersing population from some larger population (most probably from the south), and it has moved in relatively recently”. These 26-odd elephants are completely cut off from other herds of the state and by themselves do not constitute a viable population.
It also ruled out building natural corridors as the animals, used to roaming the cropland, were not likely to take such paths back to the forests from where they wandered out. If anything, such corridors would only bring more elephants to these agricultural fields.
To create a suitable habitat, it argued, the government would have to acquire around 200 sq km of private land at a minimum cost of Rs 2,500 crore and resettle tens of thousands of people. Even such expenditure would not ensure a long-term future of this small, isolated herd. So in its recent report, the task force recommended that all these elephants be captured and trained to be used by the forest department.
The task force, however, failed to identify and address the factors that made these elephants disperse from the source populations in the forest towards the south. Without fixing those issues, future dispersal and subsequent conflict cannot be ruled out just by creating physical barriers such as trenches and electric fences.
Nevertheless, the recommendation of removal is a sound, practical solution to a crisis caused by elephants encroaching on cropland and not by people taking over forests. This bold step will help conservation in the long run by sending the right message to the people.
In Wayanad, on the other hand, incidents of cattle-lifting have, in fact, come down this year. But insensitive hype over tiger numbers created a counter-constituency of affected people, which is now being milked by politicians. Then, as if to compensate for its over-enthusiasm, the administration let the mob take it out on a tiger.

Latest in media hypocrisy: Shock at Zee-Jindal drama

The Jindal-Zee sting operation has triggered a familiar ‘holier than them’ routine among the media. But the practice of ignoring, downplaying and outright manipulation of news is far too commonplace.

FirstPost, 3 December, 2012

The consternation in the media over the Zee-Jindal episode on paid withheld news is touching. While a few journalists are anxious that Zee has found little support in the fraternity, the majority in the industry sound like they have been wronged by one of their own. Going by the Twitterati, hallowed media practitioners have finally realised that journalism, or the version of it they practise, needs a huge overhaul.

Really?

Granted, there is an element of shock. Though a well-oiled ransom industry has become the bread and butter for local media in small towns, this is the first time such prominent names have figured on both sides of an alleged news extortion case. But the promptness with which most journalists started carping about the apparently shady past of those allegedly caught in the act belied any real sense of surprise.

Cautiously judgmental media practitioners have not failed once in the past week to imply that such things happen in someone else’s organisation. That sounded funny because journalism, particularly the business and Page3 avatars of it, has involved cash for individual journalists for a long time. It is only recently that media houses are seeking to streamline and legitimise the money by channelling it to company coffers.

It is true that big news do not carry price tags in much of India’s mainstream journalism, at least not at the level of editors or owners. But cash is seldom the direct currency of corruption. Anyone who has worked in this profession in a reasonably significant capacity knows how often stories are “tweaked” or “spiked” altogether to suit someone or the other the editors or owners consider important.

Why only news, a particularly courageous editor made his reporters turn upside down even the ministerial ratings of the UPA-I that he himself had cleared earlier. Every news organisation, irrespective of its claim to transparency, has its own list of (s)he-who-must-not-be-named or equivalents. Some have more entries than others.

Of course, cash is too petty a stake in power games. Why do we even need to get into all that after the Radia tapes. However, the lists of ‘untouchables’ usually have more than top politicos or industrialists on them. One editor even blacked out criticism of his family physician. Of course, the editor’s physician was no ordinary doctor but headed a national institute mired in chronic controversies.

If the ultimate sin of journalism is silence, almost everyone in the media is guilty. Zee allegedly offered it at a price. Somebody else maintains it in bigger anticipations. For another, it may just be payback. But why we should hold silence as a bigger sin than even deliberate misreporting is because lies run the risk of getting exposed and almost always do at the end. Omission, on the other hand, is just so criminally convenient.

Nobody paid the national media not to cover the planned attack on three Dalit villages in Tamil Nadu by a 2000-strong mob that burnt down more than 500 homes last month. Thousands are homeless as a result of this caste violence allegedly carried out in connivance with the local police and politicians just because a dalit boy dared marry a Vanniyar girl. Vanniyars – the politically important backward caste at the helm of the local feudal hierarchy — forbid inter-caste marriage and resent Dalit empowerment.

The Kokrajhar violence in Assam has so far killed more than 100 people since July, displaced nearly 5 lakh Muslims and Bodos, and is showing no sign of abating after five months. It made big headlines and left news anchors hoarse when a backlash triggered by hate smses set off an exodus of residents of the northeast rush home from different parts of India. The multi-city drama over, the national media forgot almost overnight those hundreds of thousands still in relief camps and many still dying on their way home. Who has put what price on that silence?

We judge the news value of our stories much like multiplex owners decide their Friday releases. Reports begging for attention are junked due to lack of readers’ or viewers’ connect which ostensibly means the middleclass radar. But if the middleclass has indeed become largely insensitive to what it considers other’s problem, it is largely because the media has been deciding for it all the while.

So the call for a huge overhaul sounds funny given just how frequently we walk all over journalism in our newsrooms and edit meets in the name of readership and TRP, to be competitive in a market of our own making. This reality of us is staring the media for long now. Its corruption – financial, intellectual and moral – has been too much in our face to be noticed suddenly just because one dubious deal went sour somewhere.

Jindal Steel and Power Ltd (JSPL) started construction at its Angul plant in Odisha without obtaining clearance for the forest land and was served a notice by a divisional forest officer in July 2009. In February 2011, Environment minister and party colleague Jairam Ramesh absolved Naveen Jindal, and a month later, asked Odisha to initiate action pleading ignorance on his ministry’s clean chit. In May last year, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik signed a note referring the issue back to the Centre.

No case has been filed against JSPL by either the state or the Centre since. The company continues to toss aside laws with complete impunity. With cops in tow, it has unleashed terror on the local tribal resistance. In a brazen violation of its legal entitlement, it has dug up nearly 400 bore wells and sunk the aquifer to water its power plant. So far, it has faced no official scrutiny.

Over how many column-centimetres or minutes of airtime has the media reported, questioned or debated these concessions to Jindal, with or without payments? And then, we have the gall to be shocked.

Man-animal conflict: Just how many is too many

A zero-damage arrangement of co-existence is non-existent. But man-animal conflict will continue to get ugly as long as conservation is for conservationists’ sake

Tehelka, 30 November, 2012

As organisers of the 21^st international bear conference were busy receiving guests from 37 countries last weekend, news reached Delhi that villagers in Kashmir had set a bear ablaze earlier in the week. News TV showed the desperate animal climbing a tree and the crowd reaching for it with burning clothes tied to a pole. Its pelt on fire, the bear jumped off and fled the murderous mob.

Six years ago, another bear was not as lucky. Another lynch mob in a Srinagar village stoned, thrashed and burnt the animal alive. Last year, villagers in Uttarakhand poured kerosene on a trapped leopard in transit and charred it in the presence of top forest officials. Shocking footage of both attacks made it to the national media.

Though gruesome, such assaults on the wild, particularly carnivores, are not aberrations. Man-animal conflict has always been real and is getting progressively worse. Space crunch due to exponential growth and development of human population and resulting loss of wild habitat is the prime driver. Rapid colonisation of forests also brings settlers who are not used to living near wild animals. The result is frequent violation of the terms of coexistence resulting in casualties on both sides.

One dangerous outcome of such ignorance and intolerance is the policy of capturing and shifting so-called problem animals elsewhere. This ends up fuelling, even creating, conflict because the displaced carnivores, often traumatised after prolonged captivity, try to find their way home and run into people on their way.

Whatever the trigger, bear victims crowd hospitals across the Kashmir valley and elsewhere. In November alone, Mumbai lost a child and an elderly woman to leopards. This week’s first casualty, a woman, was from Odisha’s Ganjam district. Even tiger attacks are becoming routine. In 2012, the striped cat killed people in all corners of the country -- from Sunderbans to Ranthambhore and Pilibhit to Mysore.

Human casualties aside, majority of tigers in prey-deficient forests are cattle-lifters. The lions of Gujarat prefer buffaloes. At least half of the country’s leopard population possibly subsist only on non-forest prey in and around villages. Conflict also hurts productivity. Farmhands stay away when carnivores take shelter in fields and the damage can be significant for cash crop businesses.

So, retaliatory attacks on the wild have become pre-emptive and brutal. This is not some fad that most conservation NGOs and activists believe can be countered by awareness drives. While it is possible to imbibe tolerance to overlook financial damage, particularly when covered under a good compensation scheme, losing human lives or the fear of it is an emotion almost impossible to reason with.

More than 15 crore people live in and around India’s forests that host at least 10,000 carnivores. Each of these animals makes a kill every week. Annually, that works out to more than 5 lakh kills. We are too many and too easy to hunt down and yet the numbers of human casualties do not add up to even 200. Clearly, carnivores do not consider us food. If only the logic was comforting enough.

“Can you guaranty that no one in my family will ever be hurt if we allow leopards on this property?” shot back an estate manager I recently met in Assam. More than 80,000 die in road accidents in India every year. Drowning kills many more. That is the cost people pay for living close to highways or rivers for obvious benefits. The planter agreed but refused to discuss the benefits of having leopards around: “I don’t want my dog lifted. Liza is part of the family.”

When I shared this story, some conservationists frowned on me for giving up on that planter and tried to coach me on converting people. Unfortunately, the very basis of conflict resolution strategies offered in most campaigns is not only contradictory to the contemporary conservation goals but also naïvely misleading.

On and around World Environment Day this year, a proud conservation story appeared in the media. Kerala’s Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary recorded 80 tigers, mostly a transient population between Bandipur and Nagarhole. Though these are tigers merely passing through this 344.44 sq km patch, they were celebrated as the second largest population of big cats in south India.

Cattle-lifting has been an issue at Wayanad since mid-1990s, but the hype over tiger numbers alarmed the locals. So last month, villagers reacted violently when two tigers were spotted preying on livestock. They blocked the national highway, forced the authorities to set up trap cages, and went ballistic when a caged tiger was released back into the sanctuary.

Tiger experts and managers dubbed it a problem of plenty. Since the Bandipur-Nagarahole-Mudumulai-Wayanad landscape is saturated with tigers, they said, the surplus population is venturing out. Same is the story with Ranthambhore where conflict is escalating. Too many cubs here in the last few years has resulted in the spill over population moving out of the secure national park to the rest of the reserve and beyond.

The old school of conservation that swears by protected forest model feels that surplus populations are doomed in areas that harbour no wild prey. They also fear that these conflict-prone tigers will erode the goodwill conservation efforts need to protect key populations within reserves. So problem tigers outside forests, they concede, will have to be euthanized.

A younger generation of experts, however, believes that the future of conservation is outside the islands of protected forests that bottleneck populations of animals. For them, the ever-shrinking sanctuaries can at best serve as breeding grounds that maintain source populations of tigers (and other wildlife) but survival of wild species will depend on their acceptance among people in human-dominated landscapes.

Conflict resolution is the most important challenge before this co-existence model. Denial of food to wild carnivores — through proper disposal of waste, securing cattle and poultry in fortified pens and reducing the number of feral dogs and pigs — is a key strategy here. But while food scarcity does dissuade a population from breeding, nothing stops animals passing by.

When a surplus tiger struggles to find prey in a saturated reserve, it does not step out knowing there will be food. It simply wanders and chances upon cattle or feral dogs outside. If it does not find any, it will only look further. Likewise, more surplus tigers from forests may come checking. These transient animals are much more likely to be conflict-prone than a resident tiger familiar with the place.

True, conflict will come down over time if food is effectively and consistently denied to the wild across vast areas, but only because it will cause carnivores outside the forest to die of hunger. Clearly, a zero-damage arrangement of co-existence is non-existent.

The only way forward is to incentivise inevitable losses. The intricate eco-system services of wild carnivores may charm conservationists but the masses demand more tangible benefits. For all the chaos over tourism, conservation still enjoys more goodwill in Ranthambhore where tigers are killing people than in Wayanad where only livestock have been targeted so far.

Meanwhile, we must learn co-existence first as people. It may appear ridiculous that celebration over 80 tigers degenerated to persecution of the 81^st in less than six months. But before deciding how many is too many, let’s ask ourselves if the celebrators and persecutors were ever in it together.

Why the UPA’s cash transfer scheme will boost poverty

The government in election mode is hurrying what it believes are popular reforms. But by offering to transfer cash to 10 crore families while withdrawing subsidies that support double that population, the UPA may end up scoring a self-goal.

FirstPost, 26 November, 2012 

The Centre is ready with the nationwide cash transfer scheme that will take off next year and deposit Rs 3.2 lakh crore per year in the bank accounts of 10 crore poor families by 2014. On paper, the idea is to bypass the leaky subsidy channels. But the scheme is also the UPA’s best bet for a third consecutive term.

The government plans to cover the target BPL families before it is election time in 2014. If it succeeds, roughly 20 crore voters – considering every family on an average has two -- will benefit. If even half of them vote for the Congress and its partners, the alliance should be home again. In 2009 general elections, less than 12 crore votes ensured victory for the Congress. Its partners bagged another 2.43 crore.

But will cash transfer really help the UPA? The scheme is dubbed as fiscal-neutral. It will replace existing subsidies for PDS, fuel, fertilisers, wage schemes etc and will not burden the exchequer. The government’s bill on major subsidies towards food, fertiliser and petroleum in the current fiscal was pegged at Rs 1.8 lakh crore and has been climbing due to a falling rupee and the rising international crude price. Much of these subsidies go to people who are by no definition poor.

Poverty is debatable in India. The cash scheme targets 10 crore poor families or 45-50 crore people. The Sengupta, Saxena and Tendulkar committees, respectively, estimated 77, 50 and 37 per cent of our population as poor. That roughly works out to be 90, 60 and 45 crore Indians.  The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative with UNDP support put 65 crore as poor and another 20 crore as vulnerable to poverty.

Without getting into the relative merits of the different benchmarks used, it is safe to conclude that at least 85 crore Indians, or nearly 20 crore families, are impoverished. The majority of them are unquestionably poor. The rest is one illness or crop failure away from officially sinking below the fast-shifting line of poverty. All of them need help but, unfortunately, the government plans to hand out cash to only half of them while denying subsidies to all.

So, as 10 crore poor families get Rs3200 every month, which, by government’s own expectation, will increase spending and trigger inflation, the other 10 crore families, nearly as poor, will have to fend for themselves in a non-subsidised, inflationary market. They will soon become poorer than those who now qualify for the cash scheme. Clearly, it is not enough to support only the poorest 10 crore families while leaving out another 10 crore who need it as much.

In any case, the one size fits all approach – a flat cash subsidy of R3200 -- is unreasonable. There has been no clear word yet on linking it to inflation over time. Moreover, inflation and the price index itself is a regional phenomenon. Beyond the obvious urban-rural divide, prices vary widely between rural areas as well.

In such a scenario, R3200 may be just enough for subsistence in many parts of India. Worse, productivity will be hurt. For example, very few of the 85 crore poor will be able to afford, with or without the cash dole, fertilizer and diesel at market price. This will affect agricultural output which, in turn, will pinch the economy and push the poor further into poverty.

Even the primary purpose of cash transfer cannot be secured merely by the intent. Where cash is involved, the incentive for manipulation gets much stronger than, say, siphoning off low-quality PDS grains which have a limited market. The test of transparency begins with the selection of the eligible for the scheme. In the past, scores of bona fide candidates were left out while the landed pocketed BPL cards.

The other challenge will be to ensure possession and control of cash. Having a bank account does not warrant transparency as has been evident from several case studies under schemes such as NREGA where the village strongman took possession of all banking documents and controlled the money in collusion with local bank employees.

Anyway, the cash transfer scheme as envisaged now is only feasible when the government’s Aadhaar database covers the entire BPL population, as bank accounts will be opened on the basis of Aadhar’s unique identification number. In the last three years, Aadhar has covered only 25 crore people, mostly in urban areas.

Therefore, it is unclear how the government has set the national deadline for cash transfer covering all 10 crore poor families before the 2014 elections when Aadhar itself does not target more than 50% of the population by the end of 2014. Worse, Aadhar’s penetration is very limited in some of the poorest states of India.

According to the multidimensional poverty index mentioned above, eight Indian states have a combined population of 42 crore poor. Out of these states, only Jharkhand (26.79%) comes close to the national average of population percentage covered under Aadhar. The rest -- Madhya Pradesh (17.55%), Rajasthan (14.04%), Orissa (9.42%), Bengal (5.53%), Uttar Pradesh (4.95%), Bihar (2.02%) and Chhattisgarh (1.23%) – have a lot of catching up to do.

The idea of direct cash subsidy has its merits. In Brazil, for example, put in the hands of the women in poor families, it made a difference. But it will not be easy to make it work at the gigantic scale that is India. Ideally, the government should work out regional benchmarks for minimum means of living and pay the deficit to families whose income falls short of that baseline. But that seems to be a near impossible task given how generic our poverty data is.

At the same time, cash transfer can perpetuate poverty among the poorest. These beneficiaries may not make any serious effort to better their lot lest a small increase in income disqualify them from receiving the monthly dole of R 3200. So, the scheme should have inbuilt incentives for families that invest in education or enterprise and breach the poverty barrier.

A desperate UPA is in too much of a rush to look into these issues or even care. Since the subsidies will not be immediately withdrawn, some money in some people’s hands may earn it some votes for now. But eventually its results, and the country, will be poorer.