If likes and superlikes could swing real polls

NaMo worship won’t work any better than Modi bashing did

DNA, 29 May, 2013

Believe me or not, there exist Indians who do not bear the non-trivial load of one Narendra Modi in the back of their mind. In the darkly comical existence of (formally) educated Indians where almost everybody is identifiable by his or her unquestioning devotion to or pathological hatred of the Gujarat chief minister, it may sound preposterous but there are Indians, in fact millions of them, who give a damn either way.

In the past few months, as the BJP hems and haws over its choice of the prime ministerial candidate, I, like many, have been bombarded with unsolicited group emails, social media missives and online posturing for and against, mostly for, Modi. The majority of these internet trolls disguised as patriotic Indians build the cult of NaMo as an apostle of good administration and reforms. The rest swear that they will keep hurling the charges of cold-blooded mass murder against him till Judgement Day dawns on secularism.

If you are caught in this abusive crossfire – and you will be at some point or other if you happen to be a moderate to heavy internet user – you will have every reason to believe that India’s destiny hinges on whether or not Modi will become its next Prime Minister. You may or may not feel tempted (read provoked) to take sides, but you are likely to get overwhelmed by the enormity of the stakes. But even your hazy mind will register the obvious numerical supremacy of Modi supporters who are smug about Modi’s inevitable ascent to the country’s top office.

In the past few weeks, I have faced the question several times. Given the surprisingly fast and steady decline of meritocracy in the media, it is no small miracle that many still trust journalists for an actually informed ‘informed opinion’ or a more intuitive insight. I did not want to disappoint any of those who quizzed me on Modi’s national prospects but my thoughts failed to impress my inquisitors from both camps.

I recounted the Godhra carnage, the mass killing that followed in Gujarat and its aftermath. Those turbulent days, I spent long hours in the newsroom of a newspaper that virtually took it upon itself the task of delivering justice to Gujarat’s victims. But we were no exception. A very large section of the media, particularly the English press, minced no words in accusing Modi of deliberate inaction. Others went to the extent of charging the chief minister of conspiracy and collusion with the killers.

News channels ran campaigns, both sobering and shrill. Dailies splashed series after series of exposes and platitudes. The fast-expanding and already hyperactive worldwide web buzzed with incredulity and anger. The pile of evidence, backed by numerous blood-curdling eyewitness accounts, was damning enough to fuel the outrage. The conscientious liberal secular intelligentsia convinced itself that the good sense of the majority of Hindus in Gujarat would prevail and Modi would be humiliated in the Assembly polls due in a few months.

Modi retained power with a thumping majority. As investigations continued into his own involvement and that of his partymen in the organised riots, the BJP’s performance only improved in the two subsequent polls. The national (and international) outrage that made many of us believe that the ouster of Modi was a foregone conclusion did not swing votes in Gujarat. Only the psephologists were humbled.

I can think of two plausible explanations for this. Could it be that the outrage was manufactured or, at any rate, insincere? Did Modi-bashers really believe in what they professed or were they just being politically and parochially correct? If the answers to these possibilities are in negative, I have to conclude that the formally educated, English-speaking Indians are perhaps too self-important to see anything beyond their noses and failed to read the voters of Gujarat.

To most, justice is too abstract a remedy. Many of those who suffered irreparable personal losses did not want to risk whatever they were left with by stirring the political pot without any guarantee of the desired result. The majority of voters, who did not suffer directly in the riots, were largely insulated from the so-called national mood for the lack of an English education and exposure. Expecting them to mete out justice was naively presumptuous. As a former colleague often reminded me in jest, Gujaratis do not need formal education to master profit and loss equations.

Whatever be the reasons, Modi-bashing in the formal and social media failed to defeat Modi in 2002 or after. Just like there have always been a few Gujaratis in the anti-Modi camp, the Modi-worshippers on the web are also represented by a number of non-Gujaratis. They are prize spokespersons of the NaMo fan club and apparently represent Modi’s increasing acceptability at the national level.

Even if that claim is true, it only proves that the image of an assertive, no-nonsense leader who apparently delivers good governance has takers among a certain class of Indians outside Gujarat (and even outside India which disqualifies them as voters). The deluge of online support for Modi does not include the majority of Indians who cannot access internet or articulate themselves suitably in expletive-laden Hinglish chat debates. So the online smugness and media flutter about the inevitability of Modi the prime minister is as misplaced as the secular intelligentsia’s presumption that the people’s court in Gujarat would punish Modi.

But Indian voters are known to surprise pundits. I won’t hazard a guess who they will catapult to power in the next general elections. Though it seems unlikely, what if the BJP gets to lead a coalition and Modi indeed becomes the PM? Frankly, I won’t rejoice or worry. India did not take off with Sanjay Gandhi. Nor did it succumb to Emergency.  

No ethics in an interdependent world: Nat Geo webshop sells hunting stealth cam

Promotion of hunting products on the webshop of the world’s most respected green channel has shocked many but the slide was evident even a decade ago

FirstPost, 26 May, 2012

I do not know how many of you read or watch National Geographic. I do, sometimes. Though a 2004 show (more on that later) on the channel taught me to be sceptical about even the very best in the business, the National Geographic Society has largely remained a sobering authority in a clamorous world of dubious nature and wildlife programs.

After all, as it proclaims on its website, “the National Geographic Society has been inspiring people to care about the planet since 1888. It is one of the largest nonprofit scientific and educational institutions in the world. Its interests include geography, archaeology and natural science, and the promotion of environmental and historical conservation.”

Screengrab from the National Geographic website

Apparently, these interests now include the Stealth Cam. It is a specialised camera brand launched by Texas-based GSM Outdoors in 2000 for wildlife trailing and game surveillance.On its website, GSM says Stealth Cam is all about the hunt. The company goes on to claim: “Rather than piecing together mis-matched parts, through cutting edge engineering and resources, Stealth Cam built their first trailcamera from the ground up as one complete unit. The reception by the hunting community was overwhelming.”

So imagine the surprise of one of my young friends when he stumbled upon anadvertisement promoting Stealth Cam on the National Geographic webshop. He reassured himself that it was an oversight or that the usually vigilant staff was not aware of the product and wrote an e-mail addressing all possible authorities in the Society.

“I honestly feel that this fact has not been brought to the notice of your management who would never engage in business to promote hunting gear,” he wrote, requesting the Society to “kindly disassociate” from Stealth Cam or any other interest out there to destroy precious wildlife.

He was happy that he did his bit and waited for the ad to be dropped. Instead, a response from the Society shook him up. In an e-mail, the Customer Experience Manager of the National Geographic Society wrote:

“This type of camera was originally made for hunters and now is also being used to observe wildlife and for home security. National Geographic offers this camera to observe –not harm –wildlife. In the course of fulfilling our mission to increase and diffuse geographic knowledge, we at the National Geographic Society deal with thousands of other companies and individuals across the planet, some of whose own missions may not align so well with ours. In this complicated, interdependent world, every company and every individual at some point unavoidably does business–directly or indirectly–with others who may not share the same philosophies and principles.”

There is little ambiguity about the purpose of the Stealth Cam which is promoted by the company with a set of proud trophy hunting visuals on its website. The brand unabashedly uses hunting as its USP, and brags that Stealth Cam was featured in 2007 on the HistoryChannel’s Modern Marvels show in an episode on Hunting Technology, which is being aired to this day.

My young friend felt betrayed that the organisation he idolised since childhood had, gladly or otherwise, shaken hands with killers. But I was not really surprised. Far back in 2004, I learnt to rationalise my expectation from the NGC after watching a much-promoted Indian show on the channel.

The makers of Leopards of Bollywood promote the film on their website candidly: “In the city of celluloid dreams, unexpected nightmares abound. A silent stalker lies in wait for the unsuspecting victims. Unfolding in the shadow of Bollywood is a fascinating real life plot. Only in this case, fact is stranger than fiction… A story of fear, manipulation, retaliation and revenge and the fight against odds… Leopards of Bollywood captures (forest officer) Prakash’s difficult and dangerous assignment to resolve a nasty man-animal conflict.”

Nasty it was. The slickly made thriller gave lay viewers the impression that leopards are blood-thirsty creatures out to get you in the middle of Mumbai. The film also tried to intellectualise the issue of conflict, ostensibly to suit the NGC bill, but came up with the naïve conclusion that “the leopards have adjusted to the intrusion into their space, by turning to human habitation for food, an aberration from their original behaviour”.

The makers of the film perhaps had no inkling that typical leopard behaviour routinely brings the animal close to human habitations in search of small prey, including dogs. Even the NGC missed the point completely while promoting the misleading film: “Leopards of Bollywood is a fascinating real life plot, full of fear, manipulation and a fight against odds. It follows Prakash Thosre, the wildlife advocate and Chief Conservator, Forests, Pune, who has been responsible for minimizing leopard menace in Junnar, Maharashtra in India, as he sets traps to capture the tricky leopards. However, even as he tries to minimize the menace, the attacks continue.”

The attacks continued because Thorse was doing something terribly wrong. It is well established that the problem in and around Mumbai’s Borivali National Park, and in many other areas in Maharashtra and elsewhere, was triggered by faulty human intervention involving random trapping and translocation of too many leopards in the name of resolving conflict. It only creates fresh trouble as the traumatised big cats try to home back and confront people in unfamiliar territories.

Yet, the film suited the NGC because it was “another example of compelling programming” with its blood and gore even if it was certainly not in line with the channel’s “constant endeavour to not only provide credible programming to our viewers but also make it relevant and relatable”.

This experience in 2004 has helped me get realistic. Channels need to make money to survive. Even NGC with its lofty ideals needs TRPs and its webshop must sell products, any product, to keep the Society afloat. It is perhaps pointless to nitpick on ethical or even factual grounds anymore. After all, it is a “complicated, interdependent world”.

How the middle class is responsible for perpetuating poverty

It would take four times the earth’s resources to support the average American living standards for the world. The poor get poorer as more of us aspire for that good life.

FirstPost, 20 May, 2013

I am no fan of communist regimes and their totalitarian ways. In Bengal where soaring unemployment was blamed on the disastrous Left trade unionism, I grew up reading sordid tales of repression and watching forlorn black-and-white pictures of ill-clothed people waiting in long food queues on the streets of the so-called Eastern Bloc.

By the time I left school, it was time for perestroika and glasnost. Once the euphoria settled down, streamed in a set of very different stories. No, nobody missed the iron curtain but, suddenly, most people in erstwhile Communist states were finding themselves much worse off in the new democracies. The western pundits hastily told us that those were merely teething troubles of free market economy, unemployment was actually a precursor to entrepreneurship, and things would soon look up.

The rich get richer and the poor, poorer. AFP.

But many years later, East Europeans continue to flock to the big West European cities (and elsewhere) for menial jobs. When my wife spent a few months in a London apartment in 2011, all members of the cleaning staff, except for a lone Pakistani, were expats from East Europe. Most of them were too young to remember life during the Communist era.  But the broken English of the elderly ones did not belie their agreement with the sentiments of a Hungarian writer none of them ever read.

Three years ago, I read Zsuzsanna Clark’s candid piece — Oppressive and grey? No, growing up under communism was the happiest time of my life – in the Daily Mail where she recalled watching BBC shows on TV and reading PG Woodhouse among other western writers in Communist Hungary. My first impression of her sugary nostalgia was sceptical. But travelling through parts of central and east Europe this month, I met many who echoed her views.

Contexts permitting, the officials and even tourist guides in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland were always emphatic in their criticism of Communism. Even those I met informally still resented the restrictions on travelling outside the Eastern Bloc countries, and the overwhelming control of the bureaucracy (and the party) on even petty administrative matters. One’s loyalty was too frequently on demand.

Yet, nobody complained that they had a bad life. Not only in Hungary where Stalinism was replaced with a particularly liberal and altruistic Kadarism after the failed rebellion in 1956 but also in the former Czechoslovakia. A young professor I met in Prague dismissed with a hearty laugh my query if he had grown up on a modest diet: “There was always enough to eat, unless you insisted on bananas which were considered exotic and one required to queue up for such stuff. Milk, meat and bread were plentiful; and, frankly, do you fancy bananas?”

The broad consensus among those I spoke to was that no other government made the working class feel more secure: “Everyone would get a job after completing education, which was free. So were health services. The state spent generously on arts, literature and sports. Books and operas were affordable to all and not only the elites.” So why did they topple the Communist governments?

Some blamed it partially on political repression. Others claimed that the majority, particularly the working lower-middle class, was never against the Communist rule. Of course, corruption was, as always, a major issue. Yet, almost everyone agreed that the gloomy economic picture of the Communist rule was predominantly Western propaganda.

“In a way, the counter-propaganda (of the Communists) made sense.  The state tried not to expose us to the Western world. If our people started aspiring for those needless excesses of life, the basics such as job or healthcare could not be secured for all. Anyway, the middleclass was always unhappy. They wanted their consumer brands and they have it all today. But the poor has lost his job guarantee,” summed up a 40-something government employee in a Budapest pub.

Nothing can be more apt in our Indian or the global context of poverty. Few people can afford the wasteful American middle class life that consumes three times the food and 250 times the water required for subsistence. Now add to that the other energy requirements of such a lifestyle and we would need at least four times the earth’s resources to support such a living standard for the global population.

In India, the promise of a socialist state was merely rhetorical. Our feudal socio-economic and political system did not allow equity and fuelled poverty over decades. Then, two decades of economic reform has made the fast-swelling middle class aspire for the so-called good life. The many advocates of reforms have been promising that the benefits of growth will eventually trickle down to the poor. They also cite examples of underprivileged youths making it big, thanks to the opportunities spawned by the new economy.

Unfortunately, no economy can create wealth out of thin air. Depending on its prudence, all it can is to better manage and maximise the gains from utilisation of finite resources and distribute those dividends equitably to ensure that even the socio-economically weakest have enough to get by. But, forget the increasingly wasteful Indian middle class, if even those on the margins of poverty aspire to meet impossible benchmarks of good life, the poor will keep getting poorer.

A Czech premonition for the Western Ghats

Nowhere the virgin rain forests are too far from the greedy axe.

DNA, 15 May, 2013 

Travelling through central Europe, I spent a day in the Boubin forests last week. Now that was not expected to be ‘the highlight’ of my tour that included a customary pilgrimage to Auschwitz in Poland and rather off-track destinations in the Hungarian wine country. But the marvellous beech and spruce forests of the Sumava mountains in the Czech Republic stood out in their lofty grandeur.

Only a few patches of this pristine landscape survive and Boubinsky Prales is where the Vltava river, which flows under the majestic Charles Bridge in Prague, springs to life. It has a long history of conservation and enjoys legal protection since the 1960s. Yet, the axes have never been too far away.

As I was leaving India, environmentalists were agonizing over the recommendations of a high-profile panel — the second such in two years — for conservation of the Western Ghats. In effect, the environment ministry set up the second panel to examine and rationalise the exacting recommendations of the first. In the majestic silence of Boubin, I had a deja vu of sorts.

Barely two years ago, the Sumava forests became the centre of a controversy. Park officials were allowed to cut down trees on 12,800 hectares of one of the world’s most sensitive ecosystems, including primeval forests, wetlands and peat bogs apparently to check a bark-beetle infestation. Environmentalists claim that the so-called beetle epidemic was just an excuse to allow the logging lobby to enter the national park.

And that is not just a conspiracy theory. Jan Strasky, former park director, also announced plans for various projects, including ski lifts, widening of roads to help construction of private villas, and even setting up new municipalities inside the national park. The man seen as pro-logging did not mince words while spelling out his philosophy: "Nature is the enemy and… one must fight it."

Green politician and foreign affairs minister Karel Schwarzenberg was quoted in the Czech media calling Strasky's bluff: “The only person who genuinely benefits (from intervention and felling) is he who gets their hands on the timber. Sumava is the most tempting loot there is.”

To make matters worse, Czech environment minister Tomas Chalupa floated the plan to divide the national park in three clearly delimited zones: “The first zone would cover the most valuable nature conservation areas that would be fully protected against exploitation. The second zone would be split into two, with the first area benefitting from greater protection and earmarked for inclusion in the first zone and the second having less protection and not intended for transfer to the first zone. The third zone would be set aside for economic development and tourism."

Shockingly, the first zone covers merely 24% of the forest. Understandably, local green groups are up in arms. But political weakening of the Green Party in the recent years and the dominance of the Civic Democrats (to which Strasky belongs) does not augur well for these ancient forests.

I can't comment on the specific demerits of the demarcation plan in the Czech context, but it sounded quite like an antithesis to the recommendations made by the first of the two panels on the Western Ghats. The Gadgil panel proposed to declare the entire 129,037 sq km landscape as ecologically sensitive area (ESA), creating three ESZs (ecologically sensitive zones) within it, with different levels of protection.

He prescribed that the existing sanctuaries and ESZ1 would together cover 60 percent of this landscape. The 25 percent lowest priority areas would be marked as ESZ3 to allow all developmental activities with precautions. The remaining 15 percent area would become ESZ2. For instance, while no mining would be allowed within ESZ1, existing mines could continue in ESZ2 with a moratorium on new licences. In ESZ3, new mines could come up as well.

The Environment ministry’s review panel under K Kasturirangan, however, has done away with this graded approach and suggested that only 60,000 sq km — against Gadgil panel’s 77,000 sq km of highest-priority area — was worth protecting from industry and mines. Even within this smaller protected zone, the review panel proposed to allow hydro-electric projects under certain conditions — a loophole that could end up threatening the very integrity of these rain forests.

In an increasingly grim global scenario, the earth’s remaining ancient forests are disappearing rapidly. Some are literally crying for help. Despite strong conservation measures, Amazonian forests are being cut down at 4,656 sq km a year as of July 2012 — which incidentally is a record low in the past 25 years. Unable to prevent illegal logging, authorities are now hoping to catch the criminals with a small wireless tracking device that will be attached to trees and will send out signals once it is cut and moved in the zone of a cellular tower.

What can make a difference is political will. On Sunday, I woke up in Budapest to some heartening news from Indonesia. For the past two years, the government had imposed a moratorium on felling of forests to halt the deforestation that laid waste much of the country’s virgin habitat and brought in a rash of plantations of palm oil and pulp, paper and timber businesses. The moratorium is about to expire but, reported Reuters, president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was set to extend the ban for another two years.

Given the strong opposition from the palm oil planters, conservationists are not celebrating yet. But if Jakarta is serious in its commitment, the move will set a welcome benchmark in our troubled times. I am not too optimistic about those silent giants of Boubin that have been watching over the misty slopes for centuries. It will be a far bigger tragedy if the cloud forests of the Western Ghats go their way.

Lessons from those splendid but empty European forest

The tiger is still one of India’s best ambassadors and its thriving presence in our forests sets us apart in an intolerant world

FirstPost, 13 May, 2013

A few days back, I was walking the fascinating old forests of Boubinsky Prales in southern Czech Republic. A few patches of virgin wilderness, primarily beech forests with more than 200-year-old spruce and fir trees dotting the higher slopes, still survive in the Sumava mountains as the second oldest natural reserve in the country.

The pleasant hike through Boubin was in the shadows of ancient, giant trees and along a chirpy stream that would soon become the Vltava river and flow through Prague. It was a splendid and yet sad experience. The birds were vocal all around but there was no anticipation of a chance encounter with any carnivore. Sumava’s last wolf was shot in 1874, and the last bear, in 1856. There are appropriate monuments at the hunting spots. Apparently, the lynx still survives. So do a few species of shrew. I was not fortunate enough to spot any.

A tiger passes by workers repairing a dirt road inside the Ranthambhore national park. Image courtesy: Joydip Suchandra Kundu

While discussing my plans for Boubin in Prague and Vimperk, a few unsuspecting Czechs were visibly excited to find out that I came from the land of the famous Bengal tiger. “How do Indians cope with maneaters” was the common question. The curiosity did not diminish in Poland and Hungary when I happened to exchange travel notes with fellow tourists or locals. The more informed were precise in their interrogation: “Isn’t the Sunderbans tiger, the meanest of tigers, the most ferocious maneater on earth?”

It was easy to be impatient but I recalled a similar exchange I had with a wildlife lover from Bengal a few years ago. He lives in Kolkata and knows the infamous tigers first hand. And yet, he believed that all the big cats of Sunderbans were “born maneaters”. It took me a long time to convince him that he was wrong. Frankly, I was not keen to go through that routine again but there was no option.

Let us assume, I told the curious Europeans, that all Sunderbans tigers consider humans as food. A tiger makes roughly 50 kills – one every week — a year to survive. Annually, this work out to be 15,000 kills for 300-odd tigers in Sunderbans. If humans are part of the normal prey base for these tigers, and since unarmed humans are the easiest to hunt, one would expect a sizeable number of these 15,000 kills to be humans. However, less than 100 people die in tiger attacks across Sunderbans every year. The figures do not add up.

Between 1984 and 2006, tigers killed 490 people in Bangladesh – roughly 21 victims a year. In the same period, data shows that of all the Sunderbans tigers that killed people, about 50 per cent killed only one person each, implying these were accidental attacks. Still alarmists keep asserting that the love for human flesh is embedded in the Sunderban tiger’s genes.

Tigers, or other carnivores, do not consider us food. Our great, great forefathers were very much on their menu just like the primates still are in the wild. But as we and our weapons evolved, carnivores have learnt to fear us as able adversaries. They generally follow a no-risk policy and maintain a respectable distance from groups of people, like they do from, say, an elephant herd or a pack of wild dogs.

The Boubin forest in Sumava where the last wolf and bear was killed 150 years ago. Jay Mazoomdar.

At this point, I would be cut short by confused posers. “So do you mean tigers are safe?” I hastened to explain I do not. There are records of tigers, otherwise wary of elephants or wild dogs, opportunistically killing lonely calves or defending kills against a smaller pack. So, nothing prevents an otherwise respectful carnivore from making an occasional human kill if the victim seems suitably defenceless.

On the other hand, while tigers, particularly those in the Sunderbans mangroves, do kill humans opportunistically, only a miniscule proportion of tiger prey — India’s 1500-odd tigers make 75,000 kills a year – is human. But carnivores also defend themselves aggressively if they feel threatened. They are nature’s most efficient killers. Even a defensive slap from a tiger can kill instantly. It would hardly be any consolation that the tiger was unlikely to eat its victim in such cases.

As much as I thought I had made an excellent case, what eventually convinced the interrogators was a photograph taken by a friend a few years back in Ranthambhore. It shows a tiger walking within a few metres of a group of labourers, mostly women, who were being herded away by a forest guard to let the big cat pass by. The tiger looks unconcerned and the labourers are all smiles.

My interrogators were stumped. The disbelief was unmistakable. So I hastened to add that the frame did not tell us that tigers are friendly animals. No wild tiger ever made that claim. But since they roam free, they are bound to occasionally run into people in a crowded country like India. Even if there are enough inviolate sanctuaries for the wild to breed in peace, carnivores have to share space with people around those forests where they should not be considered strays or the people encroachers.

The photograph, I concluded, proved that mutual understanding and respect can make co-existence possible. For those who still did not look convinced, I saved the meanest for the last. The absence of that very Indian understanding and respect, I pointed out, had wiped out the bear and the wolf from Bavaria and much of the western world. This despite — and I could not resist feeling doubly patriotic about it — those bears and wolves not being half as efficient killing machines as our big cats.

Karnataka sets an example

In a first, the state scraps under-construction mini hydel projects for violating green laws

Tehelka, 9 May, 2013

Two months, assured by the Karnataka government that no new hydel project would be permitted in the Western Ghats region, the high court allowed the forest department to reevaluate two projects that were already under construction. On 16 April, the state set an example by cancelling the land leases granted to Maruthi Power- Gen four years after the company secured stage-II environmental clearance for its two projects in Hassan district.

Earlier, as reported by TEHELKA (Mini Projects, Mega Disaster, 30 October 2012), the forest department had been suppressing its internal reports against Maruthi’s mini hydel projects that misrepresented facts and twisted laws to bag green clearances for its Hongadalla (4.18 hectares, 18.90 MW) and Yedakumeri (4.20 hectares, 19 MW) projects.

While projects need forest and wildlife clearances from the Centre, there are a few catches. If the forestland requirement is less than 5 hectares, it can be cleared at the state level. Similarly, hydel projects below 25 MW capacity can be given environmental clearance by the regional office of the green ministry. To exploit these loopholes, Maruthi split its projects into two ‘mini’ adjacent units with a common powerhouse and excluded the land required for paving access roads in order to keep the total forestland requirement under 5 hectares.

Next, the company made Hassan’s then Deputy Conservator of Forests recommend the projects for clearance, citing that there were no rare, endangered or unique species of flora and fauna in Kagneri and Kanchanakumari reserved forests, which are home to tigers, elephants, leopards among other endangered species, including Gundia Indian Frog endemic to the Western Ghats.

Work continued on the projects until November 2011 when a Forest Range Officer reported 13 counts of violations. Three months later, the HC stopped work after an inquiry by top forest officials confirmed a slew of irregularities.

In March 2012, the vigilance wing of the forest department pointed out further violations such as encroachment on forestland, construction of bridges and roads without clearance, and blocking of natural streams with debris. Strangely, the state government counsel backed Maruthi, arguing that use of forest roads did not require any clearance.

Subsequently, the forest department made two more attempts to exclude the forest road from the net requirement for forestland. Given the state’s bizarre stand that development and use of existing coupe roads or digging tunnels inside forests did not require clearances, the case was now being watched by many even outside the state.

Under pressure, Karnataka finally conceded on 20 February 2013 that Maruthi violated several conditions of the lease and a fresh proposal for the projects would have to be considered. The HC asked the state to “pass appropriate orders in accordance with law within four weeks from the date of receipt” of a fresh proposal from Maruthi.

The ban on mini hydel projects and the cancellation of Maruthi’s leases at an advanced stage is significant because the Karnataka Renewable Energy Development Ltd allotted 72 mini hydel projects when the controversial 2×200 MW Gundia hydel project was conceived.

While the Madhav Gadgil panel, which was constituted to conserve the Western Ghats, decided against the viability of the Gundia hydel project, which will submerge 754 hectares of thick evergreen forests in a critical elephant habitat, the K Kasturirangan review panel merely sought a reevaluation of the project. Also, unlike Gadgil, Kasturirangan did not rule out future hydel projects in the Ecologically Sensitive Areas of the Western Ghats. Karnataka’s decision against new hydel projects in its stretch of the Western Ghats may set the benchmark for other states.

By cancelling Maruthi’s leases at an advanced stage, the state also went against the accepted practice of considering a project, however faulty, a fait accompli once substantial investment has been made on the ground. Will this have any bearing on the fate of mega projects, such as the Subansiri Lower on the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border, which are stuck halfway? Or will their sheer scale pull them 

Time to put the leash on irresponsible pet owners

Dog lovers who refuse to take responsibility have turned man’s best friend into a growling neighbourhood menace

FirstPost, 5 May, 2013

Salespersons are not allowed in my walled, gated housing complex. Even the regular service boys and helps who come in daily need to be verified by the guards and checked with specific apartment owners over intercom. I need to put in a formal request when my guests have to park their cars overnight. There are security booths at the three main entrances and on the ground floor of every building block.

But for one species, such fortification means nothing. Dogs are everywhere. Besides the fancy poop-machines on leashes, mongrels of all dispositions have colonised the lawns, the basement parking lot, everywhere.

On most nights, they create a ruckus loud enough to give the old and the sick nightmares. Getty Images

On most nights, they create a ruckus loud enough to give the old and the sick nightmares. Every other day, they aggressively charge morning and evening walkers. The security staff’s biggest challenge is to stop them from climbing the stairs at night to raid the garbage bins left outside the doors for collection in the morning.

The highly-active RWAs are helpless. So are the guards. There are a few residents who feed these packs twice a day. They have warned the rest with dire consequences if any attempt is made to evict the dogs. I have not tried to reason with them yet. In my experience, most dog lovers are rabidly so.

My family’s last dog died when I was eight. I was inseparable from Bon, a stout black mongrel, and even rode her as a toddler. Mostly dignified and happy, once she lost her cool when I innocently tugged at her tail when she was busy eating. She did not sink her canines in me but refused to eat for the next two days as I indignantly ignored her.  My uncle made me feed her and soon she was wagging her tail, following me around.

It was emotionally draining for the family when Bon died. Her last two years were sad. She slumped tiredly most of the time and started smelling different. After her death, we stopped keeping dogs. It was a wise decision.

I have never been tempted to keep a dog or to feed strays since. The idea of a dog boxed inside an apartment for 15 hours or more with no one around repulses me. Yet, all around, I see well-fed mongrels turning into pets by all means except that their owners never take them home.

I have nothing against pets or compassion per se. But I do not understand pet owners who are eager to adopt dogs but hardly bother to look after them. Such pet owners, and they are the majority, are responsible for creating a situation where dogs have become a public nuisance, a serious threat to public safety, health and environment.

A pet or abandoned pet is more fearful of people than strays are. Close to its owner’s house, such a dog is always territorial and protective. So, pets account for most dog bites.  Most of us have been chased by street dogs one time or the other. But were they really strays?

While most dog lovers feed strays in their neighbourhood, I know people who carry food for street dogs outside their offices. Regular feeding by a particular person at a particular place has the effect of petting on stray dogs, making them territorial and aggressive.

The result is scary. Two years ago, when an 18-month-old boy was killed, people in Bangalore launched a campaign to kill the apparently murderous pack. Such attacks, particularly on children, have not stopped. In January this year, a six-year-old was mauled in Bangalore. In February, two children were killed in Punjab’s Moga and Jalandhar. In March, a four-year-old suffered critical injury in Nagpur. Two weeks ago, a Mumbai pack injured 15, including a 40-year-old, in a single incident.

While attacks often make headlines, alarming rabies figures are rarely mentioned, perhaps given the popular sentiment. In India, dogs are responsible for more than 20 lakh bites and 30,000 deaths every year. In leopard-prone areas, they serve as live baits and aggravate man-animal conflict. Elsewhere, these packs have become a menace for wildlife. Jodhpur’sgazelles, for example, have been hunted to near-extinction by 3 lakh stray dogs. Same is the story with blackbucks in Fatehabad or inside the Kanpur zoo.

While India’s 25 million-plus stray dog population is easily targeted, the bulk of India’s 10 million pet dogs — in fact, their owners — are the real problem. In India, one does not need to register, vaccinate or sterilise one’s pets. There is no penalty for abandoning pets or letting them loose. As a result, hundreds of unwanted pet dogs and pups are dumped on streets and thousands are allowed to run out of their owners’ premises to mate with street dogs.

To check numbers, we started killing the strays. But biologically, it is impossible to control a population by killing a few. We did not have the nerve for mass slaughters and moved on to sterilisation. Animal Birth Control (ABC) is India’s official strategy for two decades now. But even ABC requires scale: at least 70 percent of a population must be sterilised within six months to arrest population growth. No Indian city has been able neuter 500-odd dogs daily.

Yet, culling and neutering have worked to an extent as population checks. But for every stray dog neutered, dog owners let their pets add more to our streets. Then dog feeders make these packs aggressive enough to attack strangers. It gives dogs a bad name. It gives dog haters reasons to seek mass culling and dog lovers a credo of defending the indefensible.

The real gap between two Western Ghats

Tidying up Gadgil’s ambitious makeover plan, Kasturirangan leaves too many windows open

Tehelka, 3 May, 2013

Along with the Eastern Himalayas, the Western Ghats host India’s richest wilderness in 13 national parks and several sanctuaries. Recognised by UNESCO as one of the world’s eight most important biodiversity hotspots, these forested hills are also source to numerous rivers, including Godavari, Krishna and Cauvery.

Spread across six states all along the western coast, this pristine landscape has been subject to thoughtless development — mining, hydel projects, plantations and tourism. So environmentalists cheered when the Ministry of Environment and Forests set up in March 2010 an expert panel under ecologist Madhav Gadgil to find a strategy for conserving these Ghats. But hope gave way to scepticism soon after Gadgil placed his report in August 2011. Caught between the exacting recommendations of its own panel and stubborn resistance from the industry and the states, the ministry continued to dither for nearly a year.

Then, in August last year, the ministry constituted yet another panel under Planning Commission member and astrophysicist Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan to examine the Gadgil report, consult the stakeholders and suggest how to implement it in “the most effective and holistic manner”.

Many read the move as an attempt to device a compromise formula. Their fears came true when Kasturirangan submitted his report on 17 April, identifying roughly 37 percent of the Western Ghats as an Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA). Since then, the Kasturirangan panel and the ministry have been accused of undermining the Gadgil report, which marked out 60 percent of the Western Ghats as the highest-priority Ecologically Sensitive Zone (ESZ).

While Kasturirangan’s High-Level Working Group (HLWG) has indeed moved away from Gadgil’s Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) — with the caveat that “environmentally sound development cannot preclude livelihood and economic options for this region… the answer will not lie in removing these economic options, but in providing better incentives to move them towards greener and more sustainable practices” — the gap between their recommendations may not be as wide as it seems.

To begin with, Gadgil’s Western Ghats is smaller than that of Kasturirangan’s. While this forested hill range runs parallel to the Arabian Sea for nearly 1,500 km from Gujarat’s Tapi river in the north to just short of Kanyakumari in the south, there has been no standard definition of its east-west width, which varies from 10 to 210 km. In the absence of a consensus on the precise boundaries, the Gadgil panel went by forest types above a certain altitude to define the Western Ghats landscape across 1,29,037 sq km.

Gadgil’s report proposed to declare this entire landscape as ESA, creating three ESZs within it. He prescribed that the existing sanctuaries and ESZ-1 would together cover 60 percent of this landscape. The 25 percent lowest priority areas would be marked as ESZ-3 to allow all developmental activities with precautions. The remaining 15 percent area would become ESZ-2. For example, while no mining would be allowed within ESZ- 1, existing mines could continue in ESZ-2 with a moratorium on new licences. In ESZ-3, new mines could come up.

The Kasturirangan panel, on the other hand, adopted the criteria followed by the Western Ghats Development Programme of the Planning Commission and identified 188 talukas as its Western Ghats landscape, which worked out to 1,64,280 sq km. He marked 37 percent of this stretch as ESA where hazardous industries, thermal plants or mines would not be allowed. In effect, the restriction level of Kasturirangan’s ESA corresponds to that of Gadgil’s ESZ-1.

Now, according to the Gadgil report, the ESZ-1 areas add up to approximately 77,000 sq km (60 percent of 1,29,037 sq km). Kasturirangan’s ESA, on the other hand, accounts for around 60,000 sq km (37 percent of 1,64,280 sq km). That is a reduction of 17,000 sq km in the top priority segment.

Kasturirangan is also blamed for overlooking nearly 20,000 sq km (15 percent of 1,29,037 sq km) of ESZ-2 areas proposed in the Gadgil report. His report, however, says that all development projects located within 10 km of the ESA will be regulated by the Environmental Impact Assessment Notification, 2006. Since the width of the ESA itself will not extend over 10 km along a number of stretches, this may not be practical.

Pic: Arati Rao

Yet, if we factor in even 5-km-wide buffers on both sides of the ESA along its roughly 1,500-km length, around 15,000 sq km will enjoy similar protection as prescribed under ESZ-2 in the Gadgil report. So, in sum, around 22,000 sq km out of 97,000 sq km prescribed under ESZ-1 and ESZ-2 by Gadgil’s WGEEP has been left out by Kasturirangan’s HLWG.

Comparable data is not available yet for Tamil Nadu and Goa. But in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala, 17 of Gadgil’s 70 ESZ-1 talukas have been entirely left out by Kasturirangan. For the rest of the talukas, what explains the gap is the difference in the approaches of the two panels.

While Gadgil marked the ESZs at the taluka level, Kasturirangan identified ESAs on a much finer grid at the village level. Gadgil’s report marked entire talukas as ESZ-1 even if only parts of those belonged to the highest ecologically sensitive category. But demarcation at the village level by Kasturirangan allowed exclusion of dense human habitations — population density above 100 per sq km — from the ESA.

The flipside of the Kasturirangan panel’s approach, however, is that such exclusions will fragment the ESA. While the natural north-south continuity of dense forests will largely be maintained, covering prime tiger and elephant corridors of the Ghats, small patches of ESAs identified in the wings of this unbroken axis may be of little ecological benefit.

In fact, given the experience in such cases, these tiny islands of ESAs are unlikely to survive encroachment and other human misuse for too long. At the same time, it will take thorough ground surveys to determine if existing encroachments and expired land leases have been taken into account while excluding high human use areas from the ESA.

However, both panels stressed the importance of protecting local livelihood interests, which is essential to build a pro-conservation constituency among the communities. While Gadgil’s three-tier ESZ model favoured the concept of “develop sustainably – conserve thoughtfully” over a strict “go/no-go” regime, Kasturirangan stressed on adequate financial arrangements to incentivise “green growth” in the region.

Therefore, if site-specific concerns are addressed and the ESA is made as contiguous as feasible, a reasonable downsizing of the area originally proposed by Gadgil may still not be that ominous for the ghats’ future. Given the brazenly combative opposition to any length of ESA, marking 60,000-75,000 sq km of India’s best wilderness as out of bounds for development is probably as good as it will ever get.

However, the big catch lies in the Kasturirangan panel’s refusal to impose a categorical ban on hydel projects even within the truncated ESA it proposed. For new projects, he has merely proposed a set of conditions such as maintaining baseline river flow, cumulative impact study and minimum distance between projects. His panel has also refused to reiterate Gadgil’s candid stand against Athirappally and Gundia hydel plants and called for yet another round of revaluation.

But for these open windows, who knows the greens might well be reasonable enough to settle for a few lakh hectares less.