Come clean or just clear out

FirstPost, 26 July, 2012

Who are the groups that are shocked by the Supreme Court ban on tourism in core tiger forests? The tourist-photographers who brazenly flout rules for a few indulgent ‘likes’ on social networking sites; hoteliers who build properties blocking wildlife corridors, guzzle natural resources and make dumping grounds of forests; experts who are too busy raising awareness and money to set an example of good practices in the resorts they own or patronise; and forest staff who make a fortune by presiding over this frightening mess.

The welcome court order slapped this lot out of their comfort zone. For now, it is a blow to their business-as-usual ethics rather than their business. The ban has come after the monsoon closure of all tiger reserves and, in all likelihood, will be relaxed by the time the parks open. One would want them to use the time to introspect, or maybe feel a tad chastened. Instead, they are whining like a bunch of pampered kids.

All over social media, their verdict is that the ban will spell the end of the tiger. Yes, tourists do keep an eye on the easily wayward forest staff, if not the tiger, and yes, they do significantly boost accountability. The flipside, however, is equally stark. If the forest personnel were left to undo the damage done by tourists, they would not have much time for anything else. Policing is one liability. Most of us are witness to how dozens of tourist vehicles line up at sighting points, almost boxing in the tiger that has unwisely shown up. Fewer are familiar with spectacles of tourists getting off vehicles deep inside tiger forests and blissfully wandering into the bushes to answer nature’s calls.

Instead of shutting the door on all tourists, what is needed is to strip away luxury facilities in core areas. Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters

Cleaning up after the tourists is another herculean task. While Gypsies usually stick to forest roads and the trash on their trail can be collected by a follow-up drive, there is no way one can pick up after the tourists on an elephant safari. I have seen biscuit and wafer covers in grasslands, mineral water bottles on riverbeds and tobacco sachets, well, everywhere. At any forest rest house complex, some of which spread out like villages, the canteens sell everything that you can buy at a regular corner shop and the phenomenal appetite of the tourists ensures massive loads of garbage that ungulates feed and choke on. Often, the canteen workers simply set such dumps on fire.

If tourists really pride themselves on their “indirect patrolling” keeping poachers away, they can continue the service in the buffer forests which are usually the gateway to the core areas. They need not worry about tiger sightings either. Given the spin-offs attributed to tourism, there is no reason why the buffer forests will not dramatically improve as habitats and attract enough big cats.

Another argument doing the rounds is the need to learn from the African experience where ranches are run deep inside forests with local communities. This is nonsense. First, the expanse of the African wilderness is not comparable to our small pocket forests. Second, with the exception of the Congo basin, the forests and savanna of Africa usually allow wildlife sighting from a fair distance, a convenience rarely enjoyed in India due to thicker vegetation. In any case, there are serious issues over the number of vehicles and gas balloons hanging too low even in famed reserves such as Masai Mara.

The co-opting of Masai tribals in tourism is often touted as a triumph of inclusive conservation. In reality, it has resulted in the disempowerment of the tribe in Kenya and Tanzania where they are allowed to stay inside reserves to serve the ranches run by the whites but have become strangers in their own land due to total exclusion from the decision making process. The fate of our tribes, often used as conservation props or menial workers by tour operators and hotels, is worse.

This does not mean we should or can do without wildlife tourism. A whole set of legal restrictions in and around forests disallows industries, resulting in limited livelihood options. Ecologically sustainable tourism, in fact, can be the mainstay of such local economies. But the few good people in the business complain how the system is tailor-made for corrupt profiteering that has become synonymous with tourism. While nothing justifies a total lack of self-policing — there is not a single association of wildlife tourism organisations that can regulate the sector — the official policies are indeed banal and ridden with loopholes. Even the new eco-tourism guidelines drawn up by the Centre offer no incentive to good practices and are conveniently vague on punishing violators.

As in tourism, it is unfair to tar all tourists with the same brush too. There are many who truly value a jungle experience. So instead of shutting the door on all tourists, what is needed is to strip away luxury facilities in core areas. Imagine a Spartan accommodation — no air-coolers, no mineral water, no soft drink, nothing packed in plastic, no five-course meals at commercial canteens, even no electricity after a reasonable hour. With only a hard bed, a clean toilet and basic food on offer, the core will only attract those who really care for the forests and the picnic crowd will automatically move their party to the buffer.

Even so, till the buffers are developed as good wildlife habitats, core areas can also accommodate a limited number of day tourists on safari under strict regulations that include hefty penalties for littering and mischief.

To tackle the real danger of tourism, however, we have to rein in the mega walled resorts outside and around core forests. Without strict land use policies, restrictions on use of natural resources (water, wood, stone or sand), and strict pollution (sound, light and garbage) norms, such properties will continue to mushroom and suffocate our green isles. Unless made to share their profits with the locals, these businesses will further alienate the communities who anyway pay the highest price for conservation.

The Supreme Court will look into the eco-tourism guidelines at the next hearing on 22 August. While it may relax the interim ban, nothing far-reaching can be achieved without coming down ruthlessly on unscrupulous hoteliers circling our forests. With huge money at stake and major political interest at play, it will not be easy for any administration. But the apex court can at least summon the horse to the water.

How the violation continues

Our voyeuristic outrage at rape will not end the life of this crime. But maybe it won’t be attempted so often, so brazenly if we start dealing with rape for what it really is


OPEN, 21 July, 2012

I happen to know a few victims of molestation, possibly rape; some of them did not specify. Barring two, these victims are women. I do not know why they confided in me. Not all of them were friends. Not all of them were violated by strangers and at least two still maintain more than a functional relationship with the violators. I also know a few sexual offenders. I brought up the issue with two of them. One soon got abusive in denial and the other answered me patiently before breaking down. Since the victims refused to press charges, the offenders had no real reason to be fearful of me. But they were.

It was almost 10 years ago when I last spoke to some of them. In 2003, a spate of rapes—including the much-reported assault on a Swiss diplomat during the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) at Delhi’s Siri Fort complex—had pushed me to seek a few answers. From chatty crime reporters to wary sociologists, everyone was busy offering theories. Some blamed “a cow belt mindset”, some spoke of new money and narcotics. In a sudden spurt of sensitivity and outrage, terms like trauma-care and summary trial became household terms. Activists took to the streets against what they termed a “culture of rape”.

The same outraged righteousness was manifest in the media and the shrill demonstrations following the public molestation of a young woman in Guwahati last week. The footage was run 24x7 across channels and, to highlight the enormity of the crime, breathless anchors went into every detail of the “barbaric violations” the victim suffered. Some doubted her age and marital status, others questioned her purpose outside a pub (the crime spot) late at night. Activists hit the streets with placards demanding that ‘the rapists’ be hanged—casually branding a molestation victim as raped.

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We haven’t overnight created a ‘culture of rape’. One of our most popular deities is worshipped in the phallic form because he was cursed by the sage woman he raped. The Greek myth of Callisto—a river goddess and a member of Diana’s band of virgins who was raped by none other than Zeus, exiled by Diana, transformed into a bear by Hera and finally enshrined in the sky as the Great Bear constellation by her violator—tells us how ancient the practice is.

Data from the US National Institute of Justice classifies rape as one of the three most frequently committed violent crimes in the US, with an estimated one million victims every year. That, when the National Crime Victimisation Survey indicates that only 30 per cent of the cases are reported. The under-reporting is worse in India—no more than 20,000 rapes are reported annually—but the Indian male is no worse than the male anywhere else.

Through history, rape comes across more as a means than an end in itself. While there have always been enough instances where the sexual urge alone drove men to force themselves on women, it might be safe to hazard that women would have felt much safer if sex was the only impetus for rape.

Before man worked out the institution of family, the alpha male could have sex with any female in the herd. Quite like the lion king. The institution of marriage followed the institution of family and early societies invented the most brutal ways of meting out death for adultery and incest—but not rape. Probably because rape was still shrouded in mysticism—a king could ‘marry’ the daughter or wife of another king after conquest, a priest could ‘bless’ a woman of his choice in the name of occult rites.

Understandably, the common man associated such practices, which created a kind of pseudo-legitimacy for rape, with power. Raping the adversary’s women was as emphatic a statement of supremacy as capturing his land or cattle. It took on mass dimensions in times of anarchy. In Bosnia or in Gujarat, rape became just another weapon—almost de-sexed. Rape also stands de-sexed when infuriated members of a runaway girl’s family rape the adolescent sister of the guy who eloped with their girl. Even today, as in the past, a large number of victims are just rape fodder in the clash of false pride and misplaced honour among men.

But hasn’t the woman come a long way? The industrial revolution gave her room to seek her own identity. She had played her part in the agri economy too, but as far as men were concerned, so did the livestock. Now she could finally have an economic identity. She has walked a long way since on that path of independence and created a world of her own, which presents new dangers.

Before the woman started to seek her own identity, male supremacy was taken for granted. Even the most sensitive of men would try to score, play, ride or earn better than other men to become the rightful claimants of women. Not anymore. Girls top public exams, women CEOs and entrepreneurs steal the show at award nights and it has been some time since men learnt to take orders from women bosses. The master has suddenly been reduced to the competitor in all walks of life. Except sex, where men and women are supposedly equal partners, but most men see it as the last standing bastion of traditional male dominance.

Man did not inherit the knowledge of how to compete with the woman probably because he never had to in the past. Some of those who could not learn on the job and felt threatened were tempted to take on the new woman in a field, which, according to their collective male memory, promised only male winners. And this new woman needn’t necessarily be the urban stereotype. Haven’t we known the fate of a number of village women who dared to defy traditions? Unfortuna- tely, today’s women can become targets for what they are, rather than for what they are not.

More recently, rising social tension can be blamed on lopsided growth policies, pitting a shining India, an aspiring (and frustrated) India and a doomed India against one another. Strikingly different sets of values make such social interfaces even more stressful. Again, rape, like any other crime, becomes a tool when those who feel left out try to get even with those better placed in the socio-economic hierarchy. Worse, the frustrated target their own who try to climb the social ladder. Trace the social standing of the victims and offenders in most cases of rape committed by strangers, and the pattern will hold out.

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None of these theories, however, explains why a family member or a friend seeks out a victim. That is plain perversion, we have been told. None of these theories matter to the victims of rape either.

The ones who spoke to me made two common points about their ordeal. First, they never believed it could happen to them, were relieved that nobody else came to know of it and felt “paralysed” or “blank” considering the possibility of it happening again. Second, they did not want to discuss why it happened or how it could have been avoided because that would not have lessened their trauma. They did not even care if the offenders were punished; some feared the stigma associated with the prosecution process, others sought solace in the fact that they were not “actually raped”.

The one offender who did answer some of my questions said it was an error of judgment at a “really bad moment”. He blamed his drinking and a “weird state of mind during that phase” when he easily felt rejected. Then he blamed the victim for “freezing with fear or something” and not “really resisting”. At this point, he suddenly broke down. Years later, I ran into him in Mumbai. He introduced me to his wife and child, but expressed no desire to stay in touch with me.

The other offender claimed he never “took advantage of anyone” and whatever happened was consensual. When I asked him if he was sure, he turned abusive and dared me to prove otherwise. “My word against hers even if she dares accuse me” was the refrain. He pointed out that his wife and the victim’s would-be husband knew each other well and that the four were “in touch for another couple of years or so” till the newly married couple moved to a different city. I could not verify.

The Guwahati victim, or the ones groped during different New Year eve revelries in Kochi, Mumbai or Gurgaon, suffered in public and did their best to fend off the violators. The ones abducted in Delhi or Gurgaon and gang-raped inside moving cars probably had little chance to resist. So can we do anything at all about getting raped, apart from observing commonsense precautions? We need to address the social fault lines. We also need better policing, investigation and prosecution. But murder is as base a crime and we have the strictest possible penalties in place. People still get killed.

Only one of the victims I know was angry that her family did not allow her to report the offender. When she spoke to me, she resented that she was too young to decide for herself. “I didn’t and still don’t understand the social stigma thing,” she complained, “Yes, it is a terrible feeling to be touched against your will. But that is entirely personal. For society and the legal system, it is only a crime. In case of every other crime, it is the criminal who is on the backfoot. Why should sex offences be any different?”

I remember her last words from that evening and, more than a decade later, she suddenly made a lot more sense to me. I hesitantly called her up. She was surprised but managed to laugh at my query. No, she has not “really got over it” and hates the fact that she has not. “I can’t really explain but the consequences seem to be much more punishing than the act. I really wanted to report him then. But since I didn’t and it remained a secret, I learnt to fear that someone somewhere perhaps knows or will come to know about all that happened to me,” she says.

So is there a way to deal with it, minus the histrionics and the breast-beating? “The idea of rape is so enormous that most of us (victims) perhaps get mind-fucked before we are actually… you know? I simply went numb when I realised what I was in for. I so wish I was myself and faced him. The guy was not a martial arts type or terribly intelligent either,” she laughed again, “If it happens now, I won’t give in so easily.” I called her crazy and she hastened to add that she wasn’t really looking forward to an opportunity to prove herself.

Our theories may help us understand better the motives behind rape and molestation, but they will still continue to happen just like any other crime. Handicapped by fear and stigma, we lose even our slim chances against criminals. If she can stand up to her crippling memory of shame, the woman’s best bet against rape might be to dissociate the crime from its life-ruining baggage and deal with it for what it is: a crime as heinous as murder but a crime nevertheless.

If the media, the activists and civil society stop making a victim of the victim over and over again, many more instances of rape will get reported and rapists prosecuted. If only it were easy for her, or us, the salaciously righteous multitude, to focus on the crime in ‘sex crime’.

The big, blurry picture

The new eco-tourism guidelines specify no penalty for violators, offer no incentive for good practices and shut doors on all tourists


Tehelka, 20 July, 2012


THE ADVANTAGE of any blanket policy is that the question whether it will fit does not arise. It is also expected to keep a lot under wraps. The eco-tourism guidelines submitted by the Centre before the Supreme Court are on target on both counts. Consider these:


• The guidelines seek to promote homestay facilities run by local communities by exempting them from a conservation cess — a minimum of 10 percent of the turnover, tax exempted — recommended for all hotels within a 5-km radius of protected forests. But community homestays are anyway cheaper than regular hotels. The only way they can attract more tourists is by offering contemporary facilities and better services.


Velas, a tiny Maharashtra village, attracts a good number of tourists during the turtle nesting festival each year. Of the 11 homestays of Velas, the only one with “private rooms” and water closets does the best business. Improving facilities requires capital investments and villagers need training to offer semi-professional service.


The guidelines do say that the money from the proposed conservation cess and gate fees will fund conflict management, conservation and local livelihood development. But there is nothing specific to help these first-generation homestay entrepreneurs — namely funding community-credit schemes or giving soft skills training to villagers.


• A blanket cess neither differentiates between ethical and damaging businesses nor offers any incentive to good practices. Why should a hotel that trains locals as cooks or guides, pay the same cess as one that hires them as guards or gardeners for a pittance? Why should a property that keeps 80 percent of its land open to wildlife pay the same tax as one that has 80 percent built-up area?


In effect, the message is that as long as a hotel pays the cess — a kind of pre-penalty — it can go on conducting business as usual. Most hotels will anyway pass on the load to clients. A 10 percent hike in tariff is unlikely to reduce the numbers of tourists and ease the pressure on forests. If at all, it will dispel the not-so-well-off tourist who is not necessarily the rowdier or more demanding of the lot.


• The guidelines do talk about restricting land use and construction, area of coverage, waste recycling and disposal, rainwater harvesting, solar power, noise pollution, etc. District revenue and forest authorities are supposed to ensure that “severe penalties” are imposed for noncompliance. At the same time, “violators of these norms will be appropriately dealt with by the Local Advisory Committee, to be constituted by respective states for each protected area with representatives from local panchayat, communities, NGOs, etc”. This ambiguity apart, there is not a word on what these “severe penalties” are.


• Barring tourists from forest areas reclaimed by moving out villages, the guidelines stipulate a five-year deadline for shifting all tourism activities to buffer areas. Meanwhile, a maximum of 20 percent area of core forests larger than 500 sq km will be open to eco-tourism if 30 percent of the surrounding buffer is restored as a wildlife habitat during those five years. For core areas smaller than 500 sq km, 10 percent area will be accessible for tourism if 20 percent of the buffer is restored. These are ad hoc specifications, much like the quasi-scientific equations for calculating a forest’s tourist-carrying capacity.


The proposed ban on setting up new tourist facilities on forestland is a must. But existing rest houses, after dismantling lavish amenities, if any, should be made available for tourists who are ready to sacrifice most creature comforts for a true jungle experience. They deserve access to any forest as long as they do not complain about hard beds, basic toilets, plain meals and no electricity.


At the same time, eventually barring even day-safari tourists from core forests, otherwise made impregnable by law and left solely to the Forest Department’s charge, will shut the only window to accountability. The tiger may or may not resent being watched. But the forest staff?

A Fight Between Many Indias

Firstpost, 15 July, 2012

Much of India is “outraged” by the “barbaric” act of molestation of a “teenage” girl on a Guwahati street. Not long ago, much of India was outraged when Ram Sene goons manhandled girls in Mangalore pubs or when women were molested or abducted outside Gurgaon malls and raped. Every time, we have vented our anger at the deteriorating law and order situation, police inaction and the depravity of the men and boys involved and then forgot all about it to be outraged all over again. What we refuse to accept is that our victims are collateral damage in a continuous and ever intensifying clash of many Indias created by our unbalanced policies of growth.

Even for its ample appetite, India has whipped up a bit too much of inequality in the past 20 years. Today, a rich India coexists with a not-so-rich, a poor and a destitute India. An ancient India is hemmed in by a medieval, a conservative and a liberal India. The proximity is often precariously close, the interfaces almost constant. Modern housing complexes at city limits are skirted by villages that supply maids, drivers and nannies to the apartment owners. Swank malls source their guards and sales people from the slums squeezed into their backyards. Exposure to riches and liberal lifestyles invariably triggers aspirations which often end in frustration. The youth, not yet resigned to destiny or the ways of the world, often chart dangerous paths.

What we refuse to accept is that our victims are collateral damage in a continuous and ever intensifying clash of many Indias created by our unbalanced policies of growth. Reuters

The attack on bar-going women (or minor girls) is not necessarily a sign of disapproval. On the contrary, the offenders aspire to join such “modern” circles. But they do not socially (or financially) qualify. Their frustration is compounded when some of their own—the not-so-affluent and upmarket—having managed to join the liberal set, treat them with the derision which is the preserve of the traditionally rich and sophisticated. It is not a coincidence that majority of the victims belong to this transitional strata – pub workers, escorts, call centre staff etc. The pubs and hotels that usually report such crime are not the ones frequented by the rich and powerful but by youth who are probably the first ones in their families to discover some cheap beer and privacy with their partners.

Though women from the traditionally rich and sophisticated segments of the society do get targeted (few report it though), they usually get away with snubbing an “eve-teaser” unless confronted by hardened criminals. But ticked off by one perceived as their own, even the average left-out youth may turn vindictive and want to “teach the woman (or girl) a lesson”. Numbers or alcohol emboldens such resolve and all it takes is a lonely road, a moving car or an opportunity to exploit. Whatever be the trigger, a crime, particularly sexual, deserves the strictest punishment. But prosecution alone may not suffice in tackling this wave of social retaliation which is not a simplistic man-molests-woman story.

Last March, a girl from Mizoram was brutally beaten up in a Guwahati neighbourhood by a group of local women who were subsequently assisted by a couple of men. In the city to attend a wedding, the girl’s fault was that she lost her way to the guesthouse where she was putting up and knocked on a door in the neighbourhood to ask for directions. The women who thrashed her claimed that she reeked of alcohol. They resented that the victim spoke in English and was strangely (read affluently) dressed.

The ramification of this conflict among the India-that-has-already-arrived, India-that-wants-to and India-that-may-never extends beyond the occasional rape and molestation. Consider Khoda, a ghetto village on Noida-Ghaziabad border next to Delhi. A few years ago, the residents of Khoda infamously broke into a violent riot when a newly constructed housing society closed down a traditional passageway running through its walled complex. Refusing to suffer the detour of a few hundred metres, the mob vandalised the apartments till cops opened fire. Even today, the wide road-divider on NH-24 remains cut up, causing a perennial jam, because the villagers of Khoda see no reason to honour the right of way of the highway traffic, bulk of it the cars from the newly-built posh housings in the vicinity.

Khoda has no sanitation, little water and power and is considered the most crime- and disease-prone area in the region. Even home guards belonging to Khoda extort motorists caught in jams on NH-24. The new-fangled “cities” of Indirapuram and adjoining sectors of Noida depend heavily on Khoda to run their modular apartments and mega malls. Already, the villagers are a divided lot and, with other occupants of the neighbouring hinterland villages such as Ghazipur also in the fray, a complex three-way conflict—among the upmarket, the aspiring and the desperate—is resulting in a busy spate of crime. It makes headlines only when carjackers bump someone off or a woman gets raped in a mall basement.

The same pattern is unfolding in and around most Indian cities. What is worse, the desperate youth is getting emboldened to strike outside five star hotels (Mumbai) or target even the truly privileged including foreigners (Kochi). Sexual motives may expose the socio-economic divide at its ugliest, but our outrage at the mere symptoms of a dangerous and pervasive social churning may not arrest the trend. There is no excuse for not arresting the Guwahati criminals till the media got shrill. But the crime graph will continue to mount unless we address the lopsided growth chart. It’s time we figure out how to chase a better life without turning our own against us.

600 Animals Dead, 1,000 Displaced

Flooding is as vital for Kaziranga’s ecology as it is for Assam’s economy. But as governments dither on an integrated river management plan, a sediment-laden Brahmaputra is killing too many too often. Caught between rising waters and speeding vehicles, the wildlife desperately needs safe passage to highlands across NH-37

Tehelka, 13 July, 2012

ITS GAZE transfixed on the busy road, the hog deer was shivering. Shoulder-deep in chilling water, the tired creature was struggling to stay afloat. It made its way through the sweeping currents of the Brahmaputra to the edge of a submerged Kaziranga. The highland where it could find its feet was finally within sight, but it was on the other side of the afternoon traffic on a noisy highway.

“It was on 28 June. We were volunteering with a patrol team on National Highway-37 when we spotted the animal near Burapahar. Too frightened to approach the road, it did not move except for involuntary efforts to avoid being swept away by the current. Only when we looked away, the deer veered towards a submerged bush, away from the road. I don’t know if it survived. The sequence was repeated many a time during those three days. One just feels so helpless,” recalls Soumen Dey, Associate Coordinator of WWF’s Kaziranga-Karbi Anglong Conservation Programme.

During 25-28 June, Kaziranga drowned hundreds of its wildlife. Dozens were knocked down by speeding vehicles on NH-37 while escaping to the highland of Karbi Anglong in the south. Many more were killed by villagers in their backyards. Pohu (deer) and bonoriya gahori (wild boar) meat is a monsoon delicacy in these parts of Assam and locals happily make a meal of animals edged out by floods. Even roadkill is often used in the kitchen. With dozens of villages between Karbi Anglong and Sonitpur feasting on wild meat during the last fortnight, it is impossible to keep count.

Opportunistic poachers gunned down fleeing rhinos for their horns. On official records, three were poached — one in the Paharpur range, one further to the west and another in Pobitora. Field sources claim that another two were put down in the north bank and in Buraphapori. “Rescuing animals was our main mandate as the floods gave poachers a chance to target rhinos,” admits Dibyadhar Gogoi, Divisional Forest Officer (DFO), Eastern Wildlife Division, Kaziranga. Poachers, however, continue to prowl as too many animals are still roaming outside Kaziranga.

Their stories are pouring in: a desperate swamp deer interrupting a local football game, an estranged rhino calf drifting to a village cattle shed, and helpless animals stuck in mud or mazes of hyacinth. Some villagers in Kohara range even reported tigers clambering up trees. Large elephant herds that took shelter on tiny high banks built by the army in the 1980s, chomped clean the entire vegetation of those islets within 24 hours. Hunger forced many herbivores to move from one shelter to another; in the process, many small ones were swept away.

MANY ANIMALS that survived the flood have been displaced while looking for land. While the young may never reunite with their mothers, others are likely to find their way back to natal herds and territories if they escape a section of so-called volunteers who are rescuing even fit, adult animals to collect rewards announced by some local NGOs.

“Such rewards build competition among the locals who go after every animal they spot,” explains Uttam Saikia, honorary wildlife warden of Golaghat district. “We don’t want to rescue animals unnecessarily, we want to provide safe passage to them. Capture myopathy kills up to 70 percent of the rescued animals.”

Saikia’s voluntary group Bhumi swung into action on 23 June when the first warning of a flood was sounded. Kaziranga traditionally prepares for the annual flood season in July when coordination meetings between the forest department and NGOs take place. Everyone was caught unprepared when the water suddenly rose on 25 June and drowned more than 80 percent of Kaziranga in just three days. There were not enough country-made boats for rescue operations. Patrolling in peripheral beats where poachers target displaced animals could not be strengthened. The forest department did not even have enough time cards printed to regulate vehicle speed on NH-37. Not a single vehicle responsible for roadkill was caught.

As the water recedes and bloated animal carcasses reveal themselves, the weathermen have issued fresh flood warnings. Grappling with the early monsoon hit and the challenge of carcass disposal, Kaziranga must now brace for its annual flooding routine as the Brahmaputra is likely to inundate the grasslands twice between late July and September. Most animals that have moved to the highlands may simply stay put, though their survival is suspect as they have little to forage on. But the rest of the Kaziranga’s wildlife will again have to walk the razor edge between rising waters and speeding vehicles.

MUCH OF Assam depends on the Brahmaputra for life. Thanks to the river, more than 60 percent of the state constitutes one of world’s most fertile alluvial tracts. Yet, over-precipitation in its catchment areas and massive sedimentation make the Brahmaputra overflow and ravage the Valley.

The grasslands and beels (floodplain lakes) of Kaziranga, the Brahmaputra’s gift, host India’s only significant population of the one-horned rhino and wild buffalo and nurture the region’s only viable population of tiger and swamp deer. But scores of these animals drown every monsoon when the mighty river inundates the plains. This year’s toll of 600 (and counting) has been the highest since 1998.

Taming the Brahmaputra is a daunting task, perhaps, unwise too. Like Assam, Kaziranga survives on the river’s bounty and annual flooding is vital for its ecology. The loss of nearly three-fourths of the original forests of the Brahmaputra watershed and random flood control methods have led to heavy silting of the river. While an integrated approach to respect the hydrology and protection of natural ecosystems may allow the river to hold better, the Brahmaputra will, and should, continue to flood.

“It (flood) is a normal phenomenon in Kaziranga and an important part of the ecosystem,” says Firoz Ahmed, a member of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA). “The flood may kill some animals but it also carries out a massive ecosystem management service in Kaziranga by maintaining the grassland, the wetland and the natural drainage system.”

Kaziranga has been much more than today’s national park demarcated by the NH-37 in the south and the river in the north. The original landscape stretched to the south on the other side of the highway to Karbi Anglong Hills with an altitude variation between 70 and 600 metres. When the Brahmaputra floods revitalise the grasslands and beels, animals move to the highlands. Over the decades, the dirt track dividing the floodplain and the hills became a highway, bringing with it hotels, settlements and industries.

Today, all four north-south corridors are choked, restricting the wildlife retreat to the highland. The Amguri corridor in the west, still spacious, is witnessing a construction boom. Tea gardens are fencing off the Kanchanjuri corridor at Burapahar. The temple complex on the Haldibari corridor is threatening to expand. Settlements and quarries have blocked the Panbari passageway. The UNESCO World Heritage Committee describes the highway as a “potential threat to the integrity” of Kaziranga.

TEHELKA has earlier exposed how illegal mining in the No-Development Zone (NDZ) near Kaziranga is devouring space used by wildlife. While replying to activist Rohit Choudhury’s petition against illegal stone quarrying around Kaziranga before the National Green Tribunal, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) admitted that 64 industrial units, including 26 stone crushers and 14 brick kilns, are in operation inside the NDZ, in violation of the MoEF’s own notification in force since 1996. RTI replies in TEHELKA’s possession show that the state had set up a Minor Industrial Estate close to Kaziranga and permitted stone crushers on elephant corridors though the estate was meant only for wood-based industries.

“This year’s flood was abrupt and vigorous. But the animal toll has increased because the known animal corridors around the park have been blocked by human activities like stone mining,” says Wildlife Trust of India’s (WTI) Rathin Barman whose team has successfully released 94 of the 130 animals it rescued. DFO Gogoi accepts that the issue of human activities disturbing animal corridors is “important” but not “totally within the forest department’s ambit”.

Hemmed in by encroachment and chased by flood waters, the traumatised wildlife braved the few available passageways across the highway only to be knocked down by heavy traffic. Hundreds of flood-displaced families squatting on highway stretches passing through Burapahar further funnelled the wildlife movement. The smaller species, such as the hog deer, took the maximum hit.

DFO GOGOI claims that but for the preparedness of the forest staff and the awareness of the villagers, the animal toll would be higher. Amid the carnage, indeed, there have been moments of, and reasons for, hope.

A rhino calf was spotted trapped in flood waters in Baghmari village under Baghori range. When rescuers from the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW)-WTI-run Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation (CWRC) reached the spot, they found it impossible to approach the animal as their boat failed to negotiate the flood rapids. With the animal already nose-deep in water, it was a race against time. Animal keeper Bhadreswar Das jumped into the water, swam to a nearby tree and tied a rope on its trunk so that the boat could be towed. The calf was eventually rescued. Another rhino calf, barely seven weeks old, rescued in a dehydrated state from Haldibari village under Kohara range, is back on its feet, under the CWRC’s care.

Mohammad Siraj Ali, of Deochur village in Kaziranga’s Burapahar range, led a team of 15 volunteers and rescued at least 50 animals, mostly hog deer, using bamboo and country- made boats. Dhruvajyoti Saha, a local reporter from Kohora, quickly summoned local students to form human chains on NH-37 to ensure safe passage to an exhausted herd of 17 elephants with calves.

There were also those odd moments of humour. “The flood notwithstanding, Kaziranga was also in the grips of Euro soccer fever. While patrolling in Kohora range, our team spotted a swamp deer taking refuge in the bushes of a football field in Haldibari. We clicked its pictures as the animal was quietly playing spectator until we tranquilised it,” says Shasankha Barbaruah of the WTI.

Rescue tales are always heart-warming, but the harsh reality is that a certain number of animals, mostly the infant, old and infirm, are supposed to die in floods just like they do in the summer. That is how nature cleans its gene pool. The Brahmaputra will require an integrated strategy for river management and inter-state coordination rather than ad hoc site-specific measures such as embankments to rein it in. The Northeast Water Resource Authority, proposed after the devastating floods of 2004, is yet to be set up.

Likewise, a large number of roadkill is expected when hundreds of animals are scampering across a highway unmindful of heavy traffic, unless the road is closed temporarily or shifted for good. Since 2005, when Kaziranga celebrated its centenary, authorities have been sitting on the proposal for an alternative alignment of NH-37 along the north bank of the Brahmaputra. The NHAI had apparently prepared a Detailed Project Report for the Kaziranga diversion but kept it under wraps. The Assam Public Works Department also conducted a feasibility study.

Locals, however, have staged several demonstrations pressing their demand for widening the existing road to four lanes with adequate safeguard against roadkill. 

“We are not against animals but we want development here. The diversion will make the stretch 50 km longer. Anyway, the plan was to build four-lane flyovers over a stretch of 21 km under which animals could freely move between Kaziranga and Karbi Anglong,” points out Debopradip Bora of the Fourlane Demand Committee.

The choice is tough: a realignment resulting in a 50-km detour, or an expensive flyover that will be one of India’s longest. There is also a third choice: the one that killed 600 animals in the last fortnight and will kill thousands more in the weeks and years to follow.

Pranab & the Oddest Prime

Mamata needn't worry about a backlash: the would-be President remains a distant second to the could-be prime minister

The Economic Times, 9 July, 2012
  
Zail Singh was handpicked by Indira Gandhi to be president. The Shiromani Akali Dal voted for him.Pratibha Patil was Sonia Gandhi's choice. The Shiv Sena supported the Marathi manoos. The Bengal CPI-M has forced its central leadership to backPranab Mukherjee. So how come the Trinamool Congress initially opposed, and is now silent on, Mukherjee's candidature? Does not the party risk hurting the Bengali sentiment? 

Indians love icons and Bengalis are starved of them. Even the long shadow of Ray's towering genius struggles to cover half a century between Tagore and Ganguly. Few remembered Bose before one boson recently gained mass appeal. Others forced Mukhopadhyay to commit suicide after the good doctor created India's first test tube baby. So Bengalis have had to turn to what they do best, or, at any rate, most: politics. India's longest-serving chief minister easily became Bengal's biggest political icon. 

Mukherjee is not Basu. He excelled in Delhi. Whatever politics Mukherjee tried in Bengal only prolonged Basu's record stint at the Writers' Buildings . Probably that was his high command's mandate in the coalition era. But the success of his Bengal mission finally backfired, splintering the state Congress and unleashing a certain Banerjee on the decadent Left and, eventually, himself. But let's stick to the story. 

STATE'S ICONS 

Mukherjee has not been the only Bengali politician in Delhi. There was Gupta, who, with a family and political background more formidable than even Basu's , remained merely a giant of a parliamentarian. His only brush with power triggered tragiccomic moments such as when a nubile TV reporter, having secured a bite amid a mini stampede on the staircase of the CPI-M party office as Left leaders descended after a "Front meeting" , asked the country's home minister for his name and designation . 

The capital also saw Chatterjee, whose nickname of MoU-da (thanks to numerous futile forays to capitalist shores to fetch investment for Basu) stuck despite his gallant, non-partisan parting shot as the Speaker. Among his Bengali compatriots, Mukherjee has certainly been the most influential politician in Delhi. Like Basu, his charm and authority cut across party lines and ideologies. If Basu pioneered the art of coalition management in Calcutta , Mukherjee later perfected it in Delhi . 

Though the head of a Left government , Basu enjoyed an unrivalled fan following in the chambers and industry. The slowdown during his second stint as finance minister notwithstanding, Mukherjee remained the business' choicest go-to man before and after liberalisation . But Basu's national appeal far surpassed Mukherjee's aura in Bengal. During the volatile Third Front era in the late 1990s, Basu's rare monosyllables tested the patience of the Delhi Press. 

On one occasion, a couple of desperate reporters got into the service lift that was ferrying the chief minister's dinner to the fourth floor of Banga Bhavan, the Bengal state house in the Capital, to "hunt for a scoop" . Quizzed about the giant portions of fish in a runny curry, an attendant nonchalantly replied: "What with the fish, he will also digest you." The reporters dared not step out.


ALWAYS NUMBER 2 

Mukherjee's entry into big-time politics was through the Rajya Sabha in 1969. The first time he went to the people in 1980, against the advice of Indira Gandhi, he badly lost from Bolpur in Bengal. Lesson learnt, Mukherjee would not contest a direct election again in 24 years. As an adolescent in a highly political Calcutta in the 1980s, I remember the grown-ups dismissing Mukherjee as a loser who preferred the back door (Rajya Sabha ) to facing the voter. 

The popular disdain only grew when Rajiv Gandhi's indifference made him leave the Congress to form a one-man party. 'Without Indira, no Pranab' went the refrain. In the last two decades, Mukherjee has reinvented himself as the mostuseful politician in the Congress ranks by working the policies, the coalition and the media. Out of power in the late 1990s, he would agree to exclusive interviews post-midnight after returning home from lengthy CWC meetings. Since 2004, he has won two Lok Sabha polls, comfortably. 

More importantly, he never repeated the mistake of 1984, when he offered to lead the government after Indira Gandhi's assassination. The Congress has depended on his skill for political survival time and again, but made sure he remained the number two, albeit the most important number two ever, in the Cabinet. 

DIFFERENT FOLKS 

If Basu's (or his party's ) historical blunder in 1996 was to refuse, Mukherjee's in 1984 was to claim prime ministership. The two choices have set the two politicians apart and, at least in Bengal, still help the Basu myth while portraying Mukherjee's presidency as a consolation, if not a demotion. Basu remained the one who could have been the prime minister; Mukherjee, the one who would never be. 

Little wonder then that celebrations for Mukherjee's candidature were restricted mostly to his ancestral village and sundry party offices in Bengal. Though the voices on Kolkata's streets are positive about one of their own heading for Raisina Hill, the hysteria witnessed during the 1996 Basu fiasco, or the recent IPL triumph of the Knight Riders, is missing. 

There is anyway little room for debate because the outcome of the presidential contest is now a foregone conclusion. The Trinamool Congress might still have drawn some sentimental flak at home had it succeeded in scuttling the chances of a Bengali president . But Mukherjee's wide acceptance in national politics ensured it did not. Now, whichever way didi votes in Delhi, Kolkata is not holding its breath. 

Have laws, Will Flout

To fast-track reforms, India’s Prime Minister apparently wants to bulldoze green clearance barriers


Open, 6 July, 2012

The Prime Minister has spoken. His chosen lieutenants, Montek Singh Ahluwalia and C Rangarajan, have their job cut out to fight the economic slowdown. The brief is simple: revive investor sentiment by disarming taxmen and throwing environmental rules out of the window.

So the Centre is tracking the progress of every investment above Rs 1,000 crore to ensure that these projects go through. The National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council has asked all ministries to provide details of public sector projects above Rs 1,000 crore, prompting them ‘to indicate whether there are any sector specific issues such as environment and forest clearances which may be causing delays’.

From Kamal Nath (Road and Surface Transport) to Sriprakash Jaiswal (Coal), Dr Singh’s ministers have been up in arms against the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) during the UPA’s second stint in power. The Planning Commission has slashed the budget of the green ministry twice since 2011. The Reserve Bank singled out ‘environmentalism’ to blame for a one-third dip in foreign direct investment (FDI) last year. The Prime Minister himself cautioned that green regulatory standards might bring back the dreaded licence-permit-quota raj. The build-up is finally complete. Now that the economy’s animal instincts have sensed a second round of reforms, Team Manmohan has bared its claws.

But sarkari environmentalism is a myth perpetuated by Jairam Ramesh’s relentless media posturing. During his tenure in the MoEF, the ministry cleared 99 per cent of the projects referred to it. His high-profile clash with Jaiswal over ‘go’ and ‘no-go’ areas for mining ended in Ramesh conceding 85 per cent areas to the go list. Since 1982, the MoEF approved 94 per cent of coal mining projects. Between 1982 and 1999, the average delay in project clearance was five years. During BJP rule, it came down to three years. The UPA-I further reduced it to 17 months. The UPA-II takes 11 months to decide on a project and its rejection rate has been just 1 per cent. Yet, the Government blames environmentalism for the sagging economy.

Beyond the reform-or-perish frenzy whipped up by the media, lie a few home truths. Yes, the stock market is sluggish but not more than 7 per cent of Indians hold any equity. The Prime Minister must worry because falling stock prices wiped out about a fifth of the total value of his country’s 100 wealthiest citizens last year. But if his reforms jeopardise the already-compromised ecological security of the country, the livelihood and food security of hundreds of millions of Indians will be further at stake. If more people now go hungry after two decades of liberalisation, which is a grim fact, the economy cannot hardsell the trickle-down benefits of reforms.

Posco, for example, wants to invest Rs 52,000 crore in its Odisha plant. The Prime Minister himself has expressed strong commitment to see the project through. The 2005 MoU allowed the MNC to extract 600 million tonnes of iron ore over 30 years, and ship out 30 per cent of it. The MoU also conceded that Posco would source an additional 400 million tonnes of iron ore from India for its plants in South Korea through supply arrangements from the open market. There is a fat margin between the domestic open market (average Rs 4,400 per tonne) and the international price (average Rs 7,400 per tonne) of iron ore. For 400 million tonnes, it adds up to Rs 120,000 crore, more than double the proposed investment.

Forget about the ravaged forests and displaced communities, such a deal will also weaken our resource security. India is the world’s largest iron ore exporter after Australia and Brazil. But in terms of per capita reserves, India has only 21 tonnes against Brazil’s 333 and Australia’s 2,000 tonnes. Business-as-usual will exhaust India’s iron ore reserves anytime between 2025 and 2040. But we are desperate to open our reserve for a few thousand crore.

A set of green laws—environment pollution, forest and wildlife protection—and the Forest Rights Act obstruct the free run that industry thinks it deserves. Ironically, it is the Congress that enacted these legislations. The green laws are the legacy of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The Forest Rights Act was a prime achievement of the UPA-I.

If India’s green laws were applied fairly, a bulk of the projects would’ve been summarily rejected. But since the establishment wants to get every project cleared, it drags the clearance process on by instituting panel after panel until the facts get lost in a maze of referrals and finally a go-ahead is obtained. Most projects take off without due diligence, trusting the establishment to clear those as fait accompliafter a suitably long clearance drama.

Parliamentarian Naveen Jindal’s Jindal Steel and Power 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, the MoEF absolved the Congress MP. The national highway expansion drive felled thousands of trees across the country without even bothering to obtain statutory permissions. But asked to construct a few flyovers to protect the integrity of India’s last few viable forest landscapes, the NHAI drags its feet and complains of delays in forest clearances.

If the Prime Minister wants to fast-track the clearance process, he should insist that every project factor in the environmental costs at the conception stage instead of resisting legally binding green safeguards later. At the same time, both government and private developers should stop pushing projects in ecologically sensitive areas that add up to less than 5 per cent of the country’s land area.

Under pressure, successive green ministries have diluted several rules, from the norms for coastal regulation zones to restrictions on industrial pollution. If there is a policy compulsion, the reform agenda should now include abolition of India’s green laws in Parliament. It will save the Government the hypocrisy of enacting laws only to sidestep them.