How India is building Asia's largest secure forest network

A landmark effort by the Indian state of Karnataka to connect isolated protected forests could lead to the building of Asia's largest unbroken forest.

BBC NEWS, 20 March, 2014

It's been all about connecting the green dots.

Since 2012, the southern state of Karnataka has declared nearly 2,600 sq km (1,000 sq miles) of forests as protected areas, linking a series of national parks, tiger reserves and sanctuaries.

Protected areas cover nearly 5% of India's land mass and come under strict legal protection that makes conversion of land for non-forestry purposes difficult. Tiger reserves and national parks do not allow human settlements.

Karnataka has already built three unbroken forest landscapes spread over more than one million hectares along the Western Ghats, a mountain range that runs along the western coast of India. It is also a Unesco World Heritage site and one of the eight hottest biological hotspots of the world.

In southern Karnataka, the missing links in the Bannerghatta-Nagarhole landscape have been bridged to achieve an unbroken stretch of 7,050 sq km that includes adjoining protected areas in the neighbouring states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

In central Karnataka, the Kudremukh-Aghanashini landscape across 1,716 sq km has been made contiguous.

In the north, expanding the Anshi-Bhimghad landscape has linked a forest stretch of 2,242 sq km in Goa and Karnataka.

Experts say habitat fragmentation is a major threat to wildlife conservation. Contiguous forest landscapes allow gene flow and increase colonisation probability, thereby reducing the risk of local extinction.

Interconnected forests also offer a better chance of adaptation and survival when wild animals shift habitats to cope with the impact of climate change.

None of these concerns has stopped the Indian government from dragging its feet over implementing the recommendations of an expert panel to safeguard the Western Ghats.

But Karnataka has on its own secured much of this biological treasure trove.

But it has not been easy.

Given the exclusionist conservation model of the Indian state, local communities usually fear losing their traditional rights when a forest is brought under legal protection.

But the state forest department officials say they have been treading cautiously.

A series of national parks, tiger reserves and sanctuaries has been linked

From the beginning, explains former forest official BK Singh who initiated the expansion process, it was made clear that all existing rights of the people would continue.

"The protected area expansion covered only reserve forests where people's rights were already settled. Even in those areas, we did not force our decisions on people," says Vinay Luthra, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Karnataka.

'No threat'

"We have not relocated a single village for this expansion," says MH Swaminath, former wildlife official who was part of the team that drew up the plan in 2011, adding that the focus was on protecting biodiversity-rich forests and key wildlife corridors from invasive development such as heavy industries, mining or dams.

"In comparison, existing villages [within the expanded protected areas] do not pose any serious threat to conservation," says Mr Singh.

The expansion plan was accepted by the Karnataka state wildlife officials in July 2011. By January 2012, it had the approval of the National Board for Wildlife in Delhi. Within a month, the first expansion was implemented in the Bandipur tiger reserve.

"Since then, nearly 1,700 sq km was added to three national parks and five wildlife sanctuaries. Another 906 sq km was notified as a new sanctuary," says wildlife biologist Sanjay Gubbi.

Besides supporting wildlife, these expanded protected areas also serve as watersheds and support 15 rivers, he adds.

The state forest department hit some roadblocks in Bhadra tiger reserve and Pushpagiri wildlife sanctuary.

Largest network

"Certain vested interests tried to mislead people. A lot of ground has been covered in just two years but a few key links still remain to be achieved to establish forest connectivity between Bangalore and Goa," says Mr Singh.

Nagarhole National Park in Karnataka 

A spate of small hydel power projects, for example, threatened to block the elephant corridors and spoil the natural water systems in and around Pushpagiri wildlife sanctuary.

In April 2013, the Karnataka government informed the High Court that no new mini-hydel project would be permitted in the Western Ghats region and also set an example by cancelling the land leases granted to two ongoing projects.

Yet, an unbroken Bangalore-Goa landscape may remain just a dream.

There are only two small conservation reserves - Aghanashini (known for the lion-tailed macaque) and Bedthi - in a sea of human settlements and areca nut plantations between the northern and central Karnataka landscapes (see map).

"But it is possible to link the southern and the central Karnataka forest landscapes into a contiguous protected area spread over 15,000 sq km in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala," says Mr Gubbi.

"That in itself will probably be Asia's largest unbroken protected area network."

Will it be Mayawati who makes or mars a Third Front this summer?

Only a spectacular show by Behenji in UP can stop Modi's march to power and open a window for a third front government. But if her BSP emerges as the third largest party, her justified claim to prime ministership may upset the front's number game.

FirstPost, 15 March, 2014

On paper, the chances of a non-Congress-non-BJP government at the Centre look bright this summer. Between them, the Congress and the BJP together bagged 322 seats in 2009. This time, the big two may not take home even 280. That leaves out nearly as many in a 542-seat contest. And since any third formation is likely to get the support of 100-odd Congress MPs, we are actually talking about an 180-seat strong front. Surely, out of 260-odd non-Congress-non-BJP MPs, at least two-thirds can come together in an alliance.

If only politics followed such simple arithmetic. Look at the 2009 Lok Sabha. Barring two Left outfits, there are five parties with two seats each, 12 parties with a single MP each and seven independents. No stable government can be formed with long-term dependence on them. That leaves out 30-odd MPs from the calculations. Take out the sworn allies of the NDA and what remains of the UPA. And what we are really left with are parties such as the AIADMK, DMK, Left Front, TMC, SP, BSP, JD(U), TDP, BJD and NCP.

If J Jayalalithaa emerges as the non-Congress-non-BJP prime ministerial candidate, none of these parties except the DMK will have any major issues joining the government or supporting it from outside. In such a scenario, the numbers add up quickly. Between them, Jayalalithaa, Mayawati and Mamata are expected to win at least 90 seats. Add 15 each from LF, SP and JD(U); another 35 between BJD, TDP and NCP. That makes it 170. Jaya can count on smaller players such as Lalu Yadav, Farooq Abdullah, Jagan Reddy, Ajit Singh or Deve Gowda for at least another 10 MPs.

However, a number of these parties — for example, NCP, BJD, TMC and Jaya herself — may flock to the BJP if the party touches the 180-mark. In fact, the question of a third front government arises only if the BJP stops well short of that magic figure. Why 180? Because that takes the likely NDA (Shiv Sena and SAD) tally close to 200. Add TMC, AIADMK, BJD and NCP — it’s well past the 272-mark.

Barring a Congress miracle, the biggest obstacle to the BJP's 180-seat run is Mayawati. Because, considering the party needs to add 70 seats to its 2009 tally, Uttar Pradesh is where Narendra Modi will be fighting his most crucial battle.

Of the states under a so-called BJP swing, the party can gain substantially only in Rajasthan where it won just 4 out of 25 seats last time. But there is no room for significant gain from Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and Himachal where the party won 44 out of 70 seats in 2009. Altogether, these five states may account for no more than 25 extra seats.

The BJP will also gain in Uttarakhand, Punjab and Delhi. But these small gains are likely to be offset, more or less, by a loss in Karnataka. The Modi wave is likely to earn a few extra seats in Odisha and Maharashtra. In the best case scenario for the party, it will have to depend on Bihar and UP for at least 35 of the additional 70 seats it needs.

Even if BJP wins half the seats in Bihar, its 2009 tally of 12 will improve only by 8 seats. That leaves Uttar Pradesh where the party must add 25-30 seats to its 2009 tally of 10. Between them, a cornered Samajwadi Party and a waning Congress will still take away at least 20 out of the 80 UP seats. But the real fight here is between the BJP and the BSP. After the riots, the Jats have apparently abandoned Ajit Singh for the BJP. But Mayawati's gain is bigger because the Muslim voter is disillusioned with the SP and unlikely to bank on a weak Congress.

If the Dalit-Muslim vote helps Mayawati bag at least 35 seats, the BJP will have to settle for less than 25. If BSP insiders are to be believed, Behenji is eyeing a 40-plus tally. Such a show by the BSP may limit the BJP's national count to 160, and throw the gates open to the possibilities of a third front government.

As the leader of the third largest party, Mayawati is likely to demand prime ministership for herself rather than back Jayalalithaa. Besides, neither Jaya or Mamata can claim the moral high of reining in the BJP even if they sweep their respective states. Bengal and Tamil Nadu do not figure in the BJP's scheme of things and the party can reach the 180-mark without a single MP from these two states. The real battle isMayawati's and it will be difficult to deny her the spoils if she succeeds.

But of course, Mayawati's prime ministership may upset the numbers game that looks so positive for Jaya. Since Mulayam Singh cannot back his arch rival -- and since the support from a depleted DMK cannot compensate for SP's at least 15 MPs -- Mayawati's third front may fall short of the 180-mark by 10-15 MPs. It won't matter if the Congress goes well beyond 100 seats and compensates for a weaker third front. Or if Mayawati really brings 40-plus MPs herself. But these appear distant possibilities.

As it stands now, Mayawati is the third front's only bet to bring it into the reckoning by stalling Modi. But if she succeeds and demands her rewards, the front may never add up.

What You Didn't Know about Bengali Cinema's Resurgence

A cool new breed of filmmakers. The return of middle-class cinema. Bengali movies going abroad. It all sounds great, nit no one is talking about the precarious revenues or how this new cinema has deepened the class divide in Bengal.

Yahoo News, 13 March, 2014

In the final sequence of Meghe Dhaka Tara, director Kamaleswar Mukherjee's 2013 film on the life and work of Ritwik Ghatak and Bengal's socio-politics during the Naxalite movements, the protagonist is brought in a wheelchair to a play he directed with fellow inmates of a psychiatric institution. 

Watching with a faint smile, he imagines a little sari-clad girl outside the auditorium. In his mind, he gets up and walks out. The urban surroundings melt into lush fields and the screen, black-and-white throughout, explodes in wet green. The audience watching Meghe Dhaka Tara is on its feet, some tearful, all breaking into spontaneous applause.

There is a new buzz in Tollywood (aspirational for Tollygunge, the hub of film studios in Kolkata). The local press can't stop talking about the new crop of directors, a string of breakthrough films and, of course, swelling budgets. A born-again audience prides itself on multiplexes screening Bengali films alongside Hindi blockbusters and collections looking up steadily.

But why should Bengalis watching Bangla movies in Kolkata come as a surprise? 

The so-called Golden Era of Tollywood dominated by Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen lost steam in the 1970s. In the 1980s and 1990s, no self-respecting bhadralok would be caught dead even discussing contemporary Bangla films. 

Sample the fare that was being rejected. Anurager Choya (A Touch of Romance), a major 1986 hit, featured Tapas Pal, who dominated Tollywood with Ranjit Mallick after Uttam Kumar, and Mahua Roychoudhury, a starlet who committed suicide the same year. Here's the dialogue after the rakish hero bullies the heroine and her gang of girls in Darjeeling, and leaves with a flourish.

Hero: Bolechi na, jake ami chai, take ami pai…Kolkatay giye tomake theek khunje nebo (I told you, I get what I want. I'll certainly find you in Kolkata). 

He then snatches her purse and drives off, blowing a kiss in the air. 
"Ok, bye-bye, darling!"

Heroine: Eki! Amar bag ta nichhen keno? Ki korchen ki? Amar bag ta… (Hey! Why are you taking my purse? What are you doing? My purse…)

Heroine's friend: Jah! Buke haat diye dyakhto, tor hridoy ta niye chole jaayni toh. (Alas! Touch your heart and tell me if he hasn't taken that too.)

Cut to 1991. Beder Meye Josna (Josna, The Snake Charmer's Daughter) was the biggest release of the year, starring Bangladeshi heroine Anju Ghosh in the title role against Chiranjit Chakraborty (now a Trinamool Congress MLA). Here, Chiranjit, the prince, rescues Josna from goons. On their second meeting, moments before he expresses his love and Josna breaks into a song and dance of acceptance, their conversation goes like this:

Prince: Shono, tumi to bodo akritagno. Sedin tomar eto bodo upokar korlam aar aaj katha na bolei chole jachho. Amar dike ekbar-o takachho na (Listen, you are very ungrateful. I did you such a big favor the other day and you are leaving without a word. Not even looking at me)!

Josna: Je chokher ghum kede nyay, tar dike ki chokh phire takano jaay? (How dare my eyes turn to someone who has stolen sleep from them?)

Among other 'gems' of the 90s were Bhai Amar Bhai (Brother My Brother),  Adorer Bon (Sister Darling), Rajar Meye Parul (The King's Daughter Parul), Tomar Rakte Amar Sohag (Your Blood My Vermillion), Kumari Maa (Virgin Mother), Mayer Dibyi (I Swear On My Mother), Swami Keno Asami (Why is Husband Framed), Baba Keno Chakor (Why is Father the Servant)… 

While an affront to the sensibilities of the urban educated Bengali middle class, these films did business in the rural market. During those long years, few in Tollywood would have imagined that thebhadralok would return to their films. But since 2005, a new breed of filmmakers and their 'middle cinema' have been bringing back the prodigals and their attendant 'buzz'.

Anusuya Ghosh, a clinical psychologist, returned to theaters for Bangla films "some four or five years ago after more than two decades," and has not missed too many since. "Barring Aparna [Sen] and Rituparno [Ghosh], I don't remember anything worthwhile till new directors like Kaushik [Ganguly] or Srijit [Mukherjee] came along."

Virvikram Roy, a college principal in his early fifties, says he gave up watching Bengali films as a student of Jadavpur University during the 1980s. "It was probably 2005 when I went back. Now I consider it my duty to support the new Bengali cinema."

Rudra, a fifth grader at St Xavier's School, made his parents take him twice to watch Mishwar Rahasya, an adaptation of a popular detective novel by Sunil Ganguly set in Egypt. A bunch of college students I meet on Shakespeare Sarani near Chowringhee say matter-of-factly that they "check out at least two Bangla films" every month. 

Does the industry see it as a resurgence? "The last 7-8 years has been a great time to be a part of the industry. Things are definitely changing for the better," says Prosenjit Chatterjee, arguably Tollywood's most bankable star, and most familiar to Bollywood's audience as activist Dr Ahmedi in Dibakar Banerjee's Shanghai. 

"The industry has responded to the challenge of finding new content, adapting to modern ways of filmmaking and drawing a larger audience. The music has also improved. The budgets have increased and it shows in the quality of production. Thanks to some of these positives, the actors from our industry are getting offers from Bollywood," says Prosenjit.

Having "lived [his] life in the Bangla film industry and seen all its ups and downs," Prosenjit sees a fresh start with the investment in technology, international crew and foreign locations. "As a result, overall visibility of our films has also expanded. Two of my latest films - Jaatishwar and Mishwar Rahasya - were released nationally and abroad for the Bengali diaspora."

Srijit Mukherji, who directed Prosenjit in these two films, is also a believer in the resurgence. After all, he claims that his 2010 debut Autograph was the trigger for this turnaround. "From human relationships shot in budget-friendly half-lit Kolkata drawing rooms, we have taken up adventure capers in Egypt and South Africa. We also see the other 'Woods' taking a huge interest in the resources Bengal has to offer."

They are right. Bengali cinema is travelling outside of the state. In February, Jaatishwar became the first Bengali film to break the single-week ceiling at the box office in Singapore. Chander Pahar(2013), shot in South Africa and the costliest Bengali film ever at over Rs 12 crore, is running well in the US. Corporate producers like Reliance and Viacom 18 have come to Tollywood. The latest entrant is Mumbai's Neeraj Pandey who produced a Bengali 'thriller-drama' - The Royal Bengal Tiger- with Tollywood star Jeet.

As for Bengali actors going into Bollywood, count away: Parambrata Chatterjee (Kahani, Traffic, Highway, Yaara Silly Silly), Rajesh Sharma (Khosla ka Ghosla, No One Killed Jessica, The Dirty Picture), Paoli Dam (Hate Story, Gang of Ghosts), Rajatava Dutta (Kaminey) and Jisshu Sengupta (Mardaani).

But there is more to the resurgence plot, especially if you follow the money. Industry sources put the 'success rate' at 4-6 percent in the recent years for the 80-100 films Tollywood churns out annually.

Ashok Dhanuka of Eskay Movies, which mostly invests in Bengali remakes of Tamil and Telugu films, has been in the business for nearly two decades and remains a sceptic. "There's nothing predictable in the [film] industry," he says. "Since I started making films in the mid-90s, the average production budget has gone up from Rs 15 lakh to over Rs 1 crore. But most films tank." 

Indranil Roychowdhury's directorial debut Phoring - the story of a small-town adolescent's self-discovery - was arguably the best Bengali film of 2013. "We can't fool the audience anymore. Hindi films and cable TV have changed the visual culture. The audience demands quality but 75 to 80 percent of Bengali films are simply unwatchable. Naturally, for the amount of money producers put in, there are very little returns."

Tollywood does not release trade figures yet. Suman Mukhopadhyay, whose debut film Herbert won a national award in 2005, says there is no box office data outside the multiplex market. "Most producers have other motivations (such as gaining social status or channelling unattributed cash flow) for putting in the money. Since they don't bother about losses, you never know how much money sinks behind the visible success of a few films."

A House Divided

What is real about the resurgence is the deepening of the class divide in Bengali cinema. Indranil says, "Film budgets have gone up but there is not enough fresh content, particularly in the mainstream mass segment."

Apparently, there are two cinematic worlds on either side of the Howrah Bridge. "Films made with a certain sensibility cater largely to Kolkata's multiplex audience. Films made for the rural audience have no takers in the city. The Howrah Bridge is a metaphor for this divide," explains Suman.

Big producers, confides Dhanuka, often run a film meant for rural release in a few theaters in Kolkata. "Just jabardasti! It does not earn a penny in Kolkata but helps the box office in the districts where people are impressed that a film is running for so many weeks in the big city. On the contrary, multiplex films do not bother about the rural audience and focus on collecting entirely from the cities."

The very occasional arthouse films by the likes of Buddhadeb Dasgupta and Goutam Ghosh are meant for the festival circuit. But for the rest of Tollywood, there is no attempt yet to bridge the different segments of what is anyway a limited market. The formula therefore goes like this. Medium budget commercial cinema, usually Tamil and Telugu remakes, such as what Dhanuka makes, are solely targeted at the rural mass audience. Low-budget ensemble cast parallel cinema is for niche urban crowds. The high-budget middle-of-the-road commercial cinema, which could have strived for a pan-Bengal audience, is happy to cater only to the multiplexes.

Srijit, the poster boy of Bengali middle cinema, does not agree. "Due to the increasing purchasing power of the average Bengali and the influx of consumerism and digital revolution, the villages have started merging into mofussils, and mofussils into cities. I am proud that everything from mainstream pulp such as Paglu and Rangbaaz [remakes of Telugu films Kandireega and Chirutha] to my films is being made."

But Indranil points out that most movie theaters in the districts are in a shambles. He says, "Yes, multiplexes are coming up but single-screen theaters are disappearing, making it difficult to reach a broad spectrum of audience." By 2011, half of Bengal's 840 or so single-screen theaters went out of business. "It's a vicious cycle where poor maintenance forces cheaper pricing of tickets at Rs 20-30, which make a theater further unviable. The rural middle class don't visit these tattered halls, so the owners cater to the lumpen audience's demand for crass entertainment."

This trend cannot be reversed without serious investment in infrastructure. Until then, actor-director Anjan Dutta does not see any demand for aesthetically richer mass cinema. "If my films have an urban sensibility, I would aim for a pan-Indian urban market. Rather than taking my film to Burdwan, I would take it to Bangalore."

Suman points out that even theater groups have stopped travelling to the districts. Anjan agrees. "Just like they prefer the loudness of jatra pala (rural drama troupes) to the subtleties of theater, the rural mass wants star-cast based entertainment from films. On the other hand, the script has become the real star in our kind of urban cinema where even the stars are reinventing themselves."

Prosenjit is a case in point. When he was the biggest draw in those bleak decades of Tollywood, he was 'Posenjit' to his average fan who still struggles to roll the 'r'. With Rituparno Ghosh and later with Srijit, he has delivered a series of nuanced performances - from Chokher Bali (2003) and Dosar(2006) to Baishe Srabon (2011) and Jaatishwar (2014) - re-establishing himself as an actor. Will he ever return to those song-dance-action routines now? 

"Yes, previously I did many commercial films but now I mainly do urban films. That does not mean I will not do any commercial films for my rural audience if good scripts come my way. I'm open to strong content but the production budgets should be justified. At the end of the day, I want to see my producers smiling."

Dhanuka smiles. Prasenjit has not done any 'mass' film since he starred in Dhanuka's Vikram Singha: The Lion is Back (a remake of Telugu film Vikramarkudu) in 2012. "He was the only reason that film flopped. It did not work between him and the audience. I doubt he'll take that risk again."

But if accomplished actors abandon mass movies, will producers like him be left with only 'stars' who do not make the cut? Dhanuka is unperturbed. His audience has simple demands, he says.

In fact, the release of Yash Raj Films' Gunday dubbed in Bengali this month is a much bigger threat for the likes of Dhanuka. The mass movies of Tollywood are mostly remakes and the heroes are styled after Bollywood. While everyone in the industry is talking about trade ethics, the fear that the original will easily elbow out the duplicates is palpable.

Return to the money trail

Theater director-actor Bibhash Chakraborty attributes Tollywood's resurgence to three factors. "The public [commercial] theater died in Kolkata in the mid-1990s, creating a void for a section of the urban audience. In the next few years, the TV serial boom in cable channels gave Tollywood a lot of work. Then a lot of money suddenly became available." New funds and a new mindset is what set this Tollywood generation apart, according to Chakraborty. "In the 1950s, it was my dream to make movies. But I settled for theater. Today, theater directors like Suman [Mukhopadhyay] have the enterprise and the funding to take the plunge."

Suman, however, has his grouse with the new producers. "Most of them want to gain some social status or park some easy money, they have no real stake in the industry." The economic liberalization brought the first flush of funds. Then, money started flowing from the booming chit fund companies in the state.

Since the Sharada group went bust for its chit fund scam last year, Suman is not the only one who thinks that the well will dry up soon. Indranil says he'd be happy if producers truly bothered about losses. "That'd ensure a degree of professionalism. I foresee the majority of today's 80-90 producers leaving the industry in the next 2-3 years when they can't deny how bad the bottomline is."

That is also the timeframe for Shree Venkatesh Films (SVF), Tollywood's biggest production house, to make the most of its lucrative deal with Star Jalsha, a movie channel. SVF reportedly bagged Rs 90 crore from the channel as an advance for telecast rights of the 50-odd films it would produce in three years. (After promising an appointment twice, SVF director Shrikant Mohta eventually declined to meet me.)

Nobody talks about it openly in Tollywood, but it is difficult to escape the almost monopolistic clout of SVF, launched in 1996 by cousins Mohta and Mahendra Soni who outgrew their family business of making rakhis. Soon after joining the industry, SVF backed feted filmmakers Rituparno Ghosh and Aparna Sen and came to dominate the mass and award segments. By 2008, they were onAnandabazar Patrika's annual power list. Its website claims that the production house has helped the Bengali film industry restore its "lost glory". 

SVF apparently gained its massive political clout only after the regime change in Bengal. The Left Front's intellectual past meant it was inclined to patronize theater, rather than mainstream commercial cinema. But Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee loves to line up Tollywood stars on her stage. Her latest brigade rally on 31 January featured the who's who of the film industry. 

"One of Mamata's ministers is at every party hosted by Venkatesh. The one-sided deal with Star Jalsha came through an understanding with the ruling party that controls the network of cable operators across the state. The fourth player in this power arrangement is the largest circulated Bengali daily that never gives a bad review to any Venkatesh film," complains a Tollywood veteran at a recording studio.

Indranil won't be drawn into any of that. "Right now, Venkatesh is professionally the most equipped. Viacom and Reliance have come, but I won't bet my money on corporate producers. Unlike in Bollywood, here they have to create new content with an understanding of everything Bengali. Also, in Bollywood, the corporates succeed because of creative producers like Anurag Kashyap who nurture a film like Lunchbox."

Anjan, in fact, looks forward to playing such a role. "I would love to mentor projects, maybe as an executive producer. But the content is getting predictable; we need more exciting ideas. Ritu[parno] focused on the middle class. My Bong Connection (2006) explored new areas [NRI angst] in that bandwidth. We are not being able to sense the pulse of today's Bengal. Depoliticization hasn't helped either."

The challenge ahead, agrees Suman who has helmed theater and films, is to resolve the confusion in middle cinema. "It's getting monotonous in the convenience of dealing with and catering to the cozy Bengali middle class."

Indranil says he is serious about bridging the urban-rural gap. And he is happy that Kamaleswar Mukherjee's Chander Pahar (Mountains of the Moon), the story of a Bengali youth's adventures in Africa in the early years of the last century, is doing good business in small towns. "It tells the hall owners that more and more middle-class audiences will walk in for good cinema if they invest in their properties." That perhaps answers the infrastructure-audience riddle. The overriding factor, as Prosenjit puts it, is content. "When content draws larger audience, infrastructure will follow." 

For now though, a whispering vixen demands to know in the promo of SVF's latest dark comedyAbhishopto Nighty (The Cursed Nightie): "Oscar ashbe? (Any chance of an Oscar?)"

India’s latest conservation fix: dehorn rhinos, deport leopards

Assam minister mulls cutting off rhino horns to save them from poachers. Maharashtra lawmakers seek removal of all leopards from Mumbai's Aarey colony to resolve conflict.

FirstPost, 10 March, 2014

Assam lost at least 90 of its 2500-odd rhinos to poachers since 2008, 34 of those only in 2013. Mumbai's Aarey colony lost three children and two women to leopards in the last two years even though the forest department has trapped two dozen leopards in and around the colony since 2004.

So how do respond to what primarily have been gross administrative failures? 

Assam forest minister and environment minister Rockybul Hussain has told the Assembly that an expert committee has been constituted to look into the feasibility of dehorning the rhinos. "Many African nations have adopted this measure to stop poaching and they are quite successful in their endeavour," he claimed.

Mumbai's Shiv Sena MLA Ravindra Waikar and local corporator Jitendra Walvi have filed a PIL in the Bombay High Court seeking “complete removal” of leopards from Aarey Colony. “The lives of the tribals (1800 families) residing in Aarey Colony are affected because of the fear of attacks by leopards,” the PIL said.

Indeed, chopping off horns to save rhinos is not a new idea. Namibia was the first country to dehorn its rhinos in 1989. But it also invested heavily in anti-poaching infrastructure during the 1990s. In the absence of effective security, dehorning alone does not help. In Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park, for example, most of the dehorned rhinos were killed within 12-18 months of dehorning in the early 1990s. 

Dehorning has not worked in South Africa either, where 350 rhinos were poached in 2013 alone. The Kenyan Wildlife Service took a stand against dehorning and lost 37 rhinos in 2013. Zimbabwe kept faith and lost six newly dehorned rhinos during January-August 2011 in the Save Valley Conservancy.

The problem is manifold. First, one cannot remove the whole horn without mutilating the rhino like poachers do. After veterinarians saw off the horn, the stump remains rooted deep inside the tissue and is enough to lure poachers.

Secondly, like nail, horns grow back, making dehorning necessary every 3-4 years. Huge expenses apart, it requires frequent sedation of rhinos. Unfortunately, one in every 20 immobilisation attempts kills a rhino. Thirdly, the horn serves key biological purposes, from selection of mate for breeding to defending calves against predators. Altogether, absence of the horn does not make the survival odds significantly higher compared to the threats of poaching.

Then there is the issue of the chopped horns, valued in gold in the international market. While backing the minister's plan, the ULFA (yes, it has a say in pretty much everything in Assam) has cautioned that the sawn-off horns must be photographed and indexed properly for transparency.

In fact, having surrendered so abjectly before the poachers, the cash-strapped Assam government may consider 'sustainable commercial  harvesting' of horns and trade the future stockpile for its great forex potential. For now though, there is a global ban on trade in place.

While Assam plots a loss of face, Maharashtra is suffering from a loss of reason. In Mumbai, the forest department undermines the victims of man-leopard conflict in Mumbai as encroachers. People settle down in tens of thousands on the margins of a national park. Experts theorise on lofty models of harmony. Civil society groups peddle tokenism as solutions. And now, the politicians want to cleanse Aarey Colony of leopards.

It is possible to trap and shift every leopard sighted in Aarey Colony. Only it will be a never-ending exercise. The leopards of Aarey are part of the population that lives in Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) and will keep showing up, unless all leopards are removed from SGNP itself. That too may not solve the problem as leopards are known to move into SGNP from other parts of the state.

If nothing short of extermination will free the Aarey colony of leopards, how can the residents escape conflict?

The forested stretches around the settlements should be avoided, especially by children who often take short-cuts through bushland because the BMC dragged its feet over launching a bus service to the nearest school 5 km away. It is unclear why the forest department or NGOs failed to move the city transport department for over a year or run a school bus themselves.

The area should be cleared of garbage piles that attract feral dogs and pigs that in turn draw leopards. More toilets should be installed so that residents do not have to squat in the open and be mistaken by leopards for prey animals. Mumbai's many civil society groups take pride in garbage collection drives or awareness campaigns but have so far failed to tap into government or voluntary schemes to offer any permanent solution to either.

Since conflict can only be minimised and never ruled out, sporadic cases of injury and death demand prompt and reasonable compensation. The indifference of the forest department has not helped bruised sentiments here. If anything, it made just compensation for victims an addendum in Sena MLA Waikar’s PIL.

On paper, the political stake is the safety of 1,800 tribal families in the 29 padas. But Aarey colony has seen a nearly tenfold jump in population -- from less than 8000 in 1995 to over 75000 -- in just two decades. With rapid influx of labourers, those belonging to tribes such as Warli or Malhar-Koli have become minorities. This shift in demography has also worsened conflict.

"Imagine the pressure of such a population boom. Unlike the tribals who are often accepting of the leopard's ways, the new settlers are aggressive," points out biologist Krishna Tiwari who has been studying the leopards of SGNP for over a decade. "Not only Aarey, the Mumbai suburbs with malls and apartment complexes are rapidly closing in on the forest. Forget an eco-sensitive zone, a functional buffer area (for SGNP) seems a big ask."

There is no reason why these post-1995 settlers who have no attachment to the area cannot be rehabilitated elsewhere in the city. But it is naturally convenient for politicians to seek removal of leopards instead.

During a meeting under the chairmanship of the chief secretary in January 2012, it was decided that a survey would determine the populations of the original residents of Aarey colony since 1861, of settlers who moved in before 1995 and those who came after 1995. The report was expected in three months. It is almost two years since.

Thanks Mr Moily, for Disregarding Science and Common Sense

Reversing the environment ministry’s longstanding opposition to genetically modified food crops, minister-with-a-mission Veerappa Moily has cleared field trials. Never mind that an SC–appointed expert panel found too many holes in their safety and regulatory regime. All eyes will now be on the court because unlike government policies, transgenic changes are irreversible once unleashed.

Yahoo News, 7 March, 2014

Just before the Lok Sabha election dates were announced and the model code of conduct came into force, Minister for Environment and Forests Veerappa Moily accomplished the last of the three major tasks he was entrusted with to push his government’s growth agenda.

After stalling the notification of Ecologically Sensitive Areas in 60,000 sq km of the Western Ghats and clearing the Posco steel plant by delinking it from the proposed integrated port and mining projects in Odisha, Moily has now reversed his ministry’s position and backed the ministries of agriculture and science to allow field trials of genetically modified (GM) food crops.

All of this took Moily just nine weeks. His prime minister should be proud, and relieved. Within three years of his 2005 US visit, Manmohan Singh got the Indo-US nuclear deal ratified by Parliament. The struggle to introduce GM food crops under the Indo-US strategic partnership in agriculture conceived during the same visit has taken so much longer.

India and the US are unlikely partners in agriculture, though. In 2008, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development report by the UN said that the secret of global food security was in ‘back to basics’ agriculture and that many risks of biotechnology were as yet unknown. India ratified the report. The US did not.

But Manmohan Singh’s heart must have always been in the right place. Two years after then-Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh had imposed an indefinite moratorium on commercial planting of Bt brinjal, in an interview to Science in February 2012, the prime minister rued that “NGOs, often funded from the United States and the Scandinavian countries,” did not let him “make use of genetic engineering technologies to increase the productivity of our agriculture”.

However, the Parliamentary Standing Committee (PSC) on Agriculture in its August 2012 report (Cultivation of Genetically Modified Food Crops: Prospects and Effects) noted that not only NGOs but a number of government agencies objected to transgenic food, underlining the need for setting up an overarching bio-safety – and not merely biotechnology – regulatory authority.

Amid the din, the government failed to reach any consensus on the draft Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Bill. The debate again gathered steam in March 2013 when the reconstituted Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), a statutory body under the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), approved field trials of around 200 odd varieties of food (including cauliflower, rice, wheat, tomato, potato, okra, brinjal and mustard) and non-food crops. In July 2013, then-Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan wrote to the prime minister that her ministry wanted to keep the field trials in abeyance till the formation of the BRAI, as the Supreme Court was hearing a PIL on the issue. She also pointed out that while the ministries of agriculture and science promoted GM crops, the MoEF’s role was regulatory.

Natarajan’s opposition scuttled the government’s plan to take a unanimous stand in favour of immediate field trials before the SC. By then, the legal battle had been going on for eight years. It was in 2005 that activist Aruna Rodrigues filed a PIL against lack of transparency and conflict of interest in the government’s biotechnology regulation mechanism.

Even before Natarajan wrote to the PM, the SC had in May 2012 constituted a Technical Expert Committee (TEC) to examine the safety regulations of the proposed field trials. One of the six committee members agreed upon by the MoEF and Rodrigues did not participate in the proceedings. Instead, the SC allowed the agriculture ministry to fill in the slot with an expert of its choice – Rajendra Singh Paroda, former director general of Indian Agriculture Research Institute – after the TEC submitted its interim report in October 2012. In July 2013, this controversial new member did not sign the final TEC report, which called for an indefinite moratorium on field trials of GM food crops pending fundamental improvements in the regulatory system.

Immediately, the Association of Biotech Led Enterprises-Agriculture Group attacked the TEC’s findings as “anti-science and anti-research” that would “severely dent the future of the country's farmers besides destroying the domestic private and public sector research.” On the other hand, around 250 scientists and researchers from various institutions of India wrote to the PM, throwing their weight behind the TEC report. We will return to the TEC's findings later. 

The jury is still out on the environmental and health safety of GM food. If anything, there isincreasing evidence against it. And after two decades in the US, it is becoming clearer that GM cropsdo not yield more than the conventional ones. But they do create super pests and weeds.

None of these concerns have stalled the march of the GM giants into India’s seed industry, which is billed to grow to Rs 10,700 crore by 2015. A switch to GM crops prohibits farmers from saving seeds for subsequent harvesting. They must buy whatever seed variety the company sells every season. For example, Monsanto already controls 90 percent of India’s cotton areas.

What has India’s response been? In 2006, when the government signed a deal with the US on strategic partnership in agriculture and food security, our Planning Commission included Monsanto, Walmart and Archer Daniel Midland as board members of the Indo-US Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture. Not surprising, because the GM industry funds and controls almost all agricultural research in America and the safety regulators themselves are former industry bigwigs. 

In July 2009, then-Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office Prithviraj Chavan wrote to then-Health Minister Dr Anbumani Ramadoss, allaying his fears about the potential health impact of GM food. In that letter, Chavan quoted extensively and verbatim from promotional materials of the industry, including the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, a quasi-scientific body funded by Monsanto.

By then, the government had already initiated the process of shifting the regulatory authority from under the environment ministry (GEAC) to the science ministry (BRAI), while keeping the health ministry totally out of the loop. The BRAI Bill still awaits passage, but the attempt to undermine the health and environmental concerns by turning the GM crops into a mere biotechnological issue has been consistent since.
 

A Tough Trial
 
In such an atmosphere of expediency, what prompted Natarajan to keep the field trial on hold was a string of categorical warnings in the SC-appointed TEC’s report.
Consider these:

Contamination: The TEC cautioned against allowing field trials on land leased by the applicants to avoid the possibility that the plots might be used for a different purpose after the trials. It also pointed out that the government was leaving the onus of bio-safety on the applicants.

For instance, India is believed to be the original home of the brinjal, with some 30 species of wild and cultivated varieties. These include potential weed species that can cross to brinjal. The TEC flagged the risk of an insect-resistant gene being passed on to a weed through cultivation of GM brinjal and increasing its ‘weediness’ manifold. Forget brinjal, India also has weedy relatives of cultivated rice.

The TEC quoted the report on Bt-brinjal (EE-1 Environmental Risk Assessment) by Dr Doug Gurian-Sherman: "Given the widespread concern about gene flow, it is remarkable that there appears to be no assessment of possible harm from gene flow from Bt brinjal to wild brinjal relatives in India...”

Segregation, health and import: The Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, admitted that it would not be possible to segregate GM from non-GM material during the overall process of collection, handling, and storage in India. But the Indian laws require labeling of packaged food. The inability to segregate GM and non-GM food products, the TEC noted, would also make it impossible to carry out post-release monitoring for health effects.

This will also have serious implication on export, say, of rice now worth Rs 12,000 crore per year. Though GM rice trials were not being permitted in areas where basmati rice is grown, the TEC wondered how stringently it would be possible to enforce such control at the production level once GM rice was approved for commercial release.

Herbicide tolerance: The panel found the weed-resistance technology completely unsuitable for India. It may work for large farm sizes of hundreds of acres, whereas the average farm size in India is just 3.3 acres. Besides, it will have serious socio-economic impact on major sections of rural society where manual weeding is a source of livelihood.

Low capacity: The TEC found significant biological differences between Bt and control samples in the case of cotton. Shockingly, these problems had gone unnoticed and unaddressed in the course of the regulatory process leading to approval. The scrutiny of the bio-safety information was being done, the TEC said, by a panel that lacked full-time personnel qualified for the purpose.

Bad data: For health safety checks, the EC found that in several cases the methodology and results were not clearly reported, making the statistics unreliable. The TEC found the information provided in GM dossiers to be cursory. Examination of the molecular data by the TEC pointed to the need for the submissions to be scrutinized in detail by dedicated independent scientists.

Indian origin: Till now, no GM crop that is intended primarily for food production has been commercially released in its center of origin. The US restricts Bt-cotton (not even a food crop) in Hawaii where a weed related to cotton is found. Unlike the 1960s, the TEC observed, there was no major shortage of food in India now warranting such desperation.

Oil, not food: By far the largest deployment of transgenics worldwide is in soybean, corn, cotton, and canola, all of which are used primarily for oil or feed after processing. A case can also be made in India for oil seeds that require high import. Also, since oil is used after processing and refinement, the safety concerns are less than that of direct consumption of GM crops.

So far, 18 GM food crops – cauliflower, cabbage, corn, rice, wheat, tomato, groundnut, potato, sorghum, okra, brinjal, mustard, papaya, watermelon and sugarcane – are awaiting field trials in India. Nowhere in the world are Bt-transgenics being harvested in large amounts as major food crops directly used for human consumption. The TEC could not find any compelling reason for India to be the first to do so.

But Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar would have none of it. Bulldozing state Agriculture Minister Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil's resistance, his home state Maharashtra issued no-objection certificates to 28 applications for GM crop trials last year. The seven private applicants have been waiting for the GEAC nod since. Last December, the prime minister had had enough of Natarajan’s restraint. And now Moily has delivered well in time.

Rodrigues remains unfazed. “The next (SC) hearing is in the middle of this April. But I’ll ask for an earlier date to submit a supplementary affidavit now and seek an (interim) order against the (field) trials,” she says. “One could see it coming as they brought him (Moily) to clear the decks. I am dismayed by such brazenness. But the fight will continue.”