The broken idea of India

The strife in Assam and beyond shows that our Indianness itself is an oppressive shackle

Tehelka, 24 August, 2012

THE ANTHEM sung and the flag folded, the media quickly moved on to exclusives, and the social media to other anniversaries. Coalgate was already big. Then, a mini-exodus of the mongoloid-looking from mainland India to the Northeast got us — the opportunistic and the righteous — busy. An opportunistic writer frequently blamed for righteousness, I could not join the what-has-befallen-India chorus this time. Worse, I do not even have an intellectual excuse.

Some hardliners targeted people from the Northeast far away from the riotous scenes of Assam, where the resident and the outsider have been fighting each other for decades. Not too long ago, Bal Thackeray’s underlings tried to bully Biharis (and before that the Madrasis) out of Mumbai and the youth attacked Mumbai-bound trains across Bihar. Thousands of Hindi- speaking migrants have been persecuted in the Northeast and hassled in Tamil Nadu over decades. Even Bengalis resent the Marwari takeover of their businesses in Kolkata.

So does it really help that domestic migration is a constitutional right? Are we really one people who merely forget our Indian identity once too often? Or, is our Indianness a wishful construct too delicate to hold its ground against so many real and rooted identities? If the latter is true, what do we make of the very rationale of India?

A few happy jalebis are my first memory of tricolour hoisting. Even in commie Bengal, schoolboys easily developed into endearing nationalists. India was Kapil Dev and Rakesh Sharma, Reita Faria and PT Usha, and not Pakistan. JC Bose, the Indian scientist who lost out to that Italian Marconi, was an icon of compulsive anti-establishmentarianism that was to surge and swallow us later at College Street. Young coffee house revolutionaries did question democracy but never quite nationhood.

The day Narasimha Rao’s Congress lost the 1996 general elections that threw up a hung Parliament, it felt very much like a personal triumph when a gallivanting African student gushed disbelievingly about how the roads were so busy and life absolutely normal. Back home, he said, the military would have moved in immediately. Not for nothing did we grow up believing in India.

A decade and a half later, experience should have strengthened that conviction. It has not. Sunil Khilnani has written more than 200 pages on it and many feel he should have written more. At Twitter length, the idea of India is secular, and plural. But what is the Indian identity that justifies the geographic limits of this nation? If it binds a Naga with a Kashmiri, it can very well connect an Afghan to a Burmese. Tamil students abroad naturally gravitate towards their Lankan mates and the Punjabis seek out Pakistanis. The British, after all, tried to govern the entire subcontinent from Kabul to Rangoon as an undivided unit.

One does not have to pore over the complex annals of the 1940s to conclude that the territorial limits of the Indian nation, set by political convenience, were incidental. It was an arrangement, possibly the best one forgeable 65 years ago, with obvious merits. The tradition of huge joint families drew from the benefits of economy of scale, pooled resources and common expenditure. Look back at the intricate state boundaries on an early map of India and imagine the military expenditure involved in guarding thousands of kilometres of additional borders on both sides had those provinces become separate nations.

This smart arrangement required its symbols to subsume regional identities. While Pakistan’s failure to deal with Bengali nationalism created a new nation, India has so far staved off balkanisation at a cost reasonable to many. Regional nationalists here have been mostly happy carving out new states within the nation. While religious frissons posed much bigger problems in Punjab and Kashmir, parliamentary politics rapidly internalised caste identities.

But Indianness remains an imaginary brand. It works when the arrangement that is India clicks. When a cricket team picked from eight corners of the country succeeds on the strength of the talent pool; when states do not need to pay import duty on basmati from Punjab, terracotta from Bengal or Kanjivarams from Tamil Nadu; when the benefits of the arrangement that is India is reasonably shared among many different Indias. When that does not happen, the construct requires an assortment of forces for sustenance. Bollywood has often come handy. But places such as Kashmir and the Northeast got more used to off-screen gunfire.

It is not a coincidence that anti-India sentiments are more vocal in the physical extensions of the zmainland, far away from the so-called mainstream, the relative homogeneity. Only free referendums can tell if these secessionist demands have mass legitimacy. That apart, the aspiration, and therefore resentment, of different regional nationalisms is not unnatural within such a mega arrangement. Be it the water wars or tussles over electricity sharing, mutually hostile states of India do engage with one another within broad democratic norms.

But there are two Indias which rarely acknowledge the rest — a third India — while living off it.

‘Chinki’ does sound offensive. If mainlanders could identify a Manipuri from a Naga or Mizo or Sikkimese by their looks, language or accent, they would have invented community-specific terms such as Gujju, Mallu, Bong, Ghati and so on. All these terms can be derogatory. But why does a Bihari often get more offended when called a bhaiya (or simply a Bihari) than a Tamilian when referred to as a Tam? Why is a well-to-do Bihari, let’s say in Lutyen’s Delhi, less likely to be miffed by this regional name-calling than a jobseeker from Patna? Richer states build a more respectable image for their people. Economically secure individuals tend to care even less for such collectives.

Physical attributes apart, the term ‘chinki’ often implies a fast lifestyle and easy (even commercial) availability. Such innuendos easily hurt workers in low-paying, menial, odd and long-hour jobs. Up the economic and social ladder, such barbs lose sting and become nearly inconsequential. Imagine someone calling a Bhupen Hazarika, a James Lyngdoh, or a Chokila Tshering (Iyer) a ‘chinki’ in their face.

No socialist magic can or should make all Indians equally moneyed or equal achievers. But what each of them, communities and individuals, deserved and still deserve are equal opportunities to benefit from the experiment that is India. The wait continues.

This I-Day, I heard Dr Singh speak for about half an hour. We have heard prime ministers at the Red Fort before. It certainly takes rare skill and temperament to repeat the same promises without sounding embarrassed for not delivering yet and still hoping to convince the nation to fall for it all over again. Clearly, this mock routine cannot go on without the audience’s indulgence.

Every year, besides false promises, the Prime Minister’s address contains certain concessions for the aam aadmi. It works because the grand collective of the common man has long been a misnomer in India where the political and economic dialogues are limited to the ruling elite, and the (rural and urban) middleclass, the de facto aam aadmi.

This aam aadmi does not really mind the false promises as long as he benefits from the concessions and the hand-me-down privileges such as farm subsidies, a range of IT jobs, reservations, and an FMCG boom. They include the small businessmen, the salaried class, the landed farmer and can be almost rich, nearly poor and anything in between. The destitute majority that governments struggle to reduce on paper by pulling down the poverty line is rarely spoken to, either by this aam aadmi or the power elite. The first holds the poor in fearful contempt, the latter uses them as ballot fodder.

This I-Day, the Prime Minister said: “Time has now come to view the issues that affect our development processes as matters of national security. If we do not increase the pace of the country's economic growth, take steps to encourage new investment in the economy, improve the management of government finances and work for the livelihood security of the common man (emphasis mine) and energy security of the country, then it most certainly affects our national security.”

His common man could not have been those, depending on the the fast-changing sarkari definition of poverty, 37-77 percent of Indians. That Indian majority does not understand the aspiring superpower’s development and growth rush. They are not bothered about scams because corruption to them meant total disempowerment long ago. Really, what do people who do not remember when they last had a potato, make of or care about livelihood and energy debates?

NO DOUBT some churning, from the poor to the middle class and from there to the ruling elites, has taken place. That is inevitable in our centrifuge grinder and, by far, so deeply admired because so few escape the grind. But 65 long years after the nation was founded on the principle of equal opportunity, do we dare ask hundreds of millions of destitute Indians if they are happy with the arrangement that is India, if Indianness makes any sense to them, or if they care for national security?

That will be some referendum.

The biggest threat to national security, we are told by the State, is the Left-wing extremism in the tribal heartland of India. The excesses of kangaroo courts and bloody ambushes of the red brigade make most of us, the ruling elite and the middle class, concur that the innocent tribal is being manipulated and the nation held to ransom. Certain romantic intellectuals eloquently disagree but the communities that the Naxals claim to defend are getting increasingly vocal against the ideological and moral corruption of the so-called revolutionaries.

A thousand years ago, Baghdad became the world’s most prominent centre of liberal learning. As recently as in the 1970s, when the Baath Party kept religion out of political life, the veil was an uncommon sight and bars flourished in many neighbourhoods. In two wars in the name of neutralising Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (which remained elusive), that secular Iraq was laid waste by the US. Any common man in India knows all about the plot: It is the oil, silly!

If we attach other identities to the destitute majority of Indians, the single biggest population would turn out as tribal, geographically concentrated in the contiguous states of Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand and West Bengal. History and forest surveys know them as laidback but free-spirited people, living in sync with nature. Atrocities committed by the British and Indian State forced them to pick up arms. Today, each indiscriminate assault by security forces in the garb of fighting Naxalism pushes them further into resistance. Yet, few aam aadmi dare whisper: It is the ore, isn’t it?

If there was a separate tribal nation outside the arrangement that is India, it would require an invasion and a full-scale war to perpetrate the kind of loot of minerals and coal that we have been witnessing for decades. Loot, because the contracts for mining are offered at shockingly low prices, disregarding all environmental and local livelihood concerns and the profits bring no tangible benefit to the tribal. The spoils “uplift” a few local elites and some more elsewhere. The concessions bring investment and create jobs for the middle-class. This is India’s national interest. This justifies routine trampling of any tribal resistance against mining, mega factories or power plants by mobilising forces across states as part of anti-insurgency operations.

Yet, only America’s wars are imperial aggression; ours are waged to defend democracy.

Much has been spoken about the resilience of our democracy, about the miracle of consistently significant turnouts of largely illiterate and impoverished voters during elections that frequently topple mighty governments. At the same time, elections are manipulated in ways much more complex than mundane rigging. In Assam, for example, successive Congress governments have allowed systemic influx of people from neighbouring Bangladesh in exchange for electoral loyalty.

In the context of Indianness, these illegal migrants could well be counted among our people 65 years ago. Today, they threaten to edge out the resident tribal from the local economy that is anyway in tatters, having been all but abandoned by the arrangement that is India. Worse, the BJP and its allied organisations, the principal political opposition to the Congress, is milking away what is essentially an economic and political crisis for its communal potential just because the majority of the migrants in question happens to be Muslims, creating room for an Islamic backlash on anyone looking Mongoloid across the country.

Yet, the average poor Indian’s awareness of the value of her vote is no myth. After each verdict for change, the transition of power has always been gracious, barring the Emergency. Even the military has consistently stuck to its honourable apolitical tradition. The maturity of it all impresses visitors from banana republics but does not change much on ground.

Does that sound paradoxical? It isn’t really.

India does not erupt every time a government falls because the one that follows is not fundamentally very different from its predecessor. Big money that ultimately runs the show has long stopped playing favourites and is so entrenched across political lines that it does not really care which combination holds power.

Compare the key economic policies of the Congress, the BJP and some of their key allies such as the NCP or the BJD. Most major parties of India are on the same page on the FDI or the FTA and the extent to which foreign governments (read USA) and MNCs can influence those policies. Only last week, KN Govindacharya (yes, of all people) advised the Congress and the BJP to fight the next Lok Sabha poll together.

The resulting polarisation, of the poor and the rest of India, is becoming so stark that it has got the middle class worrying about reprisals. Recently, a friend planning to return from the US for good sounded unsure if his little fortune would stand out and make him a class enemy of sorts. While laughing it off, I could tell that he was thinking of shelving the family’s long-time dream of owning an “independent house with a slice of lawn” in favour of a duplex in a secure, gated apartment complex.

Moreover, the splendid unconcern of the ruling elite has now started riling even the lower rungs of the middleclass. The ugly clash in Maruti’s Manesar factory in Haryana did not involve any destitute Indian. It was one section of the middle class turning its anger against the corporate management (backed by the state machinery) on another section of its own.

Whichever way it dawns, the realisation that the arrangement that is India is not quite working for the majority can make the middle class aware of its critical power as the driver of the so-called Indian tiger. Simultaneously the biggest producing and consuming force, it can potentially turn around the Indian story, but for its customary inertia.

It is still very much business as usual while battle lines are getting edgier by the day. But as long as the state abuses its own, do we have any right to demand loyalty from the abused to this lopsided arrangement that is India? While persecuting, dispossessing and murdering people for their resources, can we really complain that the victims are too stupid and obdurate to see their interest in “the national interest”?

Or, is it time we accept that all Indian-born who die fighting for her land do not die Indian?

It’s Punish Or Perish

Open forests cannot and should not be fortified but every sound arrest must result in conviction

Tehelka, 17 August, 2012

TIGER POACHERS are back. Separate arrests indicate that organised Pardhi-Bawaria gangs are operating in at least seven areas — BRT (Karnataka), Valmiki (Bihar), Corbett (Uttarakhand), Panna (Madhya Pradesh), Chhindwara-Tadoba (Maharashtra) and, if Bheema, the poacher arrested from Gurgaon earlier this month, is to be believed, Rajaji (Uttarakhand). There are also reports of local operators from Ranthambhore (Rajasthan), Simlipal (Odisha), NSTR (Andhra Pradesh) and Dudhwa (Uttar Pradesh).

Early this summer, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) sent out a warning to all tiger reserves asking the local management to buckle up against heightened threat of poaching. Yet, nearly four dozen tigers have already been poached or died suspiciously this year. So, is the system tripping again?

Given our open forests, it is next to impossible to physically guard our wilderness even in high-security reserves and national parks. The task becomes more than impossible due to vacancies at the ground level and dependence on ageing forest guards. But unless we literally fortify our forests (which will convert those into zoos), there will always be the possibility of poachers sneaking in.

What can deter these killers is the fear of getting caught, prosecuted and punished. We can bell the poacher but setting up local intelligence networks takes training and a certain bent of mind not common among the majority of India’s bureaucratic field managers. What is worse, such is the fear of the P-word in the Forest Department that most officers prefer to live in denial even when poachers strike. Over the years, this has emboldened the poachers, who now operate with a sense of impunity.

We should have seen the current onslaught coming if we remembered the harvesting pattern. In the early 1990s, we lost many tigers. Ranthambhore made headlines when two forest guards were ambushed by Moghiya poachers in 1993. Then, the syndicate waited for a decade to let tiger numbers bounce back before striking big again during 2002-04, causing the local extinction of tigers in Sariska and, subsequently, Panna. After his arrest in 2005, Devi Singh Moghiya confessed that poachers harnessed 22 Ranthambhore tigers in 2003 alone. All along, the officials were in denial.

The culmination of the 10-year cycle this year has activated the poaching cells across the country. Fortunately, the official response this time has shown a shift from the customary denial. Despite occasional resistance from the top brass, field officers and enforcement agencies have managed to arrest a number of poachers — some of them wanted for years — in the past few months.

But the good news ends there. Like in the past, these poachers are eyeing bail and the majority may escape punishment. Even after the 2006 amendment of the Wildlife Protection Act, which created the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, the prosecution process has not improved significantly. The most prominent tiger killers now in police custody are either out on bail or have already served limited sentences.

The challenge now is to send these repeat offenders behind bars and keep them there as long as possible. While we are happy holding only Sansar Chand (wife Rani runs his syndicate) and Shabbir Hassan Quereshi (son Sarfaraz controls the family business), all other kingpins are still active. Some, like Tashi Tshering, are busy in Nepal. Others, like Pema Thinley, operate from China and Tibet. At the other end of their network are mostly nameless shooters and trappers, silently harvesting wild cats from forests across India.

To tackle this threat, the NTCA has installed E-eyes, a thermal imagery system, in Corbett for round-the-clock surveillance. It would do better to set up dedicated legal cells in every forest division and hire or train handpicked officers to make robust cases every time a poacher is arrested. Chances of merely getting caught never deter criminals unless they learn to fear exemplary punishment.

Six Questions To Fix The Mess

The interim ban on tourism in core tiger reserves has sharply polarised conservationists, communities and the tourism sector. But it is possible to reconcile their interests.

Tehelka, 14 August, 2012

The Supreme Court’s interim ban on tiger tourism and ultimatum to states on buffer notification has divided the so-called green constituency like never before. A large section of forest staff and conservationists have hailed the court for being sympathetic to their cause. But the ban on tourism in core tiger forests has alarmed hoteliers, tour operators and a section of tiger experts. The deadline on buffer areas has angered local communities who resent not being consulted in the hasty demarcation.

Given the lack of green cover and mega fauna (read tigers) outside many core areas, the move to gradually shift tourism towards buffer forests in the next five years is being criticised as undemocratic and impractical. The states’ reluctance to notify buffers maybe fuelled by vested interests in mega industry, mining or plantation but villagers on the ground are worried that legal restrictions will compromise their livelihood.

However, the interests of conservation, community and tourism do not appear irreconcilable if we answer the very questions that appear to divide these constituencies. Shekar Dattatri (Conservation India), Ashish Kothari (Kalpavriksh) and Julian Matthews (Tour Operators for Tigers) seem to agree.

ONE: Do we really need to demarcate fresh buffers after clubbing and notifying erstwhile core and buffer areas as critical tiger habitat?

Tiger reserves were always divided into the central core and peripheral buffer areas. To bring as much area as possible under better protection, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has notified the entire area of most tiger reserves as critical tiger habitat (CTH). In most reserves, the new core, therefore, includes areas that were earlier designated as buffer. So do we really need to notify more areas as buffer, particularly when many reserves do not have a trace of forest outside the CTH?

The answer is not simple. To stave off the incessant pressure of development, it is important to have legal restrictions in a protective ring around our reserves. On paper, a buffer notification does not compromise local livelihood options such as agriculture but it discourages mega development such as heavy industry, mining and highways.

However, in reserves such as Ranthambhore, agricultural fields skirt the CTH and a major part of the CTH itself is severely degraded. Yet, the Rajasthan government recently notified two small island forests miles away from the CTR as Ranthambhore buffer just because it had to. Such paper buffers do not really help tiger reserves.

But if existing or potential forest areas are designated as buffers around tiger reserves, it safeguards conservation (and often communities) against future land diversion. But it is legally binding that local villagers be consulted before notifying such areas. Since a lot of misinformation by vested interests antagonises the communities, a thorough awareness drive is required around each tiger reserve so that locals can make informed choices. To protect the villagers’ rights and the interests of conservation, the FD and local bodies such as panchayats should work out explicit MOUs clearly defining the dos and don’ts under the FRA, FCA and WLPA.

Shekar Dattatri: We need a site-specific approach. Wherever a fresh buffer is possible, it makes sense to declare it now, before it is too late. My understanding is that declaration of buffer will not affect anyone’s domicile status or legitimate livelihood. Unfortunately, vested interests are always at work. Around Mudumalai, for example, vested interests, many of them encroachers, spread the rumour that the forest department was planning to release tigers in the buffer after notification! The forest department must mount an information campaign with public talks, posters, bill boards etc to remove misgivings. Unless they do this, there will be massive unrest in some areas and the buffer declaration process will get stalled, SC order or not. Anything done in a tearing hurry - or unilaterally - will be impractical and undesirable in the long term.

Ashish Kothari: The CTHs have been declared in haste to avoid the FRA process and now we are witnessing the same hurry in the buffer notification process. To ensure that buffers are not restrictive of livelihoods of various kinds, there must be clarity of the rights of people living in this area through full implementation of the FRA and PESA, and processes of gram sabha consent, not only consultation. Already we are witnessing restrictions in places like Tadoba’s buffer. So we need truly joint decision-making with FD and local communities having equal say in management across the landscape (including the core). A clearly worked out, legally binding MoUs between the FD and each village is a must, including the assurance that tomorrow, the buffer too won’t be turned into a core (especially if wildlife increases) and people kicked out.

Julian Matthews: Yes, we do need buffers to keep away the most polluting and degrading forms of land use. Tourism establishments should be allowed in these areas, but minimum operational standards, EIAs, clear building regulations and maximum footprint areas should be designated within these areas. If critical areas such as corridors are owned by farmers or are community forests, we should set down a joint management regime. The local stakeholders (communities) should be able to manage such areas themselves or tender management responsibility to a vetted private operator for fee/yearly leasehold and other benefits such as jobs.

TWO: Can our wilderness withstand the growing pressure of tourism?

More than 50 laky tourists visit India’s forests every year. This amounts to a daily average of 14,000. Compared to a villager, a tourist uses 5-10 times more water. Resorts need electricity and diesel generator sets pollute the air. Wood furnaces are widely used for heating water and also for cooking in many places. The tourists generate mounds of garbage which are dumped recklessly. A number of resorts also block wildlife corridors and illegally use natural resources like stone and sand for construction.

The footprint of these 14,000 individual tourists, and easily another 1000 migrant support staff, puts as much pressure on the resources as 15000 rural families would. This is almost equivalent to one-third of the targeted families under the government’s voluntary relocation scheme. What is more, this tourist load is not uniformly distributed across the country and the pressure is acute in a few popular tiger destinations. In the census, settlements with a population of over 5000 are deemed towns and daily tourist presence would exceed that benchmark in quite a few wildlife tourism hubs.

The government is as much responsible as the tourism sector for presiding over this mess. Few existing regulations are imposed and widespread corruption in the forest and civic administration has allowed unscrupulous players in the wildlife tourism business get away bending every rule. Increasing political stake in the sector has made the situation worse.

Dattatri: Clearly, they cannot. Many luxury resorts already hem our popular reserves, posing a big challenge. However, development around other, relatively unspoiled parks should be strictly regulated now. To minimize pressure on resources resorts must take aggressive measures like installing cooking gas, solar water heaters, rainwater harvesting, grey water recycling etc. Many will not do it until forced. So perhaps we need a law for tourist facilities within a certain radius from reserves. All existing constructions blocking known wildlife corridors must go. The government must acquire such land, while perhaps making exceptions for individual landholdings that are large, wooded with natural vegetation and unfenced, allowing unfettered movement of wildlife.

Kothati: Current levels of tourism are clearly unsustainable; but they are also deeply inequitable, as benefits are mostly cornered by private resort/hotel owners and tour operators. All tourism must not only be ecologically sustainable, but also managed by local communities, or with them as equal partners. There is no reason their capacity to do this cannot be built up in the next few years. Overall, any tourism in the area must happen as part of a larger landscape level plan for conservation, livelihoods, and human well-being, with strategies that are tuned to the local environment and biodiversity, the local cultures, and local economies. The current attempt at trying to resolve the issue with tourism at the centre, and with a one-size-fits-all prescription, is fundamentally flawed.

Matthews: Agreed and this is all true. India has good environmental and wildlife laws but no enforcement mechanisms. We need an independent professionally run ‘Ecotourism Authority’ with local representatives in each state, who lay down regulations, set out audits, and enforce regulations. At least 95% of India’s forests are still unvisited and we need to spread tourism further and thinner to those areas. We have to realise that nature tourism is only going to grow and prepare a ‘roadmap’ for constructive growth. We do need to use tourism as an economic catalyst to help restore buffers and corridors too, with state mechanisms that allows community conservancies, joint management of community forests through public/private partnership or NGOs.

THREE: Why can’t we offer customised tourism?

Due to legal restrictions on mega development and crop predation by wild herbivores, tourism is an important economic tool in and around protected forests. To fully benefit from it, hoteliers have to accept that different segments of tourists have different demands and offer customised experiences. Within the core, the FD can offer limited (one two-room forest rest house in every zone) no-frill accommodation for zero impact tourism.

A5-km radius outside the core can be designated for low impact and high mitigation tourism where small non-luxury home stays run by local villagers can coexist with bigger resorts that use solar power to meet at least half their energy requirement, follow a garbage disposal protocol and pay high water tariff for usage exceeding the quota. These resorts can pass on the extra cost to the tourists who demand both luxury and proximity to forests. The proposed cess on resorts should be used as a corpus to build capacity among the locals by offering soft loans and skill training to take over the running of tourism.

Outside this 5-km ring, restrictions and regulations can be relaxed suitably. This will bring down the cost and allow certain recreational activities. Such a three-tier system will be able to cater to all economic and interest groups: those who want no-frills wildlife experience (core), those on a budget and want some creature comforts close to forest (buffer home stays), those who want luxury close to forest and can pay for it (buffer resorts), and those who want to party in the night and go on safaris during the day (resorts outside 5-km radius).

Dattatri: In principle, I agree that core areas can remain open for limited, zero-impact tourism in small, Spartan accommodation. But everything will depend on how these are managed. There should be a strict rule prohibiting non-vegetarian food or liquor as this will be discourage those who are simply looking for a good time. Bookings should be completely transparent.

Kothari: Even outside the 5-km ring, there are many important species and ecosystems, along with sensitive cultures and livelihoods. Any tourism in these and other areas needs also to be ecologically, socially and culturally sensitive, and fit into the integrated landscape vision and planning process I mention above.

Matthews: I feel it is critical that this happens in the near future. There will be a section that will go for no-frill, zero impact experience. This will also ensure that other keen naturalists can get better wildlife experience while picnic tourists can also enjoy and pay less. I would also encourage local safari parks, where injured or dangerous animals can be housed in cleverly constructed large enclosures (not zoos) and people can enjoy game drives without putting pressures on national parks.

FOUR: Is it impossible to develop buffer forests in five years?

Given an opportunity, nature always bounces back. Under a public-private partnership, key areas in a designated buffer should be targeted for forest regeneration by compensating willing villagers for not using the land. This is also the most direct way that tourism money can flow to the communities.

However, it could be socially disastrous to have people idling on compensation. So the same villagers should be engaged as part of the land deal (unless there is no suitable member in a family) to protect the buffer forest. A few of them can be handpicked and trained to monitor the safaris with a sense of ownership of the forest. This will lessen the burden on the FD and create local jobs.

Also, a villager should retain his right to clear the regenerated forest on his land for agriculture or homestead if at any point he stops receiving the payment for land services which should anyway be revised every year factoring in the inflation. He should also have the right to his proportionate share if any carbon credit is accrued from such regenerated forests at any point of time.

Dattatri: In some places a half decent forest may already exist, which, if protected, will regenerate on its own. In other areas there may already be a very hard edge between the reserve and the outside, where farmland may be interspersed with dwellings. In wet areas, good growth can be established in five years. In dry areas, this could take up to 10 years. Money generated from tourism should be used to encourage willing farmers to 're-wild' their land.

Kothari: The buffers will have not only individual agricultural land, but also lots of commons. Across India, communities have regenerated lakes of hectares on their own or with government or NGO help. The so-called ‘public-private’ partnerships should not become fronts for the private corporate sector to profit while villagers remain in subservient positions. Empowering and capacitating communities is a much better and more sustainable strategy.

Matthews: This is important and the only real way for communities to really become beneficiaries in wildlife. We need to turn them from cattle herders to wildlife guardians in such a way. The only way for this to happen is to forge real stakeholder partnerships in conservancies like these and involve professional experts and NGOs.

FIVE: Why can’t we offer incentive to tourism and adapt a compensatory approach?

Even the government’s draft guidelines suggest that safaris should continue in core areas for another five years till buffers develop. But this access should now be linked to a hotel’s (homestays exempt) investment in buffer development. In Kanha, for example, 140 safari gypsies enter the reserve twice a day. The FD may be allowed control of, say, 5% or 7 gypsies for VIPs etc. Another 25% of the fleet (35 vehicles) may be earmarked for the homestay guests. The rest, 98 gypsies, should be allotted to hotels as per their investment in the buffer.

The Kanha management can identify 100 acres of revenue land per Gypsy (9800 acres i.e. roughly 40 sq km) as key areas for forest regeneration in the buffer for an annual payment of Rs 10,000/acre to the villagers who own the land. A hotel will get dedicated annual right to a Gypsy for every 100 acres he supports. This works out to be annually Rs 10 lakh per Gypsy but hoteliers will not feel the pinch if the safari tourists, instead of paying entry fees to the FD, pay respective hotels.

The maths is simple. One Gypsy in two daily shifts carries 8 tourists. There are a minimum of 250 tourist days in a year. To recover Rs 10 lakh from one Gypsy, hoteliers will have to charge only Rs 500 for each seat. This way, 98 Gypsies can generate Rs 9.80 crore and support 40 sq km of private land around which 200-400 sq km of buffer forest can flourish.

Dattatri: In principle, this is a good idea. When people begin to grow a forest, they will realize how much effort is required and will then be more zealous about protecting their patches.

Kothari: In the short run some formula for sharing revenues is fine (though it cannot be the same figures across the country), but in the long run, as I mention above, all tourism must be community-run or in equal partnership. Flow of revenues to villages, who want such an arrangement, will then take place automatically.

Matthews: This is a very interesting idea, and should be considered but I can imagine it being both politically a problem, as parks lose essential revenue, but also an administrative headache.

SIX: Will we be able to keep a tab on the tiger status in core areas if tourism is eventually moved out?

If buffer forests are adjacent to the core (as is the case in most tiger reserves) rather than isolated units (as in Ranthambhore), it is possible to keep a tab on the tiger status in the core without necessarily visiting it frequently. If there are enough tigers in the buffer, the source (core) is likely to be secure.

But there is an outside chance of a vibrant buffer becoming the new source area if negligence by the FD destroys the integrity of the adjoining core. To safeguard against such eventualities, social audits in the form of zero-impact tourism should continue in the core. Researchers, credible NGOs and local gram sabha representatives should also have periodic access to all areas of a tiger reserve. In any case, compensatory day safaris (subject to investment in buffer) should continue in core areas till viable buffers are developed.

Dattatri: Yes, but only if social audits involve year-round access to scientists, accredited NGO groups who have a track record of conservation in the area, and through appointing a credible locally resident person as honorary wildlife warden. If the park is big, there could be more than one honorary wildlife warden. Their names, contact details, and monthly field reports should be available in the public domain. On no account should core areas be totally out of bounds to everyone.

Kothari: If the landscape is under forms of governance that involve local communities in a central role, the entire area will be under participatory monitoring. Any system that leaves an area entirely to one department is a recipe for disaster. Independent researchers should also have access.

Matthews: It is critical that NGOs and researchers are given access to all areas of a park and that tourism is allowed to be used as an effective economic and awareness tool. All evidence from parks today in India suggests where tourism exists there is greater transparency, greater accountability and less extractive pressures from bordering communities on these habitats. Tourism is not a panacea but it is a powerful tool for both conservation and communities.

Burning Both Ends

We generate electricity by destroying our rivers and forests only to pump out the remaining groundwater

Tehelka, 10 August, 2012

THE WORLD’S biggest grid failure has put the green ministry in the dock yet again. India’s power shortage is between 10-13 percent and power projects are apparently held up due to delay in environment clearances (EC). So to many, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) is the villain in our growth story, by disallowing coal extraction in forest areas and optimum harnessing of rivers.

The MoEF has indeed decided to have a relook at the new projects and also examine the legality of cutting down the capacity of operational hydroelectric plants on the Ganga. Elsewhere, not a single power project is held up in green tape.

NHPC Dibang needs diversion of 5,056 hectares of forestland but is facing stiff opposition from locals. Jaypee Lower Siang received terms of reference in 2007 but is stalled due to public resistance. The Cheemei gasbased thermal power plant by the Kerala State Industrial Corporation was considered for EC but the promoters are yet to work out the blend of natural gas and refrigerated liquefied gas, which they propose to use for the plant.

NHPC Middle Subanshri and NPCIL Mithvirdi Gujarat have not even submitted EC applications. Saurashtra coal-based project is yet to apply for forest clearance (FC). NTPC Bijapur Karnataka was granted EC this January. Essar Madhya Pradesh and Reliance Power Chitrangi Madhya Pradesh received ECs in 2010. The Essar plant is already operational, although final FC for both projects is pending.

The 11th Five-Year Plan projected a target of 50,000 MW of additional thermal power capacity while the 12th Plan aims at another 1,00,000 MW. During 2007-11, the MoEF has granted EC to 2,10,000 MW of power, which is 60,000 MW in excess of the combined target of 1,50,000 MW by 2017. Yet, imaginary green roadblocks are blamed for tripping up growth.

It is common knowledge that India loses up to 40 percent of power in transmission. But while investing heavily in new power projects, the government or the private sector refuses to plug the holes. India’s power transmission and distribution segment, says a report, is facing an investment shortfall of Rs 3.68 lakh crore. If this convenient blind spot in our policy is not shocking enough, sample this double whammy.

The recent grid failure was triggered by Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh overdrawing electricity to feed the agricultural demand. Overdrawing is common and frequent during the June-July sowing season of water-intensive crops such as paddy. The pre-monsoon data showed that the storage level at the reservoirs was low — only 16 percent at Bhakra — due to irrationally heavy withdrawal earlier in the year. Then a delayed and deficient monsoon tipped the scales.

Thanks to power subsidy, groundwater usage in north India is the highest in the world. During 2002-08, groundwater depletion in Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana and Delhi was equivalent to a net loss of 109 cu km of water — double the capacity of India’s largest surface water reservoir. To run a million water pumps to flood their agricultural fields, these states also demand the biggest chunk of power. To meet that demand, growth pundits want every river dammed and the last forests mined for coal.

So the fragile Brahmaputra landscape is being torn apart in Arunachal Pradesh where at least 135 large hydel power projects are billed to produce 57,000 MW. On the Ganga, 17 plants are operating with 14 under construction and 39 proposed. According to the latest Greenpeace report, coal mining threatens over 1.1 million hectares of prime forest in 13 coalfields in central India.

Business as usual will lead us to a suicidal scenario in a not-so-distant future when we will have destroyed all our forests and rivers only to suck out the last few drops of groundwater. It takes no great insight to grasp the urgency of a policy shift towards promoting less water-intensive crops and investing in renewable energy. If only we could begin by fixing the leaky distribution network.

No Umbrella Too Big

The promise that tiger conservation will take care of all species down the pyramid is flawed. Any little bird can tell us why

Tehelka, 3 August, 2012

THE CENTRE has finally asked the bustard range states to prepare species recovery action plans for the three critically endangered birds following its guidelines. The population of Great Indian Bustards (GIB) has fallen below 300 and the bird’s last stand is in a few pockets of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. The terai of Uttar Pradesh, duars of West Bengal, parts of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh foothills are critical for the survival of the remaining 350-odd Bengal Floricans. Lesser Floricans are relatively better off and their range overlaps broadly with that of the GIB’s.

It is perhaps already too late to revive the GIB without conservation breeding programmes. The government watched silently for over two decades as the endangered species reached the brink of extinction. The stately GIB would have been anointed India’s national bird but for our first prime minister’s not-entirely-unfounded scepticism about our spelling prowess. The bird never fell off the radar and yet the decade-old demand for a Project Bustard failed to move the government. When things finally moved in 2011, the recovery plans of all three bustards, which require very different habitat management, were eventually clubbed together to save funds.

Unless we are talking tigers, funding is a serious constraint. The Centre’s Rs 800 crore Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitat (IDWH) initiative earmarks only Rs 100 crore for the recovery of 16 critically endangered species. While the IDWH is supposed to look after the protection of all wildlife outside protected forests across the country with just Rs 250 crore, the allocation for India’s 600-odd protected areas is only Rs 450 crore, which breaks down to a daily budget of less than Rs 100 per sq km.

Project Tiger, of course, was allotted more than Rs 600 crore under the Eleventh Plan. Even Project Elephant, the only other species recovery plan run in a project mode, did not merit more than Rs 82 crore during the same plan period. This lopsided funding would have made some sense if the benefit of conserving tigers, an umbrella species, reached all other species in its ecosystem. It has not.

Let’s consider birds. The GIB is not found in any tiger reserve. Neither is the enigmatic Jerdon’s Courser. While Bombay Natural History Society’s (BNHS) Project Bustard document has no takers, the Andhra Pradesh government’s plan to recover Jerdon’s Courser is still awaiting funding support from the Centre. Of the 15 critically endangered bird species of India, points out BNHS director Asad Rahmani in his recent book Threatened Birds of India, eight are not found in any tiger reserve. The poor quality of data on birds from tiger reserves in itself highlights a blinkered conservation approach.

Nevertheless, four species of vultures have benefited substantially from Project Tiger as reserves provide diclofenac-free wild carcasses ( just like species such as the Pallid Harrier benefits from pesticide-free grassland areas inside reserves). Namdapha and Manas are good habitat for the White-bellied Heron. Bengal Florican got lucky when much of its grassland habitat came under protection in Dudhwa, Kaziranga, Manas, Dibru-Saikhowa and Orang.

However, Project Tiger never factored in the needs of Florican conservation. For example, the Ghola grassland in Lakhimpur-Kheri district of Uttar Pradesh was not included in Dudhwa simply because the area did not have any tree cover. Today, this important habitat of Bengal Florican and many other bird species such as Swamp Francolin has become cropland.

Significantly, other than the GIB and the Jerdon’s Courser, four bird species — Himalayan Quail, Pink-headed Duck, Sociable Lapwing and Spoon-billed Sandpiper — near-extinct in India do not benefit from Project Tiger. And let’s not even talk about the vagrant Christmas Frigatebird or the migratory Siberian Crane.

The pattern holds when Rahmani examines the distribution of the endangered bird species. Of the 16, only eight have been spotted in tiger reserves. The only one to have truly benefited from Project Tiger is the White-winged Duck, which is found in Manas, Nameri, Namdapha and Pakke. Greater Adjutant mostly breeds outside protected areas but has small breeding populations in Kaziranga and Manas.

Tiger reserves that have recorded other endangered species are Kaziranga (Baer’s Pochard), Sunderbans (Baer’s Pochard, Masked Finfoot and Spotted greenshank), Periyar and Kalakkad-Mundanthurai (White-bellied Blue Robin) and Bhadra (Nilgiri Blue Robin). The Egyptian Vulture is found in many tiger reserves but its primary habitat is in open countryside.

Project Tiger has no impact on the fate of the other eight endangered species. The Lesser Florican could have a good chance to flourish in many tiger reserves if grassland areas were included or not converted into woodlands. The Narcondam Hornbill is endemic to the Andamans and the Green Peafowl is restricted to Myanmar borders. The other species absent from tiger reserves are the Nilgiri Laughingthrush, the Red-breasted Goose, the Oriental Stork, the White-headed Duck and the Barau’s Petrel.

These nearly-lost causes apart, 20 out of 54 vulnerable bird species cannot be revived under the tiger umbrella. The Sarus Crane is found in 16 tiger reserves but breeds occasionally only in Dudhwa. As their large nests in shallow waters are vulnerable to predation, most Sarus birds are found in agricultural fields and small wetlands free of wild predators. Similarly, the Indian Skimmer nests in mega rivers and does not breed in any of the tiger reserves, such as Kaziranga, Nagarjunasagar, Valmiki, Dudhwa, Ranthambore and Satkosia, where it is spotted.

ALL FOREST types are not covered under Project Tiger, resulting in the exclusion of many bird species such as the White-naped Tit (old-growth thorn forests) and the Yellow-throated Bulbul (peninsular forests). The endemic Green Munia prefers dry scrub forests, breeding and foraging mostly outside reserves. Occasionally found in a few tiger forests, the Lesser Flamingo’s main breeding tract is the Great Rann of Kutch where a proposed road may soon come up close to the grand Flamingo City, affecting the water regime and the breeding of this magnificent species.

A number of small grassland birds such as the Bristled Grassbird, the Broad-tailed Grassbird, the Marsh Babbler, the Jerdon’s Babbler and the Slender-billed Babbler have benefited from the lowland grassland habitat of Manas, Kaziranga, Corbett, Dudhwa and Namdapha. But these species breed during summer when grassland is set afire as part of tiger habitat management and to increase wildlife visibility for tourists.

Sums up renowned bird author Bikram Grewal: “With all the focus on the tiger, nobody has time and money for birds. Even those who care mostly talk about the GIB. Our obsession for size draws us towards the mega fauna. In the process, too many critical bird species are disappearing too fast.”

This does not mean Project Tiger can be compromised with. “Tiger con servation has far-reaching benefits and anyway we cannot financially weaken the existing projects. But there is a serious need for additional funds and species-specific focus to cover non-tiger areas such as deserts, grasslands, coasts, marine ecosystems, wetlands, high altitude areas and islands,” says Rahmani. Or India can give up the pretension of pursuing the zero-extinction goal by 2020.