mazoomdaar

Are We Upset Because They Are Naked?

2012-01-16T04:05:00.002-05:00

The only vulgar element in the controversy is us pretending to be righteous about restoring an isolated order after upsetting it

TEHELKA, 13 January, 2011

The so-called human safari in the Jarawa reserve, as exposed by a British publication, seems to have outraged many of us. Watching fellow Indians dance on road for a handful of throwaways is certainly embarrassing. But before righteous indignation feeds on sheer hypocrisy, there is possibly room for a few questions.

Are we embarrassed because the Jarawas were entertaining tourists for a pittance? All over the country, hundreds of forest resorts organise customary tribal song and dance, mostly in hotel lawns or by the poolside. In most cases, what performers get is a free meal and a few rupees as tips (unless a foreign tourist or two suddenly feel generous). This is even part of the government’s tourism policy to benefit “local stakeholders” in tribal areas.

I recall numerous evenings when hotel guests enjoyed their drinks and discussions in the backdrop of such performances that inspired no more than casual curiosity. On occasion, a few guests would have turned their chairs to actually face and enjoy a performance, or exchange patronisingly lewd comments about the dancers going through their routines. I have never heard the media objecting to “insulting so many poor tribals and their traditional art” and that too for a meal and very little money.

So are we embarrassed because the Jarawas were, as TV channels keep harping, dancing nude? Hang on. Were they made to strip for entertainment? Any anthropologist familiar to Negritos can tell that the Jarawas do not normally wear clothes or attach any erotic value to their breasts (just like the act of kissing is alien to their idea of foreplay). It is only natural that they would dance in their traditional attire which is limited to string skirts and headbands.

Or does a sense of exotic voyeurism in tourists make the dance itself vulgar? Many a time, I have seen people leering at traditionally over-clad tribal dancers in Himachal (Malana), Rajasthan (Kalbelia), Gujarat (Banjara), Arunachal (Bodo) or Karnataka (Toda). Besides, many Indian tribes—several sub-groups of Gond tribals for example—other than the Jarawas dress minimally and do tourist routines without embarrassing too many of us. And leering and voyeurism, needless to say, is limited neither to attire, nor culture nor geography.

But if this outrage is about ‘exploitation’ or ‘commodification’ of tribals in general, what about the lot of those non-tribal or less marginalised thousands even in cities who are not fortunate enough to perform for crowds that actually queue up to buy tickets for their shows and are often treated by restaurant clients as nothing more than human décor or, worse, readily available? Or do we believe that while others, less isolated tribals included, are making a conscious choice for livelihood, the Jarawas are being taken for a ride? That they are innocent wild creatures who do not understand what is going on? If that is the cause for our outrage, we could not be more wrong or patronising.

The Jarawas are simply exercising a new choice brought to them by their proximity to outsiders forced on them by the Indian state. They eagerly line up on both sides of the highway that cut through their forests during the three-month tourist season. But they also know the limits of the deal. Like all Negritos, they are spontaneous dancers. So it is not a big deal for the Jarawas to break into a little jig for something in return. It would be interesting to note the Jarawas’ reaction had the tourists asked them to do something other than what is their second nature.

Then again, is it, as researchers point out, the isolated tribe’s lack of immunity to contemporary diseases that make us worry? The Jarawas have been subject to frequent friendship missions since the days of the raj. It is true that their hostility towards outsiders saved them from the rapid extermination suffered by the Great Andamanese due to syphilis contracted on an epidemic scale from early batches of notorious convicts and their equally wayward custodians.

Today, rape is not so common and anyway, better medicines for venereal infections have been long developed. However, the frequency of ‘contact missions’ to befriend the Jarawas only increased after Independence. So did the frequency of Jarawa raids of the orchards owned by settlers who encroached upon their forests. Between 1998 and 2004, when the Jarawa youth suddenly decided to reach out to the world outside, interaction with non-tribal settlers became routine. They learnt to barter or sell honey, etc for alcohol and tobacco. During this time, all government hospitals bordering the tribal reserve opened special Jarawa wards.

Evidently, the Jarawas have been in regular touch with the local settlers at least for one-and-a-half decades. Moreover, contraction of diseases does not require handing out edible stuff by tourists (anyway, most sarkari ‘contact missions’ did that). Once the Andaman Trunk Road was in place and traffic became regular through the Jarawa reserve, nothing stopped the tribals to scavenge on leftovers discarded from passing vehicles.

Of course, interaction with outsiders has not been beneficial to the Jarawas. More than growing a taste for biscuits, they have taken to chewing tobacco and drinking. After romanticising for years over ‘mainstreaming’ them, the administration was at a loss when the Jarawa youth decided to mingle with local settlers. Thankfully, the ancient tribe has retreated inside their forest once again since 2004. But the new addicts still depend on the outside world for their fix. But as long as the highway keeps bringing the increasingly-less-alien world deep inside their shrinking sanctuary, they are free to choose how to engage with outsiders however outrageous it might seem to us.

It speaks a lot for our civilised benevolence that the Jarawas are slowly but steadily going the ways of their ancient almost-extinct neighbours—the Great Andamanese and the Onge. The Sentinelis are the only exception thanks to the impregnable coral reefs that make landing in their little island (where they are confined) treacherous for most months and the tribe’s unwavering hostile refusal to sustained overtures of ‘contact’. They survived the 2005 tsunami on their own even though their little island was tilted by the onslaught.

Unfortunately, the mainstream has lost the opportunity to learn from the traditional wisdom of the ancient, their knowledge of the archipelago’s medicinal treasures, or nature’s apparently mysterious ways that helped the tribes survive in one of the world’s most hostile places for over 30,000 years. Instead, the sole inhabitants of the archipelago about 200 years back have been reduced to less than 0.1 per cent of the present population by rapid extermination and influx of outsiders. Even a decade after a Supreme Court order to shut down the Anadaman Trunk Road to safeguard whatever remains of the Jarawas, the highway is still operational as a lifeline to the mainstream ferrying disease, addiction, and hypocrisy.

Frankly, the only outrageous, even vulgar, element in the present controversy is our callous enthusiasm in upsetting a perfect isolated order by criminal intrusion and then pretending to be righteous about restoring it.

A Close Look At Didi's Numbers

2012-01-16T04:01:00.004-05:00

The TMC seems to have a workable strategy for success without the Congress

OPEN, 12 January, 2011

KOLKATA ~ We know the Congress is in no hurry to lose the Trinamool Congress (TMC). On paper, the Samajwadi Party’s 22 MPs can compensate for the TMC’s 19 in the Lok Sabha. But even a great show in the five state polls will not take the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) anywhere near the halfway mark in the Rajya Sabha, where the TMC is all set to increase its strength to eight this year. The TMC also needs to stay in the UPA so that Mamata can squeeze the Centre for funds to fuel the beleaguered Bengal economy.

Yet, the war of words is getting ugly. Clearly, the Bengal Congress is in no mood to cut another lopsided deal for the forthcoming Panchayat polls where the party controls 99 zila parishads, compared to the TMC’s 120. Also, the TMC’s growth plan calculates that, after the 2010 landslide, eating into the anti-Left space occupied by the Congress is easier than making further inroads into the residual Left vote bank of die-hards.

The TMC has already broken away two Congress Panchayat units in north Bengal. Understandably, the state Congress leadership feels that the party is better off contesting the Panchayat polls on its own. So far, the pressure of the High Command has kept such sentiments in check.

So Mamata’s routine provocations are crafted to incite the Bengal Congress in such a way that she does not have to do the dirty job ofsnapping ties. Curiously, TMC strategists prefer to disassociate with the Congress in phases, starting at the Panchayat level, followed by the Assembly, and then the Centre.

To believe TMC insiders, all of these are part of the party’s well thought-out ‘Congress policy’. First, the TMC wants to dump and marginalise the Congress in the state, aware that the latter is too hamstrung, for now, to return the compliment at the Centre. Subsequently, the TMC will evaluate the fortunes of the UPA in the run-up to the 2014 general elections and decide whether to contest on its own and dominate the winning alliance with a good number of MPs, or, if the UPA is truly in the dock, strike a pre-poll alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Mamata holds absolute control in south Bengal, where she can reap a handsome majority even if all other parties unite against her. It is in the north that she needs support. Here, the numbers tell an interesting story. Consider the last Assembly polls. In Malda’s Habibpur, the CPM defeated the TMC by a 1.43 per cent swing, while the BJP bagged 20.07 per cent. To estimate the allied contribution of the Congress in the TMC’s vote share, remember that the Congress on its own had managed just 6.58 per cent here in 2006.

In Jalpaiguri’s Dhupguri, the TMC (39.82 per cent) lost narrowly to the CPM (42.25 per cent) and the BJP bagged 10.65 per cent. In 2006, the Congress on its own had managed 2.89 per cent. In Birbhum’s Mayureshwar, 6,520 was the margin of the CPM victory over the TMC. The BJP drew 31,031 (19.46 per cent) votes. In 2006, the Congress vote share here was 8.33 per cent.

The story is repeated in Cooch Behar North where the Forward Bloc defeated the TMC by 2,197 votes and the BJP got 12,608. In Nadia’s Palashipara, the CPM defeated the TMC by 1,652 votes with the BJP cutting away 8,145. In Jalpaiguri’s Madarihat, the BJP came second, with 26 per cent votes, to the RSP (31.93 per cent), drawing much more than the Congress (19.54 per cent).

Not that the trend is entirely north Bengal-specific. For example, In North 24 Parganas’ Sandeshkhali, the CPM beat the TMC by 4,232 votes and the BJP bagged 17,425. But the BJP evidently has a bigger presence in the northern districts, where, barring north Dinajpur, its vote share is higher than its humble state average of 4.04 per cent.

Out of 95 seats in the eight districts of Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Cooch Behar, South Dinajpur, Malda, Murshidabad, Birbhum and Nadia, BJP-backed candidates won four, the party came second in one, and in 44 seats it bagged more votes than the victory margin of the winning candidate. In the remaining 199 seats in the south, its vote crossed the victory margin only in 35 seats.

The same trend was apparent in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. The BJP won the Darjeeling seat. In Alipurduar and Jalpaiguri, the party bagged 21.40 and 9.15 per cent votes, respectively. It made a mark in seats such as Balurghat (6.82 per cent), Malda North (6.68 per cent), Balurghat (6.82 per cent) or Bolpur (6.50 per cent). Down south, the party’s vote share dwindled. For example, in coastal Kanthi, the BJP managed 2.84 per cent of votes and in Kolkata’s Jadavpur, just 2.34 per cent.

The BJP still cannot influence outcomes in too many seats even in north Bengal. In many constituencies, the TMC-Congress combine won in 2010 despite the BJP slicing away big chunks of non-Left votes. Nevertheless, the BJP’s less-than-pushover status in the north, where the TMC can do with a little help, seems to comfort Mamata’s strategists. Moreover, the TMC will have to offer far fewer seats to the BJP than even a compromised Congress would bargain for.

But, like in 2006, a saffron ally will also distance some of Bengal’s 25 per cent Muslim voters from the TMC. However, Mushirdabad and Malda districts, where the Muslim vote is the most decisive, are traditional Congress strongholds where the TMC (with one seat each in 2010) cannot anyway hope to get a foothold on its own.

In the four southern districts—North 24 Parganas, East Medinipur, Hooghly and Kolkata—with a strong Muslim presence, the TMC holds absolute sway (51–61 per cent votes in 2010), and enjoys staunch Muslim support thanks to its role in the Nandigram (East Medinipur) and Singur (Hooghly) agitations. In Birbhum and South 24 Parganas, though, the TMC may suffer if it loses a chunk of Muslim votes.

So what is Mamata’s game? In any case, looking to maximise the party’s numbers in Parliament and play kingmaker, the West Bengal Chief Minister may not be keen at all on a pre-poll alliance. But irrespective of her future with the BJP, she is all set to snap ties with the Congress. It is only a question of time, really.

Think out of the forest

2011-12-07T01:29:00.004-05:00

The SC is likely take a call on wildlife tourism, but the solution doesn’t lie inside the forest but around it

Sunday Economic Times, 4 Dec, 2011 (a shorter version was published)

The stakes are high. At least five million tourists visit India’s forests every year. The polarisation is stark. Conservationists, forest officials, even scientists, are on opposite sides of the battle line. The question before the apex court: Should India’s best forests, made inviolate by shifting local communities out, serve as tourist hubs?

To understand why the premise of this debate is misleading, let’s try a few simpler questions.

Can wildlife be saved in protected forests without the support of local communities? Wild animals do not follow manmade boundaries and are bound to use unprotected areas where their wellbeing depends solely on local goodwill. Where people are hostile, wild animals get killed.

But can we expect people, who pay almost the entire cost of conservation, to be sympathetic to wildlife? Commercial extraction of timber and forest produce is not allowed in a sanctuary. Regular crop raids by wild herbivores frustrate agriculture and predators kill livestock. Green laws restrict industries or mines, limiting opportunities for local employment.

So, can the local economy around forests be boosted without compromising the wilderness, or better still, while creating incentive for conservation? Only eco-tourism can do the trick. Even converting agricultural fields into tourist camps is a win-win deal: the farmer’s liability – an invading herd of deer – is the hotelier’s asset to flaunt.

So why the debate? Is it because the government is shifting poor villagers from critical tiger forests and the ethical dilemma of entertaining rich tourists in the same space weighs heavy on some minds? But conservation is a scientific, and not an ethical, concern. Shifting villages out ensures less competition for natural resources inside forests because villagers use water, wood, forest produce and, on occasion, kill wild animals in retaliation or for food.

But does the equation change if tourists lodge inside the same forests? For example, Corbett’s Dhikala tourist complex is bigger than most forest villages. It is sheer hypocrisy to shunt villagers out and allow tourists to squander the same resources.

But do wildlife safaris take a similar toll on forests? Safari tourists are not allowed to alight from their vehicles or elephants. Yes, the dust kicked up by vehicles is an irritant; as is crowding of the wild. But since there is no scientific study yet on the true impact of such disturbance, jungle safaris should be acceptable in any part of the forest within a set of strict common-sense regulations.

The real danger of tourism is not inside the forest but around it. The mushrooming hotels and resorts pump out scarce groundwater, often to fill swimming pools, dump garbage indiscriminately, burn forest wood in their kitchen, even quarry local stone for construction. These walled properties allow little access to animals and anyway their floodlit lawns and noisy discos drive wildlife away.

There are some economic spin-offs, in ancillary services, of having so many hotels. But, in the absence of local capacity building, outsiders fill most of the lucrative positions – from the front desk to the kitchen. The locals who do benefit from tourism are only a small part of the population. More than two lakh people live in the 96 villages and two towns adjacent to Ranthambhore. Just about 5000 are directly employed in tourism.

A recent proposal by an MoEF panel to make these hotels share a steep 30 per cent of their turnover with local communities is a no-brainer. What we need are targeted regulations for tourism facilities within a 5-km-radius of our best forests. For example, they should compulsorily maintain a certain built-up to open area ratio, limit use of resources such as water and firewood, discard artificial fencing, halogen lamps and amplifiers in the open, and follow a safe garbage disposal policy. Hotels must also invest in local capacity-building and recruit two-thirds of workforce locally (paying them an equivalent proportion of the total wage) in a phased manner.

Many existing properties have little open land. While those blocking key wildlife corridors have to be demolished, others can compensate by purchasing equivalent land adjacent to forests and leave it for wildlife and forest regeneration. This could be the first step towards the development of vibrant buffer forests where the government wants to shift the pressure of tourism.

Many quasi-wildlife tourists demand swimming pools and night clubs close to forests. Likewise, there are some who would sacrifice most creature comforts for an authentic wildlife experience. So while recreational resorts may be allowed beyond a reasonable buffer, two-room forest rest houses even deep inside tiger forests should be open to tourists who can make do with a hard bed, a basic toilet, a two-course meal and lights out after early dinner.

Corrupt officials in the forest department and the district administration frustrate any attempt at reforms. But the onus is also on the industry. Those players who follow good practices should form a self-regulatory body to ensure responsible and inclusive practices. Tourism has a future in the wild only if the tiger and the tribal do. The courts in their wisdom will give directions, but the cleansing must begin at home.

The Man, the Forest, the Animal

2011-11-22T03:08:00.003-05:00

Corbett national park turns 75. A tribute and a critique

Sunday Economic Times, 20 Nov, 2011

June, 2005. Dhikala was abuzz and under evening curfew. A few months ago, a tigress had given birth to four cubs in neighbouring Sarpduli. Mother and cubs had subsequently moved along the Ramganga river to Dhikala and made for easy sightings. Soon, over-enthusiastic tourists started combing the Sambar road with elephants to pin down the family of five.

Dumps of canteen leftovers invited a good number of scavenging herbivores to the tourist complex boundary every night. The mother tigress stalked those easy preys to feed the family. The arrangement worked reasonably well till a sub-adult cub made an error of judgement. In the last week of May, a canteen worker was mauled outside his quarter late in the night.

As the news spread, the tourist tide swelled further. Sambar road was closed to tourists after the mishap. With curfew on, nobody, including the canteen staff, was allowed to venture out after 7.30 in the evening and dinner was served early in the room. But behind windows, people stayed up long hungry nights for that glimpse of a lifetime.

5 TIGERS, 1 BULL ELEPHANT

On the last day of that tourist season, the sky was sulking since afternoon. Soon after the vehicles and elephants returned from the evening safari, the wind gained strength, and a storm snapped the power supply.

Within minutes, the sun vanished like it does in the hills and the sky sent down early warnings of a heavy downpour. The darkness and the pitter-patter was enough to drive the crowd crazy. Then, the clouds thundered. In a split second flashed five tigers, scaling the complex wall from the riverside.

It was mayhem. The clouds continued to roar intermittently, lighting up the lawn and returning it to pitch darkness again. And in those brief moments, the tigers could be seen, each time at different spots, walking among the people. Children and women shrieked, men yelled, many scampered in the dark. Within minutes, the big cats disappeared in the forest. Nobody suffered a scratch. One forest official broke a leg running for his life.

Corbett is full of such surprises, and delicious scares. Few wild experiences compare to the numb thrill of taking a narrow road, flanked by a gorge and a steep slope, at an hour when elephants do the traffic duty. Returning one late afternoon from Khinanauli (with special permission, due to an emergency), I was stared down by a mighty bull at 15 feet, who stood guard for what seemed an eternity while his herd climbed up from the river and walked across. No, this giant did not even mock charge, the chill his cold, composed eyes spread was enough.

THE YOUNG JIM

But Corbett is more than its spirited animals or its splendid collection of birds. Very few places compare with this reserve's ever-changing horizons. The moist terai and rocky, porous bhabars at the margins of the Shivalik in the southern parts, the mixed forests dominated by Sal trees around Bijrani, the amazing savannah of Dhikala, the riverine bounty along Ramganga, the frosty heights of Kanda - there are so many Corbetts to surprise one.

After all, this is the stage of that "small boy armed with an old muzzle-loading gun... kept from falling apart by lashings of brass wire" roaming the jungles, "sleeping anywhere he happened to be when night came on...wakened at intervals by the calling of tigers..."

That boy grew up to kill 33 maneaters, 19 of those tigers. Hunter Edward James Corbett. Then he met Frederick Walter Champion, a forester who would be one of India's first naturalists. The hunter became a conservationist. Together, they ensured this spectacular Kumaon wilderness was protected as Asia's first national park, named after Lord Malcom Hailey in 1936. Post-Independence, the park was renamed after its lifeline, the Ramganga river, in 1954. Next year, Jim Corbett died in Kenya. In his honour, the park was re-renamed in 1956. When India launched Project Tiger, the world's most ambitious conservation programme, in 1973, it was only fitting that Corbett was the chosen venue.

COST OF SUCCESS

Today this reserve is one of the few high points of Project Tiger's success and also one of the world's top wildlife destinations. But the tourism boom has exacted its cost. More than 100 small and big hotels flourishing around Corbett need 20 per cent occupancy to stay in business. That amounts to 2.2 lakh double bed rooms or more than 4 lakh tourists. Even after increasing the park's carrying capacity, it cannot allow entry to more than 2.4 lakh a year.

Clearly, hundreds of thousands of tourists, who apparently do not even enter the reserve, crowd Corbett for extended sessions of corporate unwinding or rowdy weddings. To accommodate them, more and more multi-star hotels come up behind high walls, block wildlife corridors, add to sound and light pollution, drain vital resources like water, and leave behind tonnes of garbage in ecologically fragile areas.

LOCALS VS ANIMALS

At the same time, with little benefit of conservation or tourism being shared with the local communities, the level of intolerance towards animals is rising. In the recent past, a number of Corbett tigers were removed as so-called maneaters; some others died mysteriously. Without benefitting the local stakeholders, no celebration will help secure Corbett's future.

The efforts to save this marvel of Kumaon wilderness began long before Jim Corbett by the likes of Major Ramsay (1870s) or ER Stevans (1900s). But Jim's true legacy lies in understanding the wild, and its most awesome mascot, the tiger. In increasingly conflict-ridden times, we should not forget that little boy, who once crept up a bush while stalking jungle fowl and saw "the bush heaving and a tiger walking out on the far side and, on clearing the bush, turning round and looking at the boy with an expression on its face which said as clearly as any words, 'Hello, kid, what the hell are you doing here?' and, receiving no answer, turning round and walking away very slowly without once looking back."

The Madness in Her Method

2011-11-22T03:02:00.003-05:00

A desperate Bengal ousted the Left, seeking ‘poribarton’. Six months on, Mamata Banerjee is as vocal as she was while lavishing poll promises, yet ‘change’ looks elusive as ever. So, what’s holding back poribarton?

OPEN, 19 November, 2011

Popular wisdom often cliché. And Charles Darwin, if not Alphonse Karr, is well known anywhere in the world. But in Bengal, they are still quoted routinely to drive home a point.

Yes, it took three-and-a-half bleak decades. But when eventually Bengal bit the bullet, it was all about poribarton— from a regressive, anachronistic government and an all-encompassing ruling party. So this May, after defying anti-incumbency for 34 years, the longest serving elected Left government fell to the English naturalist’s theory, its failure to adapt finally catching up with it.

Today, it is the turn of the French novelist. West Bengal has become Poshchim Bongo; Tagore songs are adding to the noise at Kolkata’s traffic signals; and former Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has gone into a permanent sulk. But six months after the momentous regime change, things in Bengal remain much the same.

But a fondness for cliché is hardly something to write home about.

BIG ASK, NO INTENT
It was never going to be easy to turn Bengal around. Even in its rout, the Left secured 41 per cent of the vote. The party is deeply entrenched in the state’s social and administrative systems: from cultural icons to teachers to bureaucrats, the majority was either co-opted by the party or were bona fide Left cadres. They cheerfully toed the party line for personal gain. It is practically impossible to replace this corrupt and defunct system. It is one thing to have defeated the Left, but bringing about change at the grassroots (literal translation of Trinamool) was always going to be a tall order.

The state’s infrastructure is in tatters and rebuilding it will need heavy investment. The Maoist conflict and unrest in Jangalmahal in Purulia district or Lalgarh in West Midnapore were horribly mismanaged by the Left to flashpoints. The hills in the north are suffering from a longstanding conflict. Political control over public affairs, blinkered populism, poor work ethics and the subsequent loss of industry, jobs and capital have reduced Bengal to a socio-economic blackhole.

Given the odds, few would have expected Mamata Banerjee to fulfill her lavish electoral promises. Yet, after handing her a generous mandate for a turnaround, her voters have reason to doubt her very intent. Consider these:

» Admitted, Mamata inherited empty coffers. But the early euphoria over the ouster of the Left would have allowed Mamata to come up with a few tough fiscal measures to raise funds. A former journalist close to the new CM says she has not lost her pre-election populist reflexes—she has even scrapped the water tax Buddhadeb levied under the Centre’s Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission.

Mamata is dealing in symbolism that does not cost money: the law to return Singur land to farmers; the visit to Darjeeling and Sikkim; the tough posturing on Teesta waters; and playing the media on Jangalmahal and Gorkhaland. All this while hoping and looking expectantly at the Centre for a bailout, and embarrassing herself with bargains on the fuel price hike.

» Cashing in on the Left excesses at Lalgarh and Jangalmahal, Mamata had promised to punish the guilty, stop police atrocities, withdraw false cases and open dialogue. But once in power, she did a volte-face, say organisations working in these areas. Nobody was released; in fact, fresh arrests were made; the joint forces simply changed strategy to create an illusion of a ceasefire and focused on targeted operations; those guilty of mass murder and rape walked free.

An activist of the Nari Ijjat Bachao Committee offers an example. At Chanpadoba under Belpahari police station, the village commons had built a health centre in 2008. But the joint forces fighting Maoists soon occupied the building. After the much-anticipated regime change, villagers tried to inaugurate the health centre on 14 August. The new administration and its forces did not allow them.

Instead, Mamata is promising development and 10,000 temporary jobs as special police officers. But there are few takers for “symbolic development without democratic rights” among the locals, who dismiss the job scheme as Mamata’s ploy to trigger a fratricide among tribals. What made matters worse was the involvement of the Bhairav Bahini (an armed gang backed by the TMC) in the operations of the joint forces.

In the run-up to the polls, Mamata rushed to stand by every victim of alleged police/Left atrocity. However, in Jhar- gram to address a rally on 16 October, she refused to visit a woman in a nearby hospital who had consumed poison the day before after being assaulted at her Belpa- hari home by cops on the lookout for her husband. The victim’s husband says the CM turned away the locals who met her, saying “Jangalmahal women lie a lot”.

» The TMC’s command structure is far from robust and too many goons who had earlier served Left interests have simply changed sides, as have some renegade Communists. While some of these new entrants are taking on old-timers in their new party, others are busy settling old scores with the comrades they deserted.

Mamata’s own conduct undermines her promise of restoring the much-politicised state police to a professional, independent force. The Chief Minister made national headlines on 9 November by storming a South Kolkata police station to free a couple of goons from her own city neighbourhood who had been detained for vandalising the police station.

“No Left cadre would have publicly assaulted a police officer. No Left minister or even leader would have gone to a thana to release hooligans. Of course, they would have ensured the same results without getting personally involved,” says a veteran IPS officer.

» With every Mamata loyalist and his uncle turning up for their share of the spoils, former incumbents in key posts (some even deserving) have been summarily removed. Members of the TMC education cell, many of them with a Left history, have been handpicked to head bodies such as the School Service Commission, the Primary Education Board and the West Bengal Board for Secondary Education. Even non-Left factions in different university and college teachers’ unions complain that the new government’s attempts at reform are as arbitrary and unilateral as its predecessor’s. The new government has also redrawn the lawyers’ panels for all its departments.

»The new Chief Minister faces an acute shortage of people she can depend on to get the job done. She got elected many nondescript carpetbaggers who can contribute little as MLAs or ministers. And of the few who can, she doesn’t seem to trust any.

As a result, she takes decisions for all ministries, talks to the media on all issues (often incoherently) and even decides which sofa goes where in the secretariat. Six months into the job, there is no government spokesperson and no second-rung leadership in the party. And there is only so much a one-woman government can do, even if Mamata often puts in 18 hours a day.

TALE OF TWO CMS
Since she entered politics, Mamata’s biggest success has been to stand up against the Left bullies and show that it is possible to do so. But her three-decade-long fight could still not have brought about this regime change but for a metamorphosis she had no role in. The new CM has good reason to learn from her predecessor’s failings. Consider these:

» In 1993, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya resigned from the Jyoti Basu government. Frustrated with the rot in the Left movement, he wrote a candid play—Dussamay (Bad Times)—to record his disapproval. A staunch idealist, he flaunted his anti-capitalism credentials, at times rather naively, by refusing to attend functions hosted by industrialists.

Cut to 2006. Buddhadeb has won his first poll as Chief Minister and the first person he meets after taking oath is Ratan Tata. Eager to resurrect the state economy and create his own legacy, he starts wooing capital, and, recalls a former bureaucrat, makes new friends in a hurry. So dramatic is the switch in loyalties that he unceremoniously dumps one of his most trusted aides, a bureaucrat-turned-friend, for cautioning him about a dubious businessman. Said businessman has already won over the new government by modifying investment plans on the thousands of acres he was promised by Buddhadeb.

Years before she became Chief Minister, Mamata stood by an upright Muslim IPS officer who took on the Left government. She went so far as to put it in writing that she would appoint this officer the Commissioner of Kolkata Police if she came to power. Soon after she became the Union Railway Minister in the second UPA Government, Mamata called him to Delhi to work in her ministry.

Cut to 2011, and the new Chief Minister has appointed as Kolkata’s Commission- er of Police RK Pachnanda, a “Left stooge” whom she accused of tearing her sari and biting her during a protest rally in 1998 and vowed to punish once she became CM. Having in fact superseded the IPS veteran she once backed by appointing Pachnanda, she kept the officer out of the police force and offered him a posting in the CMO that he has since declined.

The U-turn is apparently a fallout of the good cop’s refusal to toe her line in the Railway Ministry, where Mamata sat on his report against a top security officer from the UP cadre. The new CM, claim sources, decided in favour of a more “pliant officer to ensure smooth functioning of the government”.

» Buddhadeb at the helm also did away with the regular line of command. For instance, no top cop could ever approach Jyoti Basu directly in any crisis. He would go to the home secretary (HS), who, if required, would consult the chief secretary (CS), and it was up to the CS to decide if he wanted to refer the matter to the CM. At whatever level a decision was taken, it was communicated down the hierarchy. In effect, a top cop would never know if a decision came from the HS or CS or CM.

While independent judgement at different levels would make for a better decision, the CM could distance himself from any decision gone wrong. But Buddhadeb sat with top bureaucrats and cops in his office and discussed issues like club buddies would. A few candid IAS and IPS officers could still have salvaged these debates, but the CM increasingly handpicked yesmen who rarely interrupted him.

Most of Mamata’s decisions too are unilateral with little input from the bureaucracy, cabinet or party colleagues. It’s not a coincidence either that none of her top ministers—former home secretary Manish Gupta, former Andrew Yule HR executive Partha Chatterjee or former FICCI secretary general Amit Mitra—has a political footing. The only senior Congress leader in the cabinet, Manas Bhunia, handles irrigation. Even Subrata Mukherjee, Mamata’s political mentor who gave her the ticket to contest her first Lok Sabha election in 1984, has been assigned an insignificant portfolio.

She went out of her way to accommodate a few officers from the Union Railway ministry not because of their record, but simply because she prefers, say sources in her own party, officers who will carry out orders.

» Buddhadeb has a tendency to take hasty decisions. In the early 1990s, recalls a senior police officer, the legendary owner-editor of the Amrita Bazar Patrika-Jugantar group, nonagenarian Tushar Kanti Ghosh was admitted to a Kolkata hospital. “I received an arrest warrant against Ghosh for irregularities in the employee provident fund. It was out of the question arresting him in that condition. I informed the Commissioner (of Police), who decided to consult Buddhadeb, the minister in charge of police affairs.”

When Buddhadeb heard the officers, he ordered Ghosh’s immediate arrest. “Alarmed, I pointed out that we might have to arrest the hospital bed as well. But the minister insisted, saying the Ghosh family were traditional Congress supporters. When I requested him to think over his decision, he left in a huff for the CM’s room.” Within minutes he returned and asked the officers to sit on the warrant. Jyoti Basu was apparently furious that Buddhadeb even thought of arresting someone of Ghosh’s age and stature in his condition.

Mamata’s political reflexes smack of the same impulsiveness. Playing the same partisan card the Left favoured, Mamata went to the extent of showing a number of cultural icons—writer Sunil Ganguly, poet Shankho Ghosh, playwright Mohit Chattopadhyay and actor Soumitra Chatterjee—the door in different government committees in favour of juniors such as Arpita Ghosh or Shaoli Mitra from the TMC camp.

POWER RUSH
There is certainly a pattern to Mamata’s recent utterances and action (or lack of it) in crises, ranging from the Maoist standoff to infant deaths in city and district hospitals. Sample these:

» “There are no Maoists-Phaoists in West Bengal.”

» “I’ll give you one last chance. How many jobs do you want? How many roads and hospitals? I will provide everything you want if you drop the gun.”

» “I am concentrating on industry. On infant deaths, if you still have some queries, ask my health secretary. Please don’t disturb me.”

» “Most of the babies who were admitted to the hospital weighed around 300 grams.”

At a recent function in Kolkata, where a road—Sindhu Kanu Dahar—was named after two heroes of the Santhal rebellion, she repeatedly enquired from the stage if Dahar’s descendants had made it to the inauguration. Dahar, in Santhali, means road.

Claiming that 90 per cent of her poll promises to minorities had already been fulfilled, she announced regularisation of 10,000 madrassas. Only, she never bothered to check if there were indeed 10,000 madrassas in the state.

But gaffes and outbursts may yet do little damage beyond headlines the morning after. In any case, Mamata doesn’t seem to care, having reached the seat of power that has been a lifetime’s work.

It was no mean feat for a lower middle class, godfather-less woman, all of 21, to become general secretary of the Mahila Congress in 1976, but her government’s official website, banglarmukh.com, will have you believe that she accomplished the feat as early as in 1970, as a 15-year-old!

Now that she is CM, she will need more than her natural flair for exaggeration to deliver poribarton.

বাঘ বৃত্তান্ত

2011-11-22T02:52:00.006-05:00

আনন্দবাজার পত্রিকা, ১২ নভেম্বর, ২০১১

অমাবস্যার সন্ধ্যা । খাটো, রোগা গাছগুলোর ঝাঁকড়া জঙ্গলে পথ করে নিতে রুক্ষ কাঁটাজমি ছেড়ে খোলা জিপ হঠাৎ নেমে পড়ল এক পাথুরে নালায় । বছরের এসময়টা জল থাকার কথা নয়, নেইও । কিন্তু পেল্লাই-সাইজের সব বোল্ডার আর এবড়ো-খেবড়ো চাট্টানের ‘রাস্তায়’ জিপসির পিছনে দাঁড়িয়ে ক্যামেরা হাতে নিজের ব্যালেন্সের আর মারুতির অ্যাক্সলের পরীক্ষা নিতে নিতে একবার মনে হল এর চেয়ে নেমে পড়লে হয়ত হেঁটে-বেয়ে এগুনো সহজ হত।

পাথর কেটে জলের যেমন খুশি বানানো এই পথ বেশ গভীর হলেও তেমন চওড়া নয় । ছাগলছানার মত এলোমেলো লাফাতে থাকা গাড়ি এগোচ্ছে দুপাশের দেওয়ালে ঠোকর খেতে খেতে । ইঞ্জিনের মরীয়া শব্দের কারনেই কিনা জানি না, জঙ্গলটা কেমন যেন অদ্ভুত নিঃসাড় । ততক্ষনে সূর্য ডুবেছে । নালার ভেতর থেকে দেখছি মাথার দুধারে গাছতলায়, বেড়িয়ে থাকা শেকড়ে জমছে অন্ধকার । অনেকটা ওপরে কালো ডালপালার ফাঁকে আকাশটা দ্রুত বদলাচ্ছে ঘন বেগুনী থেকে আরও ঘন বেগুনীতে ।

হঠাৎ কানের পাশে বাঁদিকের জঙ্গলটা খানখান হয়ে গেল একটা প্রায় অশরীরী চিল-চিৎকারে । ভালুকের ঘোঁত-ঘোঁত আগে অনেক শুনেছি, কিন্তু গলা ছেড়ে তার এমন আর্ত ডাক-এর অভিজ্ঞতা সেই প্রথম । কি কারনে ভালুকভায়া এত বিচলিত সেটা ঠাউরে ওঠার আগেই ওই তারস্বর চমকে দিল আরেকবার । আমাদের উপস্থিতি নিরাপদ কিনা ভাবছি, ডানদিকের জঙ্গল থেকে, যেন প্রত্যুত্তরেই, হেঁকে উঠলো এক গমগমে বাঘ । ক’মুহূর্তের নীরবতার পর আবার সেই স্নায়ু পঙ্গু করে দেওয়া হা-লু-ম, এবার আরও কাছে ।

বাঘ-ভালুকের এমন কানফাটানো যুগলবন্দিতে ফ্রন্ট-রো সিট পেয়ে যাবো কে জানত । দুই মেজাজি ওস্তাদের মাঝখানে এভাবে কতক্ষন কেটেছে খেয়াল নেই (পরে হিসেব করেছিলাম মাত্র মিনিট পনের) ।

একসময় সওয়াল-জবাবের একটু বিরতিতে খানিক সম্বিত ফিরতে দেখি গাড়ির হেডলাইটের চৌহদ্দির বাইরে সব মুছে দেওয়া ঘুরঘুট্টি রাত ।

অন্ধকারে শুখা নালার বোল্ডার ডিঙিয়ে জিপ্‌সি তখনও এগোবার ভণিতা করছিল। হঠাৎ পাথরে জবর ঠোক্কর খেয়ে ইঞ্জিনে একটা করুন গোঙানির শব্দ আর গাড়ি বেমক্কা পিছলে সামনের দুচাকা আকাশে । একহাতে আঁকড়ে ধরা খোলা জিপ্‌সির হুড-বাঁধার রড-এর জোড়-ঝালাই খুলে এল গোটা শরীরের ভারে ।

প্রায় পঁয়তাল্লিশ ডিগ্রী-তে খাড়া হয়ে যাওয়া জিপ্‌সির হেডলাইটের আলো নালা ছেড়ে উঠে গিয়েছিল মাথার ওপরের জঙ্গলে । চিত হয়ে পড়তে পড়তে আমার চোখ-ও স্বভাবত ছিল আকাশে । জানি না কোন কোরিওগ্রাফার-এর পক্ষে এতগুলি ভিন্ন মুহূর্তের এমন অলৌকিক সমন্বয় সম্ভব । অসহায় চিৎপটাং হতে হতে মাথার ওপরে দেখলাম লাফিয়ে নালা পার হয়ে যাচ্ছে বাঘ, গাড়ির আলো ঠিকরে পড়ছে তার দুধ-সাদা জোয়ান পেটে, গাঢ় অন্ধকারের প্রেক্ষাপটে ঝলসে উঠছে সোনালি-কালো ডোরা-র ইঙ্গিত । ওই একটি-দুটি মুহূর্তই, কিন্তু স্মৃতিতে রয়ে গ্যাছে স্লো-মোশানে, যেন নালার এপার থেকে ওপারে হাওয়ায় ভেসে পার হচ্ছেন জঙ্গলের রাজা ।

এ গল্পের বাকিটা না-বলা থেকে যাওয়াই ভাল । ঘাড়ের ওপর বাঘ আর কাছেপিঠেই ভালুক নিয়েও আমরা ওই পাথরে লটকানো জিপ্‌সিটিকে শেষমেশ নালাছাড়া করতে পেরেছিলাম । বেঁচে যে ফিরেছিলাম সেটা তো বোঝাই যাচ্ছে । কপালজোর বলে কথা! না হলে অমন বাঘদর্শন লেখা থাকে?

তা বলে ভাববেন না যেন নিয়মিত জঙ্গলে যাই বলে বাঘেরা পক্ষপাতদুষ্ট বা তাদের খুঁজে পাওয়ার কোনও মোক্ষম ফর্মুলা আয়ত্ত করেছি । অনেক ছোটবড়, দেশি-বিদেশি ওস্তাদ-কে জানি যারা বছরের বেশির ভাগটাই বনে-বাদারে কাটান । তাদের কাউকেই কখনও আজ-বাঘের-দেখা-পাবই এই গ্যারান্টি দিতে শুনিনি । আমার নিজের রেকর্ডও কিছু আহামরি নয়, পাঁচবার বাঘবনে গেলে হয়ত একবার দর্শন জোটে ।

অবশ্য বুঝি, বাঙালির এ ব্যাপারে একটু অভিমান স্বাভাবিক । যে বাঘকে তামাম দুনিয়া বাংলার নামে চেনে, তার ওপর বাঙালির এতটুকু অধিকার থাকতে নেই ? বাংলায় দু-দুটো টাইগার রিসার্ভ, তবু বাঙালিকে কিনা রয়্যাল বেঙ্গল টাইগার দেখতে ভিন্‌রাজ্যে যেতে হয়?

বিশ্বায়নের যুগে ঘরের-বাঘ-ঘরেই-দেখব এই গোঁ ধরা যায় না। তবে ঘর ছেড়ে বেরোলেই যে দর্শন মিলবে, তারই বা গ্যারান্টি কি? নইলে সরিস্কা থেকে কাজিরাঙ্গা আর রাজাজি থেকে পেরিয়ার –- অবাধগতি বাঙ্গালী ভ্রমণার্থীর অযুত ক্যামেরায় ওই গাইড-প্রতিশ্রুত সোনালি-কালো ডোরা কি করে বছর-বছর অধরা থেকে যায়?

আবার এর উলটো দিকটাও ভেবে দেখুন । তেনার মর্জি হলে, আপনাকে সম্পূর্ণ অগ্রাহ্য করে তিনি হেঁটে যেতে পারেন একেবারে নাকের ডগায় । এমনকি টাইগার রিসার্ভের বাইরেও ।

এবছরই মে মাসের কথা । কলকাতার এক পুরনো বন্ধু সপরিবারে দঃক্ষিন ভারত ঘুরতে যাবার আগে বি আর হিলস আর বান্দিপুরে বাঘ দেখার অনেক সুলুকসন্ধান জেনে নিয়ে গেল । কিন্তু দু-দুটি নামজাদা টাইগার রিসার্ভে হপ্তাখানেক অনেক সাফারি হাঁকিয়েও যখন শিকে ছিঁড়ল না, দার্শনিক-গোছের মুখ নিয়ে বাক্স-প্যাটরা গুছিয়ে তারা গুটিগুটি রওনা হয়েছিল বান্দিপুর থেকে কুর্গের পথে। পথে নাগারহোলে ন্যাশনাল পার্কের কাবিনিতে খাওয়া । লেট লাঞ্চের পর একটু ঝিমুনি মত এসেছিল বোধহয় । তন্দ্রা ছুটে গেল ড্রাইভারের উত্তেজিত গলায় । চোখ খুলতেই গোধূলি আলোয় রাস্তা পার হয়ে অলস হেঁটে যাওয়া বাঘ ।

আমার বন্ধুজনের মধ্যে এমনও দেখেছি যারা কুড়ি-পঁচিশ বছর নিয়মিত জঙ্গল ঢুঁড়ে ফেলেও বাঘের ন্যাজটি অবধি স্পট করতে পারে নি। আবার এমনও ক্ষণজন্মাদের জানি যারা কপালে যেন বাঘ লিখিয়ে এসেছিল, না হলে জীবনের প্রথম সাফারি-তেই দশ মিনিটের মধ্যে বাঘের ক্লোজ-আপ ফটো ? তাও আবার করবেটের ঝোপঝাড়ে চোখ চলে না এমন জঙ্গলে?

এই অনিশ্চয়তাই আপনার বাঘের খোঁজের আসল রোমাঞ্চ । এ যে শুধু চোখের দেখায় সীমাবদ্ধ তা-ও নয় । রাজস্থানের রনথম্বর টাইগার রিসার্ভের শুখনো, খোলামেলা পর্ণমোচী বনে বাঘ দেখার সুযোগ অন্যান্য টাইগার রিসার্ভের চেয়ে অনেকটাই বেশি । কিন্তু এই আসাধারন জঙ্গল থেকে শুধু ট্যুরিসম জোনে সকাল-বিকেল সাফারি করে ফিরে এলে, বাঘের দেখা পান বা না পান, জঙ্গলের অভিজ্ঞতা সম্পূর্ণ হবে না।

তার জন্য জিপ্‌সি ভাড়া করে একবেলা চলে যেতে হবে বানাস-এর কুলে । নদীতে বা পাড়-ঘেঁষে দেখতে পেয়ে যেতে পারেন চম্বলের বিখ্যাত মগর কুমীর । না পেলে, অপেক্ষায় বিকেল গড়াবে। বানাস-এর ওইপারে জঙ্গল-মোড়া আরাবল্লীর বুক থেকে খসে পড়বে অবসন্ন দিন, গহন সবুজ ধীরে নিভে যাবে এক স্বর্গচ্যুত, শিরশিরে সন্ধ্যায় । কান পাতুন, হয়ত দূর থেকে ভেসে আসবে ক্রমে আরও দূরে চলে যেতে থাকা কোন নিঃসঙ্গ বাঘিনির অধৈর্য ডাক । জঙ্গলে এমনটা হয়ে থাকে।

Bengal’s New Battle: Didi vs Her Demons

2011-11-06T07:16:00.004-05:00

Mamata Banerjee’s feckless response to recent hospital horrors in Bengal and her political threats over oil prices are symptomatic. Her paranoia is affecting her priorities. And the Left’s lying in wait

Sunday Economic Times, 6 Nov, 2011

Change, said Heraclitus, is the only constant. But over 34 long years in West Bengal, the Left proved many wise men wrong. Mind you, Bengal did change under Left rule -- but after the early euphoria of land reforms, mostly for the worse. The May 2011 verdict was as much against lost opportunities of development, job, enterprise, capital, you-name-it, as it was against a systemic takeover of the administration and basic democratic rights by the party. So when Bengal finally voted Mamata Banerjee in, only one emotion overrode relief: hope for a turnaround.

Six months on, sample this. “I am concentrating on industry. Regarding infant death, if you still have some queries, ask my health secretary. Please don’t disturb me,” chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who holds the health portfolio, told reporters on the death of 47 babies in a week in three hospitals in Kolkata, Burdwan and Murshidabad. Two days later, a newborn in Murshidabad died on Wednesday when the doctor used carbolic acid instead of dettol to disinfect. The CM’s response hasn’t changed since a similar crisis in July: the Left is to blame for the pathetic medical infrastructure in the state.

But inertia is no excuse, given the expectations. Last month, my elderly aunt, having seen many a cynical autumn, dismissed my indifference towards ever the same festive crowds with an unusual prod: “Are you sure you want to miss this (Durga) pujo – the first after poribarton?” It struck me that I was in kindergarten when the Left Front came to power; that not much of my memory dates back beyond 1977. Could this be the reason why I, belonging to the first of many so-called Left generations, found pujo and much of Bengal the same ever all these years?

Potholes, Pujo. ‘Liberation’

The potholes, the winding jams, the rickety, smoke-spewing buses were all in place. So were the noisy, tireless, pandal-hoppers. Just when I was wondering if Rabindrasangeet wafting from select traffic signals was the only change I would encounter in Kolkata, Mamatadi held out a few surprises.

The parks in Kolkata have been reclaimed for the bhadrolok (gentry). Families now enjoy evening walks without being intimidated by drug-addicts or hoodlums. Pity, the municipal workers lock the premises soon after sundown; the move, I am assured, has nothing to do with moral policing. There are just too many homeless in the city.

Pujo too was different. It is a multi-crore industry, and the organisers — clubs, big and small — were mostly controlled by the Left. This year, several “Left pujos” had Trinamool challengers. Elsewhere, the control over organising committees changed hands. While scores of pujos organised by Left workers shrunk in scope, those under Trinamool Congress (TMC) patronage saws a 300-700 per cent increase in their budgets.

The pujo backed Mamata’s close aide and Bengal industry minister Partha Chatterjee used to be a modest neighbourhood affair until recently. This time, the idols were brass-and-mahogany, and everything else was as lavish.

Even during the festive season, a highly polarised local media had played up reports of sporadic political violence. But to her credit, Mamata had sent out a message for peace immediately after assuming office. A veteran IPS officer recalls the bloodshed across the state the Left had ended a long, almost uninterrupted Congress rule in the late 1970s. “From that experience, we were prepared for another bloody transition. But by and large, Mamata has succeeded in keeping TMC workers on leash.”

Left leaders play victim in public. In private, many of them sound relieved. “We expected much worse. Whatever (violence) is happening has a pattern. In areas where we did not allow any opposition, our cadres are facing the backlash. Elsewhere, they (TMC) are giving us some space.”

But the command structure of TMC is far from robust across the state and too many musclemen who earlier served the Left interest have simply switched sides. A good number of “renegade” communists have joined in too. While some of these turncoats are taking on the old-timers in their new party, others are clashing with the comrades they deserted.

On the margins of politics, the newly “empowered” are struggling to handle their “liberation”. On the first day of this pujo, the officer-in-charge of south Kolkata’s Garfa Police Station asked a few TMC-affiliated auto-rickshaw drivers to stop drinking in public (actually the reasonable man suggested that they move their party from the main road to a nearby alley). He spent the pujo in hospital with several fractured bones.

But Has the Left Gone?

So is this what turnaround is about? And if indeed the earth did not shake and little blood flew, why did it take Bengal so long to dislodge the red brigade?

During an adda (an informal, often wasteful, discussion), an old acquaintance reminds me of Martin Seligman. In 1967, the American psychologist made a startling observation. When dogs were confined and subjected to random electric shocks, after a while they refused to run away even when not in harness. Seligman called the condition “learned helplessness” – a mental state when making any effort to end misery seems useless.

Over the years, Mamata’s biggest success has been to stand up, often alone, against the Left bullies and demonstrate that it is possible. She even risked physical injury to find acceptance among the bhadrolok voters who sniggered at her lower middle class upbringing, non-ladylike demeanour and shrill theatrics. But as Mamata persisted against all odds, ridicule slowly gave way to admiration, and her antics morphed into courage.

The balance finally tilted with Singur and Nandigram. Mamata stunned the Left in the 2008 Panchayat and the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. The writing was on the wall. The Left government hung on, limp, inactive for two years – a sad waste even by Bengal’s standards. Six months after the inevitable Assembly poll outcome, Mamata’s voters are still so thrilled to have ousted the Left that they refuse to judge their didi yet.

But even in its rout, the Left secured a 41% vote share. The party is still entrenched in the social and administrative systems. From bureaucrats to lawyers, teachers to union leaders, artistes to police, most were either bona fide Left cadres or co-opted by the party. They blatantly benefited theparty for personal gains. It is one thing to defeat the Left but quite another, to quote an MLA who teaches at Jadavpur university, to change “this morally and professionally corrupt way of life” they institutionalised.

Not surprisingly, the so-called Left way of life – of rewarding loyalty over merit – is reflected in a number of Mamata’s early decisions. Everyone who can claim to have helped Mamata’s campaign feels entitled to a share of the spoils. Considering the previous regime packed most key posts with cadres, some purging was inevitable. But her education minister Bratya Basu makes it clear that “one cannot be both Left and deserving”. So the same us-and-them syndrome that divided the intelligentsia under Left rule is being practised by the new regime.

A number of cultural icons of Bengal have been shown the door in different government committees in favour of juniors from the TMC camp. Members of the TMC education cell, many of them with a Left past, have been handpicked to head different education boards. Even non-Left factions in various university and college teachers’ unions are unhappy that the new government’s attempt at education reforms is no less arbitrary and unilateral. The new government has also redrawn the lawyers’ panels for all its departments. The list of such partisan shake-ups is long.

There are other worries: The Left was trying to withdraw outdated, polluting vehicles from Kolkata’s roads. Mamata has allowed these to ply. Before the Assembly polls, Park Street footpaths were freed of hawkers. Now, they are back. Mamata scraped the water tax Buddhadeb had levied under the Centre’s Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. While she is working late evenings, there has been no visible change in a system where the right political affiliation entitles government staff to “pension-on-the-job”.

Mamata’s HR Problem

So does change have a chance at all?

The CM has inherited empty coffers. If she cannot raise funds due to her populist compulsions, she cannot invest in infrastructure development yet. So looking to the Centre for a bailout -- and now using the fuel price hike issue for a better bargain -- she is mostly dealing in symbolism without the overheads: the law to return Singur land to owners; the visits to Darjeeling and Sikkim; the tough posturing on Teesta; and playing the media on on the issues of Maoists and Gorkhaland. But by setting childlike deadlines for resolving longstanding conflicts, she might have set herself up for early scrutiny.

Mamata also faces an acute shortage of quality human resources in TMC. She got many nondescript carpetbaggers elected; they contribute little as MLAs or ministers. In a cabinet sorely lacking in administrative experience and capability, Mamata has saddled herself, and a few chosen ones, with too many remits. The few bureaucrats she trusts also have their hands too full.

It’s not a coincidence either that none of her top ministers — former home secretary Manish Gupta, former Andrew Yule HR executive Partha Chatterjee, or former FICCI secretary general Amit Mitra — has a political footing. The only senior Congress leader in the cabinet, Manas Bhunia, is irrigation minister. Even Subrata Mukherjee, who gave Mamata the ticket to contest her first Lok Sabha election in 1984, has been assigned the insignificant portfolio of public health engineering.

Call the Mamata a control freak or insecure or both, she decides for all ministries, addresses the press on all issues (often several times a day) and even picks the furniture for the Writers Building (secretariat) corridors. A debilitating trust deficit does not allow her to promote a second rung leadership in TMC or even assign a government spokesperson. She may have been toasted for single-handedly winning 227 seats, but an all-Mamata ruling party and an only-CM government cannot deliver, even if didi frequently clocks 18-hour workdays.

Soviets Vs Bengal

When Soviet communist states crumbled, the party was razed to the ground, making regeneration possible. In a democracy, the defeated survives. The Left now argues that its average vote share has been 49 per cent and it ruled all these years due to divisions in opposition vote. Had Prakash Karat not insisted on withdrawing support on the nuclear deal, paving way for the TMC-Congress alliance, they claim, the Left could still be in power.

Clearly, the red brigade is in no mood for any introspection or change within. They will be back in their elements if voted back any time soon. So Bengal’s hope for a turnaround rests solely on Mamata’s ability to deliver. For that she must first fight her own demons.

To change Bengal, Mamata must change herself.

Playing God

2011-11-06T07:05:00.007-05:00

Who are we helping by keeping old tigers alive with regular baits? Or, by releasing hand-raised cubs back to forests? Welfare is often a selfish motive. Practised in the wild, it defeats the interest of the animals and the very purpose of conservation

Sunday Pioneer, 30 Oct, 2011

First, a disclaimer: I am not given to anthropomorphic tendencies. Animals, wild or not, are animals. But still, it is difficult to think of her as it.

Her disregard for crowd and camera can shame any film icon. Over 14 years, she has been spotted by more than 100 million tourists. A few days every year, tens of thousands of pilgrims walk all over her territory on their way to Ranthambhore’s famed Ganesh temple. She hardly cares.

Her composure and confidence can humble the most efficient single mother. Despite being almost always surrounded by crowds, she has deftly raised nine cubs in four (some wrongly claim five) litters to adulthood between 2000 and 2008. She never compromised her little ones’ safety but rarely charged people even when they ventured too close for comfort. She has some nerve.

Her courage and determination make her a remarkable survivor, particularly by her species’ dodgy standards. She repeatedly took on deadly marsh crocodiles bigger than her and overcame them. Even after those mortal combats cost her two canines, she not only continued to hunt and support herself but also fed five cubs in two litters. Physical handicaps starve even dominant tigers to death over weeks. She won most of her battles in the mind.

Her far-reaching contribution can dwarf many game-changers we idolise. With crores of tourists cherishing how they photographed her, she has been the biggest advertisement for tiger conservation. In 2009, when she was awarded for lifetime achievement at the British Ambassador’s residence in New Delhi (no, she was not there), it was rather conservatively estimated that she had already generated $10 million for the local economy through tourism. But that’s not all.

Almost singlehandedly, she has defended India’s fragile westernmost population of tigers through an ominous decade. Including those nine cubs from three males, her bloodline has so far produced at least 38 tigers in Ranthambhore, including two females sent to repopulate Sariska. Of the 38, 31 are alive today and constitute 60 per cent of Rajasthan’s present tiger population.

She is the tiger legend: T16 alias the Lady of the Lake alias Machli.

When I first saw the young tigress at the turn of the century, I did not even know she had a name. Afterwards, I watched, photographed and filmed the reigning queen of the three majestic lakes near the craggy fort at the heart of Ranthambhore many a time. As tigers disappeared from Rajasthan with poachers striking at will in the first half of the last decade and hollow promises crumbled all around, the very sight of Machli — strolling, stalking, ambushing, raising still more cubs or just minding her own business — was one of the few reassuring constants. We sought to spot her every time we passed by her territory, as an omen of sorts.

It was a miracle that Machli raised her fourth litter at a ripe age and without two canines. However spectacular, all things, even George Harrison knew, must pass away. So three years on, now Machli has lost all but half a canine, a little patch of her once vast territory, and some of her indomitable spirit. She still makes occasional kills. But without the baits the forest department has been offering her for two years now, she would have long been dead.

Except in photos clicked every season by tourists on Machli pilgrimage, I have not seen her after 2009. I refuse to watch an amazing wild tiger reduced to a pathetic spectacle.

For generations fed on the 1966 blockbuster based on Joy Adamson’s Born Free, the idea of ‘helping’ wild animals, particularly big cats, is one of the loftiest goals of conservation.

Machli is not the only victim of our compassion. Life support was also offered to her contemporary and partner T2, the ancient Anantpura male. The big daddy fathered many tigers, including three sent to repopulate Sariska. By 2010, he was too weak to kill even chained buffaloes and finally died this year. In April 2009, a young Ranthambhore male (T29) was operated upon for an injury and set on his feet. It is another matter that Ranthambhore’s tiger population is showing a skewed sex ratio, with too many males around and nature must eliminate a few to restore balance.

Yet, across the country, old and injured tigers are being baited and treated, and orphaned cubs are being brought up in “natural enclosures”.

Not to mention the smug celebrations every time a maneater is packed off to a zoo, instead of being put down.

But animal welfare is an ethical and not an ecological concern. At best, these efforts have no bearing on wildlife conservation. At worst, they defeat its very purpose. In nature, the weak and the injured must perish so that the fittest may flourish. So an aged tiger dies of starvation or at the hands of a young adversary.

The reign of Charger, revered as the mightiest ever of all Bandhavgarh tigers, ended in a deadly fight with one of his grandsons in 2002. Of course, the forest staff tried to feed the mauled, half-blind veteran but he did not respond. Had Charger survived thanks to human benevolence, his young grandson would have had to get into another fight to kill him, thereby inviting fresh injuries or jeopardising his own future as a dominant male.

Yet, we treat the wild like pets.

In September 2008, Ranthambhore’s Guda tigress died of suspected poisoning, leaving two sub-adult cubs, about 16 months old. The forest department promptly stepped in and handed out routine baits to the T36 male and his sibling T37 female.

Raised on calves, the brother-sister duo possibly lost, or did not get to acquire, much of wild survival skills. The sister has a better chance since females seldom face deadly challenges from other females. The brother’s luck gave out when he ran into a probing male in October last year. The adversary was just three years old. The natural advantage should have been with T36. But it was an unequal battle between a raised tiger and a wild one.

Once he was orphaned, 16-month-old T36 would have died of starvation. Or, maybe, necessity would have made a wild tiger out of him. But by offering him baits, forest officials consigned him to an inevitable end. Poor T36 was dead the day he became a raised tiger in the wild.

Another brother-sister duo, orphaned when Ranthambhore’s Berdha tigress died in April 2009, enjoyed regular baits from the park officials. In July 2010, Simba, the three-year-old brother, seriously injured himself attempting a wild hunt. He was spotted in a sorry shape during the monsoon, suffering from deep wounds inflicted by porcupine quills. Then, he disappeared.

This blinkered welfare motive is not limited to cubs and the elderly though. For example, sending a “man-eater” to a zoo does save its life but, in terms of wildlife conservation, the effort is no better than shooting the animal dead. In both cases, the result is one animal less in the wild.

Our excitement about saving “man-eaters” shifts the focus from the real problems — absence of buffer forests, faulty land use around forests — that push predators to chance encounters with people and create “man-eaters”. If these root causes are not addressed and if we do not learn to differentiate between accidental and deliberate attacks, we may soon be left with empty forests, once we have happily rescued all the tigers as “maneaters” to zoos.

The more obvious fallout of Born Free is our aspiration to return orphaned cubs to the wild. But cubs raised in captivity have rarely succeeded in the wild. They lack in hunting skills and fail to defend themselves. Also, bereft of any fear of humans, they tend to get into conflict.

Captive females do stand a chance since wild males accept them as mating partners. For a hand-raised lioness, such acceptance even compensates for her lack of hunting skills as she gets to feed with the pride. After rehabilitating Elsa the lioness, Adamson successfully returned two more hand-raised cats to the wild. Not a coincidence that Pippa the cheetah and Penny the leopard were also females.

In India, Billy Arjan Singh experimented with four hand-raised cats. Tigress Tara and leopardesses Harriet and Juliette had cubs in the wild, but the whereabouts of Prince, the male leopard, remained uncertain. The attempts had led to conflict and subsequent poisoning of Harriet and Juliette.

In Karnataka, Gajendra Singh released two leopards near Bandipur in 1999. While the male was killed soon after while attempting to hunt a sambar stag, the female survived. Emboldened, Singh repeated the experiment this year with three orphan leopard cubs. Around the same time, Bangalore-based NGO Vanamitra was allowed to release three hand-raised cubs in Bhadra. Within months, the cats killed two villagers and injured many, forcing the State forest department to remove them from the wild and ban such experiments.

An excellent guideline issued by the Ministry of Environment and Forests in 2010 is unambiguous on the issue: “A cub without its mother usually does not need ‘rescue’ as the mother leaves the cubs when she goes hunting. Equally, cubs released without its mother have poor survival probabilities. If cubs are found alone, a watch must be kept for their mother without disturbing them. Cubs are not to be ‘released’, but only require ‘reuniting’ with their mother. Reuniting should be attempted immediately in the night in the same area, from where they were picked up.”

“Cubs that are hand-reared in captivity have a negligible possibility of future release back to the wild. Lifetime care is the only suitable option for such cubs, since their release in the wild even after a long-term rehabilitation process may only worsen the already existing conflict situation.”

Yet, three orphaned Tadoba cubs are being raised in an enclosure in Maharashtra’s Bor sanctuary since September 2009. The forest department and a Nagpur-based NGO, Shrusti, are adamant that they are fit to be released in Pench tiger reserve. While Wildlife Institute of India has deferred a final decision, it will be the worst advertisement for tiger conservation if these cubs are set free and they run into conflict with the villagers.

Our romanticism blinds us to the lessons we should have learnt by now. Even before the sordid Karnataka experience, a hand-raised leopard, Lakshmi, was released on the outskirts of Ranthambhore in 2009. Soon, the people-friendly cat ran after local villagers, spreading panic. Lakshmi is now confined to an enclosure deep inside the reserve, much to the annoyance of the wild resident cats of the area.

A similar welfare drama is playing out in Bandhavgarh. When the Jhurjhura tigress was run over by a vehicle in May last year, the future of her three small cubs in the wild was sealed. One of the cubs was killed by a male. Still, the other two cubs are being raised in an enclosure at the heart of the reserve. In all these cases, instead of taking the cubs to zoos — to quote wildlife photographer Aditya Singh — we are deluding ourselves by bringing zoos to the forests.

Welfare is often a selfish motive.

We want to return the Bor cubs back to the wild or keep Machli alive because it gives us an emotional and moral high. It is not them but merely our perception of them that we want to protect and preserve.

Not many Ranthambhore regulars talk about the Sultanpuri tigress (T14) any more. For many years, Machli’s sister was the prize sighting in Zone 1. Then, she was challenged by T13, one of her three daughters, in 2009. Soon, the mother surrendered her territory. T13 became the new Sultanpuri female and has already raised three cubs of her own.

Machli was lucky to hang on to about one-fifth of her territory after she was dethroned by her dominant daughter, T17. When the forest department begun baiting her under public glare, sister Sultanpuri was stumbling away to Bhaironpura where she took refuge at the edge of the national park. Though she was exactly Machli’s age (from the same litter), nobody lobbied to keep her alive. Away from the tourism zone, Sultanpuri made occasional kills and scavenged some more. Her last known big kill was a buffalo this February. It is already six months since she was last spotted sometime in April.

Sultanpuri’s lonely, helpless end may sadden us. But unlike her sister, she was fortunate to have been left alone. The biggest disservice millions of Machli fans could do to her was to treat the fierce fighter as destitute. If we agree that the wild are born free, we must learn to respect that freedom, in life and death.

The writer is an independent journalist

Ten lessons of the fortnight that was

2011-08-31T06:38:00.005-04:00

Kafila.org, 30 August, 2010

The 13-day blockbuster— peddled as the second freedom struggle, panned as irresponsible blackmailing, and a lot in between — is over. Anna Hazare accepted honeyed coconut water from two little girls, introduced to the crowd as a dalit and a Muslim, and went on to recuperate in one of India’s most expensive hospitals, one branded after Hindu spiritual literature at that.

News TV is still fighting the vacuum by flogging the debate – so much so that seasoned correspondents are chasing a rather dismissive Dr Naresh Trehan to unravel the mystery of Anna’s endurance. Biker gangs have gone into a sulk and roads at India Gate are looking safer for traffic and women (which is not saying much in Delhi). What is more, India has started taking note that too many Indians have meanwhile drowned in floods.

The show is over; at least for now. There is suddenly time (with deadlines no more literal) and space (the grounds again look big) for holding a thought or a few (though the calls to action, and only action, still haunt). Post mortem is perhaps a sensitive term in the context – Anna has survived some of his more obdurate team members, his movement is obviously alive, and some of the Protest TV still aching to go live. Yet, the torrent of emotion has somewhat ebbed and it is possible now to read the alluvial fan for signs of both hope and anguish.

THE GAINS

THE BIGGEST GAIN of the Anna show is the emergence of a section of people on India’s streets and in its political equation. The Anna supporters are not quite the aam aadmi, they mostly come from different layers of the urban middle class with a few not-so-poor (by rural standards) from villages. Not all of them are new to agitation. For example, lawyers agitate so frequently that it does not even make news every time and Gujjars have mastered the art of crippling the economy by blocking road and railway arteries across north India.

The difference this time is the significant presence of the tax paying middle class (TPMC) in a popular, street movement. Yes, many of them formed picnic groups seeking novelty and some younger ones enjoyed a wild spin on the wheels daddy bought. But undoubtedly, a large number of the TPMC Indians were out there to simply register their protest.

This is a huge plus because so far, the power equations of our political class factored in only the so-called upper class, both urban and rural. Big corporate interests are always protected, just like landed farmers are guaranteed subsidy. The rest did not really matter. The majority of Indians -- from the landless farmer to the marginalised tribal, the real aam aadmi – are still taken for granted just because it is possible to deal that way with the utterly disempowered. Yes, the poor do have the numbers and the politicians know how to tap them before every election with diktats (muscle/caste/religion) and ingenious promises.

While this aam aadmi remained far removed, physically and otherwise, from the Anna show, it has been fascinating to see the other taken-for-granted section of the Indians shed the very characteristic that often makes them fall off the political radar. Till now, the TPMC talked about their grievances among themselves but rarely got any political traction. They remained a resigned lot – too inconsequential to lobby and too inhibited to rally. The Mandal agitation was an exception, and largely a youth movement.

At the Anna show, however, the retired walked alongside the employed, the between-jobs, the unemployed and the student. As a rallying point, the figure of a largely apolitical Anna with an assortment of Gandhian symbols finally offered the TPMC a comfortable platform to vent their long-nourished frustration. They might still not be the majority in Anna’s rainbow crowd; but the fact that they have finally ventured out of their “status-quoist” bubble to hit the roads (with many others they instinctively hold in suspicion), may eventually help them emerge as a political interest group to reckon with.

THE ANNA MOVEMENT has shown Palaniappan Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal – arguably India’s two most insufferably arrogant politicians – their place. As the union Home Minister, Chidambaram was supposed to bring all that Shivraj Patil could not to this key office. Since the Maoists still ambush almost at will and terrorists remain fascinated as always about Mumbai, perhaps the only way our Home Minister can stamp his authority is by shooting his mouth.

Sibal’s perpetual smugness, however, is harder to understand than RP Singh’s smiles in the Oval test. No wonder that even the apex court found his dismissal of the CAG report on the 2G Scam objectionable. One can only hope it will be a while before the ministers recover their voice, and style.

The Anna movement also jolted our MPs who determine what Parliament is on any given day. If the callous waste of public money and, more importantly, delay in legislation is not enough, the honourable members have long conducted themselves in a manner that even pushed a succession of well-meaning Speakers to occasional profanity.

Institutions are abstracts that manifest themselves through the mundane. Not without reason has the impression of Parliament in the public psyche been reduced to a stage where even Kiran Bedi’s scarf act, or a certain Sreesanth’s antics, might not be quite out of place. The “challenge” from the Anna movement did not come a day sooner for our legislators. It was certainly reassuring to witness how the political class fought its divisive inertia to get a mature, sincere show of statesmanship going.

FOR MANY, THE civil society has been a villain this fortnight. What probably went unnoticed was that a large segment of the same civil society provided the necessary dissent to a discourse that often threatened to plummet in the realm of a dictatorial with-us-or-without-us. These dissenting voices from the civil society also refused to cross the lines of decency even as their counterparts undauntedly did so.

Even more heartening was the unusual courage and generosity displayed by some of these dissenters in the face of popular hostility. Aruna Roy, for one, was dubbed a “traitor”. It did not stop her from climbing Anna’s stage to lend her support to those clauses of his Bill that she agreed with or to the fundamentals of Anna’s movement.

AT A TIME when two of the country’s most senior politicians appear to have lost much moral authority even within their parties, Anna Hazare, a plebeian of limited education and worldview and hardly a leader of masses till a fortnight back, has set a rare example.

Why is LK Advani a spent force? He appears to have lost his presence in the party and Parliament ever since he practically gave up on his ambition for the PM’s office. Dr Manmohan Singh is an honest politician but the biggest of scams happen on his watch. Why does a man, who could be a monk, repeatedly claim ignorance as a defence?

At 74, Anna is younger than both Advani and Dr Singh. Tutored or not, Anna’s belief in the Jan Lokpal’s panacea-like utility maybe naïve. His method of fasting may be questionable. But once the man was convinced of the purpose, nothing, not even fear of death, seemed to move him.

This ability to stand up for one’s conviction is altogether missing in politics today. What it says is that our leaders have much more at stake than their principles. That is why Dr Singh carries around A Raja like an albatross and Advani refuses to come clean on B S Yeddyurappa. Ministers like Jairam Ramesh even make a virtue (“mature flexibility”) of the compromise involved in clearing “ill-advised” projects “under pressure”.

In an uneasy prospect for our political class, Anna has restored the lost standards: one is not a worthy leader of people if his or her professed stand (not necessarily on Bills but on principles) is negotiable.

THE WORRIES

THE ANNA MOVEMENT is too much about Anna. This has drawn sections of the hitherto absentee TPMC to roads but such reliance on individual appeal puts a movement on shaky ground.

For the record, the Team Anna -- Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi and Prashant Bhushan -- were already a team when they approached Anna because they needed an icon to sell their cause to the media and the people. Once convinced, Anna inspired a popular movement (with ample help from eager TV channels and a fumbling government) in a matter of months.

But busy hardselling Brand Anna, Team Anna, by its own reckoning, has stuck to playing Hanuman to Anna’s Ram. They have not shared Anna’s grace, his sense of proportion or the moral authority (none of them even broached the idea of going on a fast). Take Anna away and this movement will disintegrate or spiral out of control.

TENS OF LAKHS of Indians support Anna’s movement. But India is a country of thousands of lakhs. So when Team Anna wanted to force the Parliament’s hand on behalf of the country, it was a case of dangerous misrepresentation. Movements against a dam, a factory or a nuclear plant either oppose misuse of certain laws or demand that certain laws be upheld. Moreover, these movements draw on large-scale participation of local populations who have every right to force local issues that affect them more than anyone else.

Yes, Irom Sharmila’s fast is to demand the repeal -- just like Anna’s for enactment – of a law. But an overwhelming majority in the North-East is against the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) which is not a pan-Indian law and applies only in the region (and later Jammu and Kashmir). So Sharmila’s fast or the anti-Posco movement derive “legitimacy” from their specific, limited context. But when a handful of activists from Team Anna want 1.2 billion Indians to accept a law that they have drafted and a few lakhs (or crores) support, they violate the fundamentals of a democracy.

TEAM ANNA HAD more than a million ears over a fortnight for at least 12 hours a day. For a movement built on values and morality, the Anna show wasted this enormous opportunity to build an informed constituency and mostly engaged in harangues. Yes, they called it Anna ki pathshala but very little education or debate happened on the Ramlila stage. Educators-cum-entertainers sang eulogies of the 21st century mahatma or incited crowds in a language very much identifiable with the political class they were lambasting.

This is particularly worrying because most of Anna supporters have the convenient holier-than-thou approach. Anna’s high moral ground that calls for introspection and purification of the self found little echo with his colleagues and supporters who simply played victims of bribery. What Anna clearly envisions as a movement for a better society has so far failed to aspire for anything more than changes in laws and institutions.

TO GARNER PUBLIC support, Team Anna has promised the moon. While peddling their miracle Bill, they even quantified the impact of the Lokpal in percentage terms. In this necessarily simplistic and often vague euphoria, unreasonably huge expectations have been created among the Anna supporters. If the Lokpal does not deliver a miracle, and we know it will not, natural cynicism may relapse. It took roughly 35 years from JP to Anna. If this wave peters out, we maybe in for another long wait.

TESTS AHEAD

FROM THE RAMLILA stage, Anna and his team have spoken of taking up the fight on electoral reform, farmers’ rights, land acquisition etc. The first leg of the movement has capitalised on a largely urban concern for corruption that is limited to bribery. Now the movement has its choices. For example, it is not difficult to sell the idea of “right to recall” that instantly appeals to the middle class. But garnering popular support for non-middle class causes, such as displacement of tribals, is not easy. It is still more difficult to bring the two Indias – aam and still more aam – together in this movement. These choices will test the intent, strength and pull of Anna’s movement.

For all its saffron undertones, this movement has fiercely defended its apolitical credentials till now. Though the key Anna lieutenants have so far dismissed calls by the critics who wanted them to fight elections and directly join the legislation process, the growing clout of the movement may eventually embolden them to test the electoral waters, either by jumping into the fray themselves or throwing their weight behind candidates or political formations. At all such times, they will have two choices: remain true to the movement or get co-opted in partisan politics.

TEAM ANNA HAS repeatedly acknowledged how the movement was as much the media’s as it was theirs. News TV, in particular, has been credited for a “social revolution”. While cynics and politicians have pointed fingers, alleging that the movement and live TV were tailormade for each other, channel heads have defended their editorial prerogative to play up what they felt was a genuine people’s cause.

They have not, however, bothered to explain why the same news TV rarely turns to the far corners of India (or makes do with hit-and-run coverage) where people fight gruesome battles to defend their livelihood and lives. Are those movements less genuine because they do not clear the TRP-vs-expenses tests?

The only way the media can put such doubts to rest is by being a little less choosy. If the media is indeed keen on social justice, as it should be, the cameras should now, like Anna’s movement itself, travel outside the bribe-stricken cities and towns to the much larger India out there and address issues far more complex. Journalism is not about convenience. Neither is revolution.

Everybody Loves a Good Protest

2011-08-27T05:25:00.002-04:00

Dissent is a casualty at the Anna show where his rainbow coalition of supporters eats, drinks and makes protest before the camera

OPEN, 27 August, 2011

Retired Director General of Maharashtra Police SS Virk, who knows something about dealing with Anna Hazare and his fasts, has this story to tell. “In 2009, he was on fast, demanding an inquiry in a criminal case. I called him up and said, ‘Anna, everyone on your stage is not a saint and you should not put your life at risk for people who don’t really care if you die.’ He agreed. I quickly ordered an inquiry at my level and he called off his fast.”

The former top cop pauses for effect. “I told him his life was precious and he must live to fight for bigger causes. A simple, reasonable man, he responded graciously. But this time he has big support. This Ramlila protest… how is the mood there?”

+++
It’s carnivalesque, at first glance, with nearly everyone in sight clicking away—a few with DSLRs, many with point-and-shoot variants, the rest with mobile cams. The crowd is only occasionally in focus. Mostly it forms the backdrop as they shoot themselves, posing with the tricolour or with the more colourful characters around. Three boys and a girl from Sultanpur video-recorded themselves “being interviewed” by this lowly reporter. Being here, a part of this grand spectacle, is like being in the movies they’ve watched.

But isn’t it about anger, about righteous indignation, about protesting against corruption? You might spot them too, if you look past these hormonally charged youth with their frozen wide grins — there are enough scowls on grim faces. It is easier, though, to spot the signs of a ‘popular protest’ around the dozen or so platforms occupied by the news channels. Handheld cameras for vox pops or crane-mounted for panorama, the TV cams are everywhere. So many of them and so eager that after a point people actually get choosy.

Cameras and anger (canned and real) are not the only, or even the most defining, elements of the rally. A couple of protestors who on Friday complained that they were not being allowed to fast alongside Anna assured me on Sunday that the free meals were “good for a rally”. Biscuits and bananas are plentiful. And, true to the spirit of Anna’s cause, strict volunteers threw some school students out of the queues on Saturday for collecting and “hoarding” more than they could possibly eat.

Some Class XI students of a government school from Sangam Vihar were more interested in the ice candies that were not going free. So a vendor did bulk business. Candies put away, a few of them spoke to me reluctantly: they supported Anna; this was their first visit to the Ramlila ground; they had saved on bus fare by travelling without tickets.

+++
Print journalists are cynical by training, just like their TV counterparts are hysterical. I was trying hard to suspend instinct. Particularly because I hadn’t met the girl who, asked if she had read the Jan Lokpal Bill, apparently said she was a science student and did not know much about civics, or even the young MNC worker who blamed corruption for high tax rates.

Late Sunday night, a news channel was beaming yet another corruption special. Citing an example of the corruption he’d faced, one young man said he’d had to pay to get a building plan sanctioned since he or his father could not have possibly visited the government office over and over to fulfil all the requirements. The next one spoke of a cop who hid behind a tree to catch people jumping a traffic light. Why was the cop hiding, asked this ‘victim of corruption’; he’d jumped the signal only because he couldn’t see the cop.

I try to find some answers in the Ramlila throng. Asked why A Raja was in jail, four young men from Yamuna Vihar said it was because the minister had stashed away money in Italy. I also drew three blanks and nine correct answers. Then a young girl claimed that Raja had bribed the Prime Minister.

It must be a reflection on my reporting skill that I did not find a single person in the crowd below 35 who had heard of the JP movement, which drew the biggest crowds by far to these grounds in 1975. A dapper Gurgaon youth, who wouldn’t divulge his profession, thought I was referring to JP Morgan. “Jaypee group? Constructionwala?” shot back another protestor, who had brought his six-year-old boy along.

Few had heard of Posco or Vedanta or Jaitapur either. And fewer said they would stand by their fellow citizens in the villages in their fights. Only one, a spare parts dealer in East Delhi’s Laxminagar, was candid: “It is the media that brings people. We watched Anna on TV and we are here. How can I rally against Posco if I don’t know about it?”

People here don’t like being asked if they’ve read the Jan Lokpal Bill. Till Team Anna started educating the crowd from the stage on Monday, few had any idea of the Bill, except that it will “police the PM, the Judiciary and will end corruption”. Asked who will choose the Jan Lokpal, people either name Anna or say the janata will decide.

But didn’t the same Parliament and political parties and NAC (National Advisory Council) pass the people-friendly RTI Act two years ago? A lively group of young musicians jamming at the site were venturing some answers when the crowds intervened. Soon, a few exchanges like “Kaun hain yeh jo sab poochh rahe hain” (Who are these inquisitors?) and “Congress ne agent bheje hain” (the Congress has sent agents) ended the debate. A lot of wagging fingers and a little shoving around settled it—Anna’s Jan Lokpal Bill was the only means to end corruption. I was told to write it down. I did.

+++
There is strength in numbers and numbers add easily at the Ramlila ground. A sizeable anti-Congress, pro-BJP crowd is conspicuous. There are school students in uniform and the youth have come prepared with face paint and flags, much like they would for an IPL match at the Ferozeshah Kotla stadium not far away.

And there are the others. I sit down with a group of five friends and they smell of alcohol in the afternoon. All smiles, they tell me they do nothing and were getting bored whiling away time in their Shastri Park bylanes. “Idhar music hai, masti hai. Bas hit gana suno, aur ladki dekho” (It’s fun here. Just sit back, listen to the music and check out girls). On cue, the loudspeakers blare yet another Rang De Basanti number.

Many young couples have walked in too; one can tell because they avoid the cameras. Families are regulars in the evening and also after dinner. The police should take credit: it’s their host-like graciousness that has made this middle-class family entertainment possible. With so many of them deployed here, mob aggression is naturally under check, though one constable did get slapped around (nobody was really sure why) till his colleagues rescued him.

Then there are the rally and trade fair regulars—pickpockets among them, for whom this must be a bonanza. Also, there has been the usual spike in business in the red light quarters on GB road; a 25 per cent increase, reported a daily, is standard every time there is a big rally at the Ramlila maidan.

Yet, this crowd is unlike any other that gathers at the Ramlila. Lanky Shahnawaz stands in his tattered kurta and watches proceedings intently. At a distance, an over-enthusiastic protestor accidentally steps on the tricolour while posing with it. Shahnawaz springs into action, pulls out the flag, wipes it clean, and gives the man a stare. And then returns to his watch behind the swelling crowd.

Shahnawaz does not talk, but many say they trooped in simply because an arrogant government refused them space for dissent. Kapil Sibal is villain No. 1. An autodriver from Shahdara says he felt humiliated by the way the minister spoke on TV: “Woh kya kya bolte hain aur kis tareeke se bolte hain TV pe? Woh hamare malik hain kya?” (See what he says on TV and how. Does he own us?)

For the majority, the methods of Team Anna do not matter. Musicians Bhavesh, Akansha and Ram are protesting for Anna from the day he was arrested. They do not know if Anna’s prescription will work. But they will take anything if that means “a shift, a change from the present system”.

Many also admit that they would not be here if it weren’t for Anna. Sweta Kumar and Basanti Sharma have come from Chhatarpur with their husbands and children. “What will he (Anna) get out of it? It is rare to find a selfless man,” says Basanti’s husband Devender, who works at Customs clearance and knows “how bad corruption can get”.

For the less privileged, though, corruption is an abstract and the real issue is runaway inflation. While paying Rs 5 for a cup of tea, an elderly protestor from Faridabad said he could get one for Rs 2 not so long ago. Stay-at-home women in particular rue how their household budgets have gone for a toss.

The Gandhian angle of Anna’s protest has also drawn thousands of senior citizens to Ramlila. Yet, some like Vaje Singh from Haryana never need much prodding. “I have been protesting since 1965 when the movement for a separate Haryana state was launched. I protested during the JP movement, during the Emergency, with Bansi Lal, with Vajpayee and I was here when Baba Ramdev held his dharna,” gushes the 69-year-old.

+++
Kiran Bedi can add drama to routine health bulletins. “Anna’s BP is 80-130. Aap aur humse achhe hain (Better than you and me),” she roars from the stage on Sunday. The crowd roars back. “Heartbeat is 78. Better than you and me.” Another roar from the crowd. Dr Naresh Trehan, arguably India’s most expensive doctor, appears in the evening to check all’s well with the mascot.

On Monday, though, it seems even Anna’s stage has some room for dissent. Bedi tells the crowd that Anna’s BP is fine but his kidney is infected. Soon, Arvind Kejriwal denies any infection. But much as a few SMS jokes describe Anna as Kejriwal’s Nathha (remember Peepli Live?), the veteran faster, Virk recalls, knows his body and is no puppet.

On Sunday again, Bedi lauds the PM in the morning. “He has done such a commendable job with the Nuclear Bill. I appeal to him to support the Jan Lokpal Bill.” In the evening, activist Akhil Gogoi from Assam blasts the PM, calling him a fraud and accuses him of selling the country to the US.

Away from the stage, I meet two disgruntled Anna associates, who shared the stage with him during his fast at Jantar Mantar. The movement’s growing popularity and clout has drawn many new faces and apparently sidelined the duo. “A few people sharing the stage with Anna are so corrupt that I fear for him,” alleges one. So why did they not warn Anna? “You think it’s easy to reach him these days?” snaps another. So will they spill it to the media? “The media is in no mood for anything anti-Anna now.”

Walking out, I found Shahnawaz outside the ground. This time, he talks. “I am from the LNJP colony across the road. I work at a butcher’s shop. Yesterday, I was at the protest. Today I managed Rs 500 and brought these flags to make some money.” He hopes to finish off his stock if the crowds keep pouring in.

Shahnawaz takes out a bidi and asks for a light. As I search in my pouch, he warns me of pickpockets. I tell him that, according to a daily, crime rates have dropped since Anna began his fast . He laughs, “Police darr gaye, chor nahin (the police have got scared, not the thieves).”

I recall that the cop who came home this morning for passport verification didn’t ask for a bribe. Could it be the Anna effect? Or was I just being cynical as usual and doubting an honest cop? I may never find out.

Act Responsible At the Top

2011-08-26T04:02:00.004-04:00

Much of human-carnivore conflict is supposed to be either accidental or caused by old/injured animals, but how do we explain deliberate attacks on people by healthy, mature carnivores?

Current Conservation, Vol 4, Issue 4

Big carnivores scare many of us. They are nature’s most efficient killers. But the “threat perception” seems disproportionate to the threat. A very conservative estimate of the big five—tigers, lions, leopards, wolves and crocodiles—will put their collective population at 10,000.

Each of them makes a kill every week. There are about 15 crore people living in 1,70,000 villages around India’s forests, offering the biggest prey base to pick and choose five lakh kills from every year. Yet, how many people are killed by carnivores? Even accounting for those that go unreported, the numbers do not add up to the 200 mark.

Indeed, the numbers tell interesting stories. In India, more than 30,000 people die of rabies due to dog bite each year. Venomous snakes claim about 50,000 victims. No less than 80,000 die of injuries caused by road accidents. And yet carnivores are considered a far, far greater threat to human safety. On one hand, people are known to overestimate rare and dramatic events. On the other, maybe it is because carnivores consider us food.

So, are we wrong? The etymology -- carne (flesh) vorare (devour) -- is a giveaway. Obligate carnivores live exclusively on meat. They prefer herbivores but are not fussy about other meat. Technically, that makes us, omnivore humans, carnivore food; just like all omnivore primates are in the wild. Surely, whatever be the numbers, quite a few people still do get devoured by carnivores across the world.

But contemporary science tells us that carnivores do not consider us food. The figures cited above support the claim. Almost three-quarters of a century back, Jim Corbett was quite unequivocal in his Man-eaters of Kumaon: “A maneating tiger is a tiger that has been compelled, through stress of circumstances beyond its control, to adopt a diet alien to it. The stress of circumstances is, in nine cases out of ten, wounds, and in the tenth case old age-human beings are not the natural prey of tigers, and it is only when tigers have been incapacitated through wounds or old age that, in order to live, they are compelled to take to a diet of human flesh.”

To the list of old and injured carnivores, wildlife biologists add inexperienced or alarmed animals as potential mankillers (not man-eaters). A chance encounter with a carnivore, particularly a young one, may result in accidental attacks but such kills are not usually consumed. Some attacks are blamed on mistaken identity when a squatting person is taken for a four-legged prey. Experts have identified another condition—significant loss of wild prey or habitat or both — as a trigger to conflict.

Some biologists, pioneer among them Vidya Athreya in India, have recently pointed out another manmade aspect of conflict. Their research shows that the policy of capturing and trans- locating so-called problem animals exacerbates, and even creates, conflict because such displaced carnivores, traumatised after prolonged captivity, try to find their way home and encounter people on their way.

Clearly, the consensus is that carnivore attacks on humans are not natural and happen only under a set of exceptional circumstances. Otherwise, given that so many of us are around, the human casualties would surely have been many times higher. But do these arguments settle the issue?

Not quite. Records show that on many occasions, perfectly healthy, undisturbed carnivores in their prime have been killing and feeding on people. So if a few individual carnivores are eating human flesh, and since potentially all of them can, what keeps the rest of them away?

Also, the contemporary assertion — that carnivores, under normal circumstances, do not consider us food — is, well, contemporary. The great apes were very much part of carnivore menu. So were the early humans. Carnivores continued to attack and kill scores of people throughout recorded history. The contemporary assertion gains ground only because few such cases occur in recent times. Of course, the trend is unmistakable. The frequency of attacks on people by carnivores has been reducing steadily with time. Could it be because large carnivores are getting fewer by the day? Or is it because they have been undergoing a behavioural change?

Loss of population does not quite explain it. If we go by the notional number of 40,000 tigers at the turn of the last century (plus easily 100,000 leopards, wolves etc) and the corresponding scale of reported conflict (up to 10,000 in the 18th century), it becomes clear that even 200 years back, carnivores had limited dietary interest in us.

Can we, therefore, attribute the historical trend of consistently reducing conflict to a changing attitude in carnivores that had considered early men as natural a prey as anthropoids but slowly learned to drop modern man from the list? If we can, it is important to understand the factors that triggered this change in carnivore behaviour over so many thousand years. It is even more important to explore if such factors can get locally or temporally reversed. Because such reversal may explain why certain individual carnivores that do not fit in the exceptional category (old, injured, alarmed, prey-less or translocated) still go for human prey today. Or why certain areas (eg Sunderbans) record consistently higher casualties or certain pockets (eg Tadoba) suddenly become conflict-prone.

In most human societies, carnivores are not considered food. Early man hunted carnivores mostly to protect himself. From human fossils and cave paintings to scriptures and folklore, there is evidence that carnivores were one of the prime threats to human life. The mighty animals’ larger-than-life presence frequently transformed them into gods and demons alike—entities considered almost as powerful as other great natural forces.

Things were probably slightly more complicated on the other side. As hunter-gatherer humans emerged as a predator species in their own right, it was not easy for carnivores to negotiate with them as just another competitor. Three factors that made (and still make) carnivores wary of us are numbers, tools and motive. Humans hunted in groups. They also used tools. The first factor is traditionally respected in the wild. A solitary large cat, for instance, rarely takes on a pack of wild dogs or an elephant herd. Tools turned the balance of power upside down. Initially, tools substituted for canines and claws. Then tools became technology. From slingshots to catapults, bows-and-arrows to guns, better guns and the arms race was over soon. We all know that story.

In any human society, a carnivore hunter was always a hero. The pride and thrill involved in hunting soon turned it into a popular sport. Game hunting upturned the fundamental laws of the wild where animals kill either for food or for protection. Over time, the carnivores had to learn how to deal with a species that often killed arbitrarily. This learning process continues and it has not been particularly kind.

As humans became increasingly organised and technologically evolved over centuries, these factors probably made carnivores adopt a “no risk” policy vis-à-vis people over time, so much so that it became normal for most to walk the other way when humans were in sight. Many shikar accounts relate how tigers or leopards did not risk charging people unless disturbed or threatened.

But a lonely, unarmed human is still the easiest prey for any large carnivore. To stretch the elephant analogy, we know that tigers, otherwise wary and respectful of elephant herds, do occasionally kill isolated calves. I have known instances of tigers successfully defending kills against smaller wild dog packs, something they will not usually attempt against bigger packs.So, is it possible that even healthy, mature carnivores may seek out lonely, unarmed persons for food? If it is, given that there is still no dearth of lonely, unarmed persons in and around our forests, why are such attempts so few? Probably because a wary carnivore never attempts a human kill unless a meticulous risk assessment assures it of a certain safety threshold.

So what factors determine this safety threshold? Do carnivores balance the risk of attacking humans against the availability and their own ability to get other prey? On one hand, hunger (due to injury, inexperience or lack of wild prey) can push carnivores to target high-risk prey. There are instances of desperate carnivores targeting people in broad daylight in crowded places. But this rule is likely to apply only to certain individual animals in distress and not to a population as a whole. There is no example of a large number of carnivores turning on people even in the most degraded, prey-deficient forests. On the other hand, it is possible that even healthy carnivores will prey on people when they can assess the risk itself to be particularly low. This may explain occasional, deliberate attacks on people by carnivores that are not hungry or injured.

Most instances of sporadic conflict seem to have a few factors in common. First, the victims ventured inside or very close to a forest. Second, they were alone. But many others do so every day and some carnivores, like leopards, even share space with people. Perhaps, a third factor decides the tipping point. Perhaps, the careless victims “unmindfully” allowed the predators enough undisturbed time to stalk, observe and be sure.

But what explains the high conflict zones like Sunderbans or Tadoba? Perhaps, numbers do. Compared to other forests in India, more people venture into Sunderbans (fishing, honey collection etc) and Tadoba (for bamboo). In both places, they also spend a long time inside the forests. Most fishing, honey-collecting or felling expeditions inside Sunderbans last more than a week. Thanks to a recent state law that makes bamboo products legal, villagers around Tadoba not only enter the forests in thousands but also spend long hours cutting down the bamboo to thin strips which are then carried out of the forests.

This means more opportunities for carnivores to stalk, observe and be sure. With more practice, comes more experience. Corbett’s Champawat maneater reportedly killed more than 400 people (a random assessment only indicative of the long killing spree) and in the process learnt to single out victims in groups. Probably for the same reason, tigers have been reported to have attacked the last persons in groups walking single file in Sunderbans —a strategy that defeats the security of numbers.

Moreover, while there is little scientific evidence of so-called maneaters developing a taste for human flesh, it may be possible that they learn to appreciate the relative ease with which a human can be hunted down if the risk (numbers and arms) is low. This may explain those cycles of attacks in crowded forests (many potential targets) as very few villagers stay closeted in groups or carry guns (minimal risk) while making forays.

Of course, other manmade factors have created what Jim Corbett called “stress of circumstances” at both Sunderbans and Tadoba and may partially explain such high conflict. Poaching leaves behind orphaned, inexperienced or, injured carnivores. In the past year, five Tadoba tigresses have disappeared—feared poached. A number of faulty interventions like capture-release are rampant in Sunderbans. But, such interventions do not happen on the Bangladesh side where conflict is acute. But then, too many tigers are poached (both for revenge and profit) in Sunderbans which might have created a highly disturbed population.

Ultimately, each local conflict demands to be understood in terms of local factors. We have little data to draw any sound conclusion anywhere and thorough ground research is long overdue. Human-carnivore conflict has always evoked strong emotions. There are greater pressures at play today but we had better act responsibly. We have our right to safety, but that is not secured through exterminating other apex species. It is certainly not safe being alone. Not while walking in the wild. Not at the top of the food chain.

Why the Anna ‘movement’ leaves the aam aadmi cold

2011-08-24T03:19:00.003-04:00

FIRSTPOST, 19 August, 2011

It does not matter if the NDA was as corrupt as the UPA or less. This shameless government sucks. It does not matter if Team Anna is a bunch of right-wing and/or foreign-funded megalomaniacs. They want to end corruption. It does not matter if thousands of Anna supporters are out on the streets to earn their few moments on TV or a righteous high. They support the cause.

Yet, Anna’s “second freedom struggle” leaves the real aam aadmi feeling cheated. They are much more aam than you or me, and they are not both victims of corruption and potential victimisers. For example, they are not your regular three-wheeler guy who fleeces you and is in turn fleeced by cops. The more aam the Indian— the vast majority — the less he is in a position to offer or demand a bribe. So why does he feel cheated?

Is it because the aam aadmi has been offered a Hobson’s choice: suffer corrupt politicians who handpick corrupt bureaucrats to loot the country on behalf of corrupt business interests; or back a group of self-appointed, ham-handed dictators who blackmail democracy with a fast-unto-death to force us to accept their panacea of a law?

Is it because some (not-so-aam) people want the rest to believe that the end justifies the means? Ironically, this approach is the first sign of the corruption that Team Anna’s fascist “means” so dramatically aim to “end”. When a few men want Parliament to accept a law they drew up in their drawing (or conference) rooms, it corrupts democracy itself. If successful, it will be a dangerous precedent since most Indians have some experience in fasting and many are far bigger crowd-pullers (read mobilisers) than Anna. And few of them even pretend to be Gandhians.

Does the aam aadmi feel cheated because Anna and his team refuse to contest polls? The aam aadmi can rarely fight elections successfully, but he can and does swing results. But to swing in real change, the aam aadmi needs better options to choose from. Voters have not been able to make Kerala God’s own country or a heaven of any kind; they could not have, irrespective of the regularity with which they shuffle governments, as they have only two options to deal with.

Voters braved political corruption of the worst magnitude in West Bengal to end Left rule, but with only one available alternative, they may not be adequately rewarded. Since Anna’s team claims popular support, they should have offered options, however small, to voters. Instead, Anna preferred to idolise Narendra Modi, whose Gujarat is high up there on the list of Indian states based on sundry development indices and corruption.

The aam aadmi cannot connect because the media showcases a few thousand largely middle class supporters in a few cities to brand the Anna appeal as a “mass movement”? Step out of the comfort zones of news studios and Jantar Mantar, and you will find millions of aam aadmi who just cannot afford to appreciate this urban concern for corruption that is limited to bribery. Just like the not-so-aam supporters of Anna cannot grasp the fact that corruption in fact means total disempowerment – socio-political and economic, including loss of livelihood and lives — for the majority of Indians.

Does the aam aadmi feel cheated because Team Anna’s crusade against corruption limits itself to politicians and bureaucrats? All over the world, politics and governance are dictated by big money. We know all political parties are backed largely by the same set of business interests. That is why the level of corruption does not fluctuate dramatically with changes in government.

So what does the aam aadmi make of an anti-corruption movement that keeps mum on big money, publicly praises a political ideology (RSS-BJP) and launches its campaign when the rival political coalition is at the centre? I am not sure. I suspect the aam aadmi is too busy just surviving to care for all these nuances.

In a country obsessed with Bollywood and cricket, it is rarely that the media sustains interest in a cause. When the media does, it often calculates the coverage cost involved against the potential gain such as TRPs. Let’s not presume that media houses lapped up Anna’s “mass movement” because it was “home delivered” to them in the Capital and in other cities. Let’s not also presume that all of those thousands who turned out in different cities in support of Anna were inspired by the hungry presence of hundreds of news cameras.

But it is one thing for the media to brand an urban picnic campaign against bribery as a “mass movement” (or for the people to walk down a couple of blocks flanked by cameras), quite another to play blind and deaf when the aam aadmi fights for survival in different corners of the country after being denied basic dues by the government and the judiciary.

Of course, it is a small triumph for democracy when thousands walk the city streets, not necessarily to support Team Anna’s dictatorial demands but to protest against the government’s ever-swelling arrogance that does not allow any room for dissent. But shameless administrations have been quashing protests in far more undemocratic, often barbaric, ways across the country. The aam aadmi is getting arrested, thrashed and killed not only for opposing or demanding new laws but merely demanding that the laws of the land be followed.

Where were the cameras when children and 80-year-olds braved the forces by lying down on scorching sand, every day for weeks, to protect their land that cannot be touched, as per the laws of the land, without their consent?

How many of those who are now fawning over the “second freedom struggle” joined the aam aadmi’s battle for livelihood and survival against Posco in Orissa’s Jagatsinghpur? Or “gathered spontaneously” at any of those numerous sites where India’s land, forests, minerals and rivers were doled out to big money — desi or foreign — and entire communities were forced to destitution?

The Orissa sell out to Posco could end up in the region of Rs 3-4 lakh crore: A much bigger loot than even the 2G spectrum mega scam that apparently triggered the protests on our city streets in support of Anna. The aam aadmi cannot cite figures and tabulate the cost of lost lives and livelihood to demand prime-time attention. But he feels cheated when his not-so-aam fellow citizens in the cities and the media finally wake up to fight corruption and yet do not stand by him in his battles.

Yes, the aam aadmi feels cheated because the not-so-aam refuse to leave their comfort zones even while claiming to fight an aam cause. But then, it sounds cool on broad Delhi roads when you ask the corrupt to quit India. In goddamn places like Jagatsinghpur, it is more like do or die.

Cat Among The People

2011-08-11T06:42:00.001-04:00

Snow leopards share a particularly punishing habitat with people in the higher reaches of the Himalayas, with resources scarce and vegetation sparse. The conventional conservation model of separating wild animals and people simply does not work here. India’s green establishment is showing signs of accepting this reality, if only grudgingly

Open, 30 July, 2011

So you know they are called ‘ghosts of the mountain’. Rarely spotted (they are as good as camouflage artists ever get), never heard (the only one that ever roared was Tai Lung in Kung Fu Panda, but then he was also nasty) and barely understood (few behavioural studies have been attempted), they exist in smaller numbers in India than even tigers.

But this is really not just about the most mysterious if not charismatic of all big cats—snow leopards.

What you probably do not know is that the cat’s natural habitat in India is a 180,000 sq km expanse—nearly the size of Karnataka—of Himalayan desert that spans the above-the-treeline reaches of five states: Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. Cold and arid, this region is the source of most north Indian rivers.

And yet, such a vast and critical expanse has rarely drawn the attention of India’s conservation establishment. On paper, there exist more than two dozen Protected Areas (PAs)—sanctuaries and national parks—in this region, covering 32,000 sq km, a figure that equals the combined area of all tiger reserves put together. But in terms of funds, staff and management, these high-altitude PAs are mere markings on a map.

Things were worse in the early 1990s, when, as a young student of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Yash Veer Bhatnagar began studying snow leopards and their species of prey. With sundry forest departments struggling to fill up field staff vacancies in the best of India’s tiger reserves, snow leopards had little hope of being watched over in places far less hospitable to humans. But as Bhatnagar kept tracing the animal’s tracks along Spiti’s snow ridges, he grew increasingly restless thinking up a workable conservation strategy that was proving to be as elusive as the big cat itself.

Nearly two decades on, Dr Bhatnagar and his associates would help shape Project Snow Leopard, a species recovery programme with an innovative plan drafted in 2008 that could, with luck, save the species from extinction.

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Dr Bhatnagar was not alone. His senior at the WII, Dr Raghu Chundawat, having studied wildlife in the cold deserts of J&K since the late 1980s, had already reported a startling fact: more than half his subjects in Ladakh, including snow leopards, were found outside the PAs. “There are a number of ecological factors behind this,” explains Dr Chundawat, “sparse resources, extreme climatic conditions, seasonal migration of prey species, etcetera, make the cat very mobile across large ranges.”

As for other efforts, in 1996, Dr Charudutt Mishra, another WII alumnus and a snow leopard expert himself, had set up the Mysore-based Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) with a group of young biologists. It had some valuable field experience to offer, too.

It was Dr Chundawat’s work, however, that gave Project Snow Leopard its broad direction. “Raghu’s was a fantastic study and got us thinking: ‘If 80 per cent of Ladakh had wildlife value, how would securing a few PAs help conservation?’” recalls Dr Bhatnagar.

The question still stands. Spiti in Himachal Pradesh is significant in terms of snow leopard presence, for example, but notifying all of Spiti or Ladakh as a PA would not only be a logistical nightmare, given the difficulty in managing the existing PAs, but also defeat the purpose of conservation on at least two counts.

First, the experience in other snow leopard-range countries shows that merely declaring vast areas as PAs does not help. In Central Asia, for example, Tibet’s Changthang Wildlife Preserve extends over 500,000 sq km, but organised hunting remains a serious threat in most parts; the picture is not very different in Mongolia or Afghanistan.

Second, resources are extremely scarce at high altitudes; like the wildlife there, people must use every bit of land they can access at those Himalayan heights. The conventional model of PA-based conservation demands the securing of inviolate spaces for wildlife. But, in a cold desert, displacing people from existing PAs, leave alone notifying larger ones, amounts to threatening their survival. Besides, can anything justify evicting people from PAs if wildlife is seen to coexist with people in non-PA areas?

But ten years ago, coexistence was too radical an idea to explore for much of India’s conservation establishment.

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In the absence of effective protection, what snow leopards once had going for them was a sparse local population in the upper reaches of the Himalayas (less than a person per sq km). In the past two decades or so, however, even those heights have been witness to ‘development’ in the form of roads, dam projects and the like. The most active government agency has been the military, busy defending the country’s borders, and, in the process, slicing and dicing the region with impenetrable fences and encampments. All this has also meant a labour influx, with whom indigenous populations (and their livestock) now compete for natural resources. This has meant overgrazing, and the competition for resources has led to a loss of wild prey for snow leopards. And with the big cats increasingly turning on livestock, they often face human retaliation. Organised poaching has been a reality even here.

Clear that exclusive sanctuaries for snow leopards were not a feasible idea, Bhatnagar and his colleagues focused on understanding the cat and engaging with villagers and the local forest staff to figure out a conservation solution.

In 2001, the NCF’s Mishra had done some groundwork in Spiti’s Kibber Wildlife Sanctuary. Human communities, he found, could be negotiated with to leave wildlife pastures untouched. To look after this area, a few villagers could be hired—picked by locals from among themselves. This model has been in operation in Spiti for several years now, and so far, over 15 sq km has been freed of livestock grazing around Kibber, and the population of bharals (blue sheep), staple prey for snow leopards, has almost trebled since.

Another coexistence success has been Ladakh’s 3,000 sq km Hemis National Park, which is home to around 100 families that live in 17 small villages within it. Their relocation was impossible without subjecting them to destitution, since all the other land of Ladakh was already occupied by either monasteries or local communities. Today, despite the human presence, Hemis has one of the country’s highest snow leopard densities. The park’s villagers, urged by the Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust (SLC-IT), an NGO, regulate livestock grazing in pastures used by small Tibetan argali (a prime prey species for snow leopards). According to Radhika Kothari of SLC-IT, this was achieved by the NGO in coordination with the forest department. They launched a sustained awareness drive and offered families incentives such as home-stay tourism and improved corrals for the protection of their livestock.

The basic strategy of engaging local communities remains simple: help protect livestock (by ensuring better herding methods, constructing corrals, offering vaccinations and so on), compensate for losses (via insurance, for example), create income opportunities (community tourism, handicrafts, etcetera), restore traditional values of tolerance towards wildlife, and promote ecological awareness. This story repeats itself in other range countries; livestock insurance and micro-credit schemes are big successes in Mongolia, handicraft in Kyrgyzstan, and livestock vaccination in Pakistan.

Encouraged by early success stories in engaging local communities in J&K and Himachal, the NCF backed a conservation model in the context of the three-decade-old Sloss debate (single large or several small, that is). “The idea of wildlife ‘islands’ surrounded by a ‘sea’ of people does not work in high-altitude areas, where wildlife presence is almost continuous,” explains Dr Bhatnagar, “Instead, communities can voluntarily secure many small patches of very high wildlife value—small cores or breeding grounds spanning 10–100 sq km each—if they have the incentive of escaping exclusionary laws across larger areas [big PAs].”

The NCF has identified 15 ‘small cores’ in Spiti, of which three (at Kibber WLS, near Lossar, and near Chichim) have already been secured through the foundation’s efforts with locals. In Ladakh, too, village elders and the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC) agreed to stop grazing activities in seven side-valleys seen to be of high wildlife value—in exchange for assured community access to the rest of the Hemis National Park. It’s a win-win deal.

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The experience of other snow leopard range countries supports the conclusion that sparse human presence does not affect this wild cat’s well-being. A soon-to-be published report on Mongolia by the Seattle-based Snow Leopard Trust (SLT) indicates that the presence or absence of nomadic herders around snow leopards inside as well as outside PAs in the South Gobi Desert does not affect the probability of snow leopards using a particular site. Complementarily, there is no record anywhere in the world of a human death due to a snow leopard attack.

So, by the time Project Snow Leopard drew up its plan in 2008, a diverse team of officials and experts from the Union Ministry of Environment & Forests, WII, WWF and NCF-SLT, apart from five snow leopard states, had come to agree that ‘given the widespread occurrence of wildlife on common land, and the continued traditional land use within PAs, wildlife management in the region needs to be made participatory both within and outside PAs’.

More than one-third of the project budget (at least 3 per cent of the Ministry’s total outlay) was earmarked for facilitating a ‘landscape-level approach’, rationalising ‘the existing PA network’ and developing ‘a framework for wildlife conservation outside PAs’.

Each of the five states was supposed to select a Project Snow Leopard site, a combination of PA and non-PA areas, within a year and set up a state-level snow leopard conservation society with community participation. However, given the slow pace at which governments function, not much has moved since, except in Himachal Pradesh, where the state forest department has set up a participatory management plan for over half of Spiti wildlife division.

The red tape apart, two other factors are threatening to thwart this unique conservation project: the reluctance of the Ministry to release funds to non-PAs, and the indifference of some state forest departments towards a management plan for areas outside sanctuaries and national parks (such a plan must be submitted). “Snow leopards are present in many areas outside PAs, and I have asked for proposals from all high-altitude divisions. But there is no response from the non-wildlife divisions yet. It’s probably a mindset issue,” sighs Srikant Chandola, chief wildlife warden, Uttarakhand.

Perhaps the same mindset prompted a 2010 WWF-India report to recommend only PAs in Uttarakhand as potential sites for snow leopard conservation, though the author Aishwarya Maheshwari now agrees that a landscape approach, “as mentioned in Project Snow Leopard”, is necessary.

Jagdish Kishwan, additional director-general (wildlife) at the Ministry, says that the Centre is keen to invest money in non-PAs, but there are “some technical issues”; moreover, the Ministry’s meagre allocation might end up too thinly spread in doing so.

The Ministry has its own grand recovery plan. Announced almost simultaneously with Project Snow Leopard, it has an ambitious Rs 800 crore scheme, Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats (IDWH), aimed at the recovery of 15 key species including ones found mostly outside PAs, such as: snow leopards, great Indian bustards and vultures. Centrally sponsored, IDWH has earmarked Rs 250 crore for ‘protection of wildlife outside PAs’. The states have been asked to submit their Project Snow Leopard management plans under the IDWH aegis.

If that is the case, what stops the Ministry from releasing money for non-PAs? “India’s 650-odd PAs are our priority. But I agree that certain key species need support outside PAs. We are examining these issues. The Government will find a way to provide funds to non-wildlife divisions under Project Snow Leopard,” assures Kishwan.

Going by the original 2008 document outlining the plan, Project Snow Leopard should have been in its second year of implementation by now.

That it hasn’t yet hit the ground, let’s hope, is not a sign of apathy towards a big cat that has had—for no fault of its own—only a ghostly presence in the consciousness of the establishment.

Relook At Relocation

2011-08-11T06:33:00.002-04:00

The environment ministry’s new draft guidelines have corrected some anomalies after Open’s investigation flagged key issues plaguing the relocation of 40,000 families from core tiger forests

Open, 11 July, 2011

Setting out to rehabilitate some 40,000 families from core tiger forests in 2008, the government has finally drawn some sobering ground lessons. The deadline set by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) for public feedback to its draft guidelines for relocation expired this week. While the feedback may alter the final shape of the guidelines, the draft is a welcome step towards vital course correction in the latest round of the relocation process that began in 2008. But there are a few disappointments as well.

An investigation by Open (Relocation Rumpus, 28 May, 2010) flagged the key issues that were plaguing the process of relocation on the ground. The new draft guidelines have corrected a few of those anomalies. For example, the one-compensation-fits-all approach has been corrected and a key gender issue has been looked into.

The Centre had increased the relocation budget from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 10 lakh per family in February 2008, either payable fully in cash or as a cash-and-rehab option. But neither option took into account the actual assets owned by a family. Even in forest villages, where relative landholding may not be a major issue, assets of individual families vary. Some may own more trees, or a well, or just bigger hutments.

In revenue villages, the Rs 10-lakh package may appeal to small landholders (whose plots are worth much less) but not to big landholders. Also, a blanket provision of providing 2 hectare of agricultural land to every family after relocation (in the cash-and-rehab option) did not factor in how much land a family actually surrendered. As a result, with big asset/landholders refusing to budge, villages were being only partially relocated, defeating the very purpose of the scheme.

To fix these irrationalities, the draft guidelines are open to compensating villagers in proportion to their assets as per valuation done by the district Collector. If funds are left over after compensating all eligible beneficiaries, it will be distributed equally among them (in all-cash option) or be utilized for building community facilities (in cash-and-rehab option). If there is a shortfall, as is likely under the cash-and-rehab option that earmarks only 30 per cent of the Rs 10 lakh/per family budget for cash component, the state government will bear the additional cost.

However, the draft does not specify who will pick up the tab in case of a similar shortfall under the cash-only option. Also, there is no benchmark for a basic minimum compensation payable to landless families who live and work on other’s plots.

Relocation also has serious gender implications. Till now, the impact of handing out lakhs of rupees to poor villagers was proving to be destructive. In many cases, it led to abandonment of the spouse or even family, including minor children and unmarried daughters or sisters. In some cases, they were simply rendered homeless as the men surrendered their property for cash and rode away in new motorbikes, looking for young brides and a new life in nearby townships. So the proposal now is to deposit the compensation in joint accounts held by both spouses. Moreover, the money earmarked for buying alternative land will be paid directly to the seller, ensuring that the sum is not squandered.

However, the draft guidelines forget the unmarried women. A ministry note on 21 February 2008 said that “unmarried daughter/sister more than 18 years of age” was eligible for compensation. Within a month, it issued another order (apparently at the instruction of the Finance ministry), defining ‘the family’ as per the National Rehabilitation and Resettlement Policy, 2007.

But a policy meant for project-affected people may not apply to those who are forfeiting their right over property through an MoU, a voluntary deal. Since sons and daughters have equal inheritance rights, the consent (and, therefore, eligibility for compensation) of only the men in the family may not be legally tenable.

Then, there is the issue of forest rights. On a legally sound note, the draft says that no relocation will be carried out before the rights of villagers inside forests have been settled under the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006. On paper, it is in sync with the demand of many rights activists. But on ground, it may pose two challenges.

The process of settlement of rights under the FRA has been very slow in most states and its implementation does not depend solely on the forest department. In many places, the forest administration may have to wait indefinitely for the FRA process to get over while critical forest stretches will continue to suffer.

Moreover, to be eligible for the FRA, the non-tribal must furnish proof of residency over 75 years prior to 2005. Since very few have such records, the process of settling the non-tribal’s rights is either a non-starter or plain hostile (if they are denied rights). In many forests, such as Buxa tiger reserve, non-tribal communities do not want settlement under the FRA (fearing exclusion) and are keen to move out immediately under the voluntary relocation scheme.

Room for procedural flexibility in such cases can accelerate the relocation process and benefit both conservation and the people.

Who Let These Cats Out?

2011-07-15T04:08:00.004-04:00

Two villagers have been killed in the last month by hand-raised leopards released in the wild by the Mysore royalty and an NGO. Jay Mazoomdaar writes on a ‘rehabilitation experiment’ gone horribly wrong

TEHELKA, 14 July, 2011

MASINAGUDI/GUNDLUPET/BANGALORE, KARNATAKA

It was almost noontime. Inside the Bandipur Tiger Reserve, five Jenu Kuruba tribals were walking silently within one another’s earshot, scanning the branches overhead for beehives. Traditional honey-gatherers, these tribals collect wildflower honey in the early monsoon. Over generations, Kurubas have learnt that the forest is a safe place, as long as one stays away from rogue elephants and temperamental bears.

But on 1 June, the five men from Lakkipura, a Kuruba village at the edge of the tiger reserve, were in for a cruel shock. It was Rama Kuruba who spotted the leopard. He stood still, waiting for the cat to walk away. Instead, it came pouncing and knocked him down. Kampa Kuruba was the first to rush to Rama’s rescue. The leopard let go of Rama, who by then had given up the struggle, and turned on Kampa.

As a desperate Kampa held the cat at arm’s length by the radio-collar around its neck, it started pawing his face and the head. By then, the other Kurubas were creating a ruckus and hitting the leopard with sticks. But the cat would not let go. Eventually, a powerful blow on the spine made it back away. By then, Rama had stopped breathing. The leopard was still alive, growling in pain at a distance. Unnerved, the Kurubas scampered, carrying a profusely bleeding Kampa, who would spend the next 10 days in hospital.

In Lakkipura, the initial response was of disbelief. Kurubas never considered leopards a threat because the spotted cats avoided them and never attacked except in self-defence. Now, they were faced with a leopard that targeted people to kill and did not back away even from a group of men, challenging a thumb rule of survival in the wild. They did not know that the leopard that tore open Rama’s throat and nearly killed Kampa was not a wild cat.

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Deputy Conservator of forests (DCF) KT Hanumanthappa has brought down the humanelephant conflict in Bandipur by 70 percent in just two years, by digging up trenches and laying service roads for maintenance of electric fences. “We are here for conservation work,” he says. “But managing conflict used to take up all our time. Now that headache is gone.”

He got a fresh headache on 5 June 2010, in a letter from his top boss, Karnataka’s chief wildlife warden (CWLW) BK Singh, permitting him “to rehabilitate the leopard cubs in Ojimunti of Bandipur National Park with the assistance of Smt Vishalakshi Devi, Bangalore”.

In fact, it was Vishalakshi Devi who sought permission on 8 May 2010 for “rehabilitation of leopard cubs”. The CWLW could not have legally authorised a person without any scientific credential to carry out such an exercise. Instead, he granted the DCF a permission he never sought, possibly because he could not refuse a princess.

Maharajkumari Vishalakshi Devi is the scion of the Mysore royal family. Her father, the late maharaja Jayachamaraja Wodeyar, was the first chairman of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL). Vishalakshi and her husband Gajendra Singh own a resort-cum-residence in Bandipur and are avid “animal-lovers”.

In her letter to CWLW Singh, Vishalakshi claimed that she had “successfully rehabilitated a leopard in Bandipur National Park”. That story goes back 13 years when she and her husband received two “abandoned leopard cubs” from the forest staff and brought them up at their Bandipur property. Bully and Baby were released in the forest when they were about two years old. While the male, Bully, was gored to death by a sambar stag within days of the release, Baby survived and produced a few litters. No scientific monitoring was conducted to substantiate this claim.

Fast forward to 2009 when 12 so-called abandoned cubs were at different forest department facilities. Two one-year-old cubs, later named Shadow and Light, were sent to Vishalakshi’s Bandipur resort in April 2010 from the care of Vasudeva Murthy, range officer of Mettikuppe in Nagarhole Tiger Reserve. Incidentally, this transfer of cubs from one wildlife division to another also required the CWLW’s approval. Soon after, Vishalakshi got another one-year-old cub, later named Colour, from Bandipur Range Officer AA Khan who had been raising it in a small cage.

This February, eight months after the DCF was “granted permission” to entertain the princess’ request, the three leopards were shifted to an electric-fenced enclosure in Bandipur’s Gopal Swami Betta range. In March, the power supply to the fences was switched off but the leopards continued to hang around the spot where the royals visited them daily with food.

Wary forest staff stopped patrolling the area on foot. But keen to avoid any scrutiny, neither the royals nor the forest department cautioned the villagers living on the reserve boundary. Sometime in April, say field sources, Vishalakshi decided to cut down on the hand feed, hoping the cats would finally start hunting. On 1 June, the experiment backfired.

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Two deaths were not enough for the royals or the forest department to come clean. The Kurubas were warned that they would face charges of trespassing and killing a leopard if they claimed compensation. The gullible tribals did not realise that booking them would have also revealed Bandipur’s dirty secret. Soon enough, the dead leopard was declared the victim of a tiger attack and the administration pretended that no leopard ever touched Rama and Kampa.

But the medical records at the Gundlupet government hospital do not lie. Chief Medical Officer Dr R Srinivas confirms from his files that Kampa (in-patient number 1360) was admitted during 1-10 June with 12 injuries on his neck and face “sustained due to attack by a panther”.

Fearing arrest, Kampa fled to a small tribal colony across the border in Kerala soon after he was discharged. Once the 22- year-old agrees to talk, he is inconsolable. “My father Kullaiah was a forest guard at Bandipur and yet the forest department is treating me like this,” he says. “The leopard would have killed me had I not held it by its collar. And now I am on the run.”

Sub-inspector at the Gundlupet Police Station, Laxmikanth Talawar, however, says the case is closed. “A leopard killed a man, an unnatural death,” he says. “The leopard was also killed and our officers found the two bodies close to each other. No case of wildlife crime has been lodged.”

In Lakkipura, Rama’s single-room house remains bolted. Rama was long estranged from his wife and lived alone. Basama, his aunt and neighbour, laments that her nephew took care of her and now she has no one to depend on.

While DCF Hanumanthappa refuses to go on record, Vishalakshi says one “can’t fault the (rehabilitation) programme because the leopard did not go out of the forest to attack anyone”. In any case, she says, it was the forest department’s responsibility to warn the people. At Lakkipura, Karia Kuruba, who was with Rama and Kampa when they were attacked, says her sister-in-law works for the royals and the princess had blasted her, saying the Kurubas killed her cat. On record, Vishalakshi maintains a tiger killed the leopard.

In his Bengaluru office, CWLW Singh says he has no sympathy for the Kurubas: “No question of compensation. What humanitarian ground? They light so many forest fires.” He says tribals have no right to harvest forest honey under the Forest Rights Act (2006) inside a tiger reserve.

Asked if the administration was within its rights to permit such reckless experiments, putting lives of “trespassers” at risk, Singh fumbles. Within two weeks of the Bandipur disaster, he had allowed release of another three captive leopards in Bhadra Tiger Reserve.

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SS Lingaraja, former divisional forest officer (DFO) of Bhadra Tiger Reserve, had five “abandoned” leopard cubs in his custody at Bhadravati in 2009. He found an ally in Bengaluru-based NGO Vanamitra that “strongly believes that cubs lifted from nature can be released back into the wild”. Together, they brought up the cubs — Bheema, Shiva, Rama, Lakshmana and Parvathi — in a squalid, small garage.

As DFO Lingaraja’s tenure ended in Bhadra, three cats were released in the third week of June. As in Bandipur, no wildlife biologist was engaged for a risk assessment of the Bhadra experiment. Soon after their release, the leopards spread panic in the Tarikere taluk. Then, on 6 July, a young man paid with his life.

Vishwanath, a 20-year-old student at Tarikere Government College, was returning to his village near Upparabiranahalli. It was evening and he was attacked on the road that skirted the boundary of the tiger reserve. The leopard dragged Vishwanath’s body some 20 yards inside the forest and pounced on Somanath when he went looking for his brother. It also injured another man, Subrahmanya.

This time, the forest department could not blame the villagers for trespassing inside the reserve. As an angry mob torched a forest vehicle, the victim’s families were assured of compensation, and two trap cages set up. On 8 July, one of the released leopards attacked the forest staff while they were shifting a cage. They opened fire, killing the cat.

Meanwhile in Bandipur, more than a month after the Kuruba encounter, the princess’ other two leopards are still in the wild. Worse, one cat moved to the adjoining forests of Mudumalai Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu. As of 7 July, despite two young men dead for no reason, the Karnataka forest department did not deem it necessary to warn their Tamil Nadu counterpart to alert their guards who patrol on foot.

On 8 July, asked who would be responsible if the leopard wreaked havoc on the other side of the state boundary, CWLW Singh said he would “immediately get in touch with the department in Tamil Nadu”.

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Leopards leave their cubs at safe places and go hunting. When villagers chance upon these unattended cubs, they mistake them as abandoned and hand them over to the forest department. If not returned soon enough, the cubs are not accepted back by the mother. DCF Hanumanthappa says that villagers must be made aware of the ways of cats to prevent the “rescue” of so many cubs that become liabilities for a lifetime.

Meanwhile, the key players have started passing the buck. Vishalakshi claims the forest department wanted her to release the cubs and she never sought any permission herself. While she did not furnish “the proof” she claimed she had, TEHELKA has a copy of her letter to Singh. In Bhadra, KN Suresh Kumar, founder trustee of Vanamitra, claimed his NGO followed “expert advice”. He did not name any.

Singh admits to learning on the job. “I was misled by too many opinions,” he concedes. “Now I realise that rehabilitation of hand-raised leopards is risky.” But will he own up responsibility and order a ban on such experiments? “I am telling you we will never do it again. I will write an essay on this in our departmental journal soon.”

With four potential killers still out in the forests, and more lined up for release, it will require more than Singh’s musings to put a permanent end to the deadly games the rich and powerful play.

Where The Forests Have No Trees

2011-06-30T14:40:00.002-04:00

Of the total 60,000 claims filed under the Forest Rights Act in Assam, nearly 30,000 came from a single district. Little wonder, then, that the administration controls less than a third of Sonitpur’s forests. While no political party minds legalising this mass encroachment in the Bodo heartland, the fate of the wilderness hangs by a 2009 High Court order.

Open, 25 June, 2011

BHALUKPONG/KAMENGBARI, ASSAM

Tene hole ki hol? Ahomoyot gutei prithibikhon tu jonghol asil (So what? At one point of time, the entire world was a forest).

It’s hard to say when you’ve entered a forest in Assam’s Sonitpur district. The green marking on official maps is not what you see on the ground. Charduar reserve forest is no exception. The east-west Rangapara-Rangia railway track forms part of the southern boundary of the reserve. But on both sides of the track, the landscape is identical.

Instead of the moist deciduous forests you might have expected, open fields stretch into the faraway horizon with only a few scattered hamlets and patches of cropland breaking their dull monotony. The residents are not apologetic about the transformation; instead, they are demanding denotification of the forestland status since the forests have long been lopped off.

The magnitude of the loss can rattle even hardened officials. Last December, within months of taking charge as the state chief secretary, Naba Kumar Das made a visit to Sonitpur. When he reached Batashipur, the virtual disappearance of Charduar forest—more than two-thirds of it vanished in 20 years—made him ask a few locals, admonishingly, how they felt about cutting down the last trees in the area.

“So what?” replied a villager nonchalantly, reminding the seasoned bureaucrat that even the big city he belonged to came up by destroying forests. “Why single us out for something that has been happening for ages? In the beginning, wasn’t the entire world a forest?”

Das and the officers accompanying him had to change the subject.

+++

Forests have historically given way to habitations but Sonitpur could boast of some of India’s best wilderness even 20 years ago. From what is now Sonai-Rupai wildlife sanctuary (WLS) in the east to Behali RF in the west, a continuous network of tropical moist deciduous and subtropical evergreen forests made Sonitpur one of Assam’s greenest districts.

In this vast wilderness along the northern bank of the mighty Brahmhaputra, stretching till the hills of Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh, elephants roamed in abundance, tigers were not rare, and a host of other significant wildlife, such as pangolins, bison and wild dogs, flourished.

Then, something went terribly wrong.

A wave of insurgency movements rocked Assam in the 1980s. The Bodos, the largest tribe living in the Assam plains, also demanded autonomy. The movement for an independent Bodoland was formally launched in 1987 under the leadership of All Bodo Students’ Union (ABSU). The Bodo Security Force, a militant outfit, was already formed in 1986. In the mid-90s, it renamed itself as the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB). Around the same time, another rebel outfit, Bodo Liberation Tigers Force (BLTF), also joined the movement.

Ostensibly to stop the takeover of tribal land by Bengali settlers and the native Assamese, Bodo insurgents claimed hundreds of lives over one-and-a-half decades till the Bodo Autonomous Council was conceived in 2003 through a pact between the state and the BLTF, with ABSU’s support. Isolated and depleted after the Indian Army struck its forest camps in Bhutan, a section of the NDFB announced ceasefire in 2005 in favour of peace talks that is yet to take off. The anti-talks faction of the NDFB still continues with its doctrine of guerrilla violence and extortion in strongholds of Sonitpur and Kokrajhar.

Since the beginning of insurgency in the late 1980s, the Bodo leadership encouraged its people from all over Assam to shift to the proposed Bodoland areas to ensure a Bodo majority. During this insurgency, many tribal and non-tribal families became victims of ethnic clashes and some of them also moved to Sonitpur. Together, the migrants tore down the district’s forests and settled down.

Large-scale deforestation and encroachment started in 1990. In the decade that followed, all 81 sq km of Naduar RF was wiped out. Biswanath RF suffered 70 per cent loss of habitat and Charduar RF 60 per cent. Balipara, Sonai–Rupai and Behali were fortunate to lose only 40, 30 and 10 per cent, respectively.

An alarmed Supreme Court did impose a ban on clear felling of trees in 1996 across the north-east. Like most blanket orders, this ruling adversely affected livelihood in many states, such as Meghalaya. But in Sonitpur where the ban could have safeguarded the forests against mass felling, the administration simply did not risk implementing it.

At the same time, taking advantage of the near-total breakdown of the law and order machinery, many Bodos and other insurgents started using their guns to make easy money through extortion, illegal felling and poaching. Corrupt elements in the administration found it convenient to facilitate the loot for a share of the booty.

“It was anyway very risky to take on those gun-toting militants or those who had their support. So most officers remained silent,” says a forest officer, who served in the region in the mid-1990s, on condition of anonymity. “Some even became part of the racket. It’s like ‘if you anyway can’t stop them, why not join them?’ Even today, there are simply too many guns in these areas.”

For example, Manas national park, a biological hotspot and a world heritage site, lost all its rhinos to the insurgents. In Sonitpur, lakhs of trees ended up at timber markets. As insurgents made the forest their safe house to dodge the security forces, the administration was left with little access and no control.

+++

The worst is perhaps over, but peace treaties and ceasefires have not changed too much on the ground. In Sonitpur, fear of abduction and extortion, if not summary execution, is still very real: real enough to keep senior officials away from the field and make people wary to get photographed or go on record.

Satya Prakash Vashishth, divisional forest officer of Sonitpur (east), is a rare exception. Driving through Misamari where, as recently as in last November, Bodo militants gunned down eight passengers after pulling them out of a bus, Vashishth would rather discuss an Army firing range inside Sonai-Rupai WLS. “Elephants are sensitive animals. They don’t enjoy gunshots. Besides, how can one allow firing inside a sanctuary?”

Even as insurgency bled Sonitpur, the Army and the Air Force had to strengthen their presence in the area, anyway strategic (it’s close to the borders with China) from a security perspective. Large tracts of forestland were converted into cantonments, airbases and camps. Facing an uphill task of flushing out the insurgents, the military here has little regard for green laws. So supply of firewood is usually supplemented from reserved forests. But maintaining a firing range inside an elephant forest, particularly when there are options to shift it to barren ground nearby, is surely asking for too much even in the national interest.

At an abandoned forest office (now turned into a fortified Army camp) in Kamengbari on the Arunachal border, Vashishth does not answer why the Arunachal forest department was allowed to build an office in Assam in the first place. “It would have helped protection of these forests had they not fled,” he chuckles, adding that the fear of insurgents is usually just “in the mind”. So is the worst over? Vashishth points out that even if there has been no significant influx of migrants recently, the remaining forests are not any safer than before.

Since selling timber has always been the primary incentive for felling trees in Sonitpur rather than clearing land for cultivation, there is no indication that the existing encroachers will stop eyeing fresh forest tracts for extraction. But under Vashishth, the forest staff has regained some control.

The effect is starkly visible. The narrow road leading to Kamengbari cuts through Sonai-Rupai sanctuary. Encroachers had already cleared the southern parts of the road by the time the forest staff reasserted control. So while the northern side of the road is a reasonable healthy forest, there is not a single tree standing in the open ground across the road.

With the first sign of weakness from the department in Sonai-Rupai, the axes will cross the road. In August 2006, when locals were informed that the sanctuary was being brought under the wildlife division (meaning stricter protection) of the forest department, local settlers cleared 2 sq km forest in just five days before the change in command took place.

+++

An amateur green activist, Bidhan Bora teaches botany at the Darrang College in Tezpur. Growing up in Sonitpur, he has seen his world change around him. As a student, Bora frequently drove to Bhalukpong on the Arunachal border with friends for “jungle dayouts”. In those days, he recalls, the road from Tezpur to Bhalukpong was virtually walled in by dense forests on both sides. Once they crossed Balipara, animal encounters were frequent.

“There was not a single human settlement on either side of the road. If we got late, evening drives used to be scary. Elephants lorded over that road. Deer and wild boar were aplenty. Even tiger sightings were not rare. Most animals have disappeared now with the forests and the Army is busy widening the road for its supplies to Arunachal,” rues Bora.

The only forest Bora gets to see now is construction material for the road—boulders and soil—being taken away in dumpers from the adjacent buffer forests (Balipara) of the Nameri national park. A short stretch of “model road” is laid out like a smooth runway, offering a feel of the speed vehicles will enjoy throughout. Even if the forests recover magically, the habitat will be sliced off for good.

As reminders of the past, an elephant gate stands on the road near Gamani and a few signposts mark an elephant corridor where all one spots are hutments and sawed-off stumps of trees. “It was amazing how fast these Bodo settlements mushroomed all over Sonitpur. Even today, they are felling trees, smuggling out timber and increasing their land holdings. A lot of benami sale of encroached land is also going on,” claims Bora.

Little wonder then that out of the 60,000 claims filed under the Forest Rights Act (FRA) in Assam, 30,000 came from Sonitpur district alone. What is more, in the absence of any administrative scrutiny of or political opposition to Bodo rights, most of these claims are likely to go through. In fact, this mass encroachment would have been legalized by now but for a Gauhati High Court order in October 2009.

In two petitions, 25 Bodo tribals and 17 victims of ethnic clashes sought the status of forest-dwellers under the FRA. In its order, the HC termed both groups as encroachers, observing that “in such a situation, the [question of] recognition of their rights…does not arise”.

In January 2010, the state forest department asked its officers to follow the HC verdict while deciding on claims under the FRA. Most claims from Bodo encroachers resemble the conditions stated in the petition before the HC and do not merit land titles. So officers like Vashishth have not processed any. But a few others, allege local conservation activists who will not be named, are baulking under pressure and distributing pattas to “encroachers”.

The Bodo leadership, however, has always denied the encroacher tag. Urkhao Gwra Brahma, former president of the ABSU and former Rajya Sabha member, repeatedly attacked the state for not allowing “creation of new forest villages after 1980” to accommodate displaced Bodo people, claiming that land where Bodo migrants settled down was already degraded due to wanton felling by timber mafia in collusion with corrupt forest officials. The Bodo leadership also warned against giving land to “other forest dwellers” as that would amount to “loss of tribal land”.

Most non-tribal forest villages in the district were established much earlier than the Bodo settlements. But even the earliest non-tribal settlers, who had carved out their forest villages in the 1950s, do not meet the FRA eligibility clause that requires non-tribals to stay in the forest for 75 years prior to 2005. A denial of land rights, either on technical grounds or due to Bodo opposition, may drive the non-tribal population into a fresh ethnic conflict here.

“Bodos never had any dependency on forests whatsoever. They are only interested in chopping down trees and grabbing land. But they are taking advantage of the FRA. For tribals, the Act fixed the cut-off year (for showing land occupation) at 2005. If it (the cut-off) were fixed at 1980 as originally proposed, most of these encroachers would not qualify,” protests Bora, claiming that no other place in India has suffered such loss of forest cover in such a short period of time.

+++

Bora might be right. The astounding scale and rate of deforestation apart, what is shocking is the fact that such rampant felling is not so much to free land for shelter or agriculture as it is to simply monetise timber.

Between 1991 and 2001, in the entire north bank landscape (north of the Bramhaputra river) of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, loss of forest cover was just 2.38 per cent. But in the Sonitpur elephant reserve area, it was a staggering 24.48 per cent. Surprisingly, both areas have recorded a similar growth (about 8.60 per cent) of agricultural land in that period. Clearly, 24.48 per cent forest was not destroyed to make way for agriculture. It was just cut up and sold off. A comparison of the growth of degraded forests (result of heavy felling) in the two areas clinches the case: just 1.56 per cent in the entire landscape and 21.29 per cent in the Sonitpur reserve.

On paper, Sonai-Rupai RF (a sanctuary since 1998) covers 220 sq km. By 2001, it lost 7 per cent of its forests. After mass felling over the next five years, only 128 sq km (58 per cent) of the sanctuary remains forested. The story is the same in Balipara RF (190 sq km). It lost 27.59 per cent of forest cover but corresponding growth in cropland was just 11.97 per cent.

In 1991, 18.44 per cent of the Sonitpur district was forested, including 1.58 per cent of degraded forest. In 2001, it still had 18.22 per cent forests but out of it 7.60 per cent was degraded. Clearly, the district lost more than one-third (37 per cent) of its quality forest in just 10 years. In actual terms, one study puts the overall forest loss in Sonitpur at 232 sq km between 1994 and 2001.

The enactment of the FRA in 2006 clearly emboldened the encroachers. On one hand, they claimed legal ownership of “tribal land” they had already cleared. On the other, they started extending land holdings by felling more trees. The biggest mass encroachment was attempted at Behali in March 2009 when hundreds of trees were chopped off.

Not that the forest department did not try to hold onto its ground. In 1993, five persons were killed when forest personnel opened fire after being attacked by encroachers. Then, between 1994 and 2002, the department carried out 33 anti-encroachment drives, demolished 4,117 huts, arrested 49 encroachers and reclaimed 7.39 sq km. In recent years, Vashishth himself has foiled several attempts at encroachment in a persisting battle of nerves.

But, evidently, that has not been enough.

+++

Adding to encroachment and the deadly encounters of security forces and insurgents, the forest department has yet another conflict to deal with. Rapid loss of tree cover has unsettled the largest inhabitants of Sonitpur’s forests. If human settlements on their traditional migratory routes were not enough, disappearance of forests where they foraged pushed the hungry elephants to raid croplands.

The raging conflict has partially subsided since a WWF-India team started work here in 2003, the year that recorded 32 elephant and 20 human casualties. Since then, retaliatory killings by poisoning have become rare. But the space crunch makes frequent face-offs inevitable. Between 2007 and 2009, conflict claimed 8 elephants and 20 people.

Vashishth has just finished debriefing his field staff on the whereabouts of a huge tusker that often intimidates even the soldiers stationed at nearby Lama camp. For the first time, he looks despondent: “There is little hope for the elephants here. Big animals need more space. On paper, we have large swathes of forests. But not even one-third of it is intact.”

In official records, Sonitpur district has more than 1200 sq km of forestland. But what is standing on ground and under the department’s control accounts for less than 400 sq km—200 sq km of Nameri NP, 128 sq km of Sonai-Rupai WLS and about 60 sq km of Behali RF. The rest is either degraded or has just disappeared.

At an average actual holding of 2 hectares per family (though the FRA allows a maximum of 4 hectares), Sonitpur’s 30,000 claims require around 600 sq km of forestland. Custodian of the bulk (328 sq km in Nameri NP and Sonai-Rupai WLS) of the surviving forests, Vashishth knows he is fighting a losing battle in the district and, sooner or later, all these claims will be granted under the FRA. Tired of a long vigil and ready to move on, he offers a “compromise solution”.

“Always hungry for timber, the encroachers have cleared far more forestland than they actually occupy or have filed claims for. All these tiny settlements are scattered across the forest landscape. If they are given titles for equivalent land (total 600 sq km) in clusters rather than all over the place, we can still carve out a couple of hundred sq km to regenerate the forest. The stumps and the rootstocks are all still there,” he says wistfully.

Given the political compulsions in this insurgency-ridden district, regenerating hope, let alone forests, seems a tall order.

The Great Iron Ore Heist

2011-06-30T14:36:00.002-04:00

The Posco project in Odisha is not just about violation of human rights or an ecological disaster. It is a brazen example of how the country’s high and mighty are shifting goalposts to favour a powerful foreign multinational corporation.

Open, 18 June, 2011

DHINKIA/NUAGAON, ODISHA

Under a scorching sun, children of Govindpur and Dhinkia villages in Odisha (formerly Orissa) lie on roasting sand in a semi-circle to block approach roads. A hundred metres behind them lie the women. These human rings are the first line of defence against the administration’s acquisition of land for the Rs 52,000 crore Posco project. On 2 May, Union Minister of Environment & Forests Jairam Ramesh reversed his nine-month-old order banning land acquisition, and on 18 May, revenue officials backed by policemen marched in.

After compensating those “willing to hand over land”, the team ran into stout resistance. Unable to persuade defiant villagers, on 11 June, they sneaked in from the seaside. The daily bulletin proudly proclaimed that the government had taken over 24 betel vineyards. What went unreported: villagers put their vines back up the next day, and women and children returned to take turns under the sun in defence of their land.

It has been six years since the Odisha government signed its much-flaunted Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the South Korean steel giant for setting up a huge integrated power-cum-steel plant and captive port, allowing it to mine 600 million tonnes of iron ore in the state. On paper, the government has cleared the plan for the port and plant, but that means little on the ground.

As the battle of nerves intensified in Govindpur, villagers moved a PIL in the Orissa High Court (HC) on 20 May for a stay on the land acquisition (the next hearing is on 20 June). National Board for Wildlife member Biswajit Mohanty also moved the HC against the state for allotting ports to private parties through direct negotiation, without inviting public bids as mandated by the Centre; while the petition will be heard again on 21 June, an interim order on 30 May barred the state from signing any MoU for private ports without the court’s permission—in effect, stalling Odisha’s plan to ink a fresh MoU with Posco (the one signed in 2005 expired last year).

THE PLANNED LOOT

While India pats itself for having netted its single-largest foreign direct investment, Posco is poised to make many times its investment from iron ore alone. The 2005 MoU allowed the South Korean company to extract 600 million tonnes of iron ore over 30 years. Odisha’s 2004 MoU with Tata Steel allowed extraction of just 250 million tonnes of ore for a 6 million tonnes-per-annum (6 MTPA) steel plant at Kalinganagar. Posco, with a proposed plant of twice that annual capacity (12 MTPA), has been allowed 100 million tonnes of extra ore.

Why does Posco need so much iron ore? Because Posco, as it made clear during its MoU discussions, plans to export 10 million tonnes of ore per year; the 2005 MoU allows it to ship out 30 per cent of the ore it extracts. In fact, the MoU also concedes that Posco may source an additional 400 million tonnes of iron ore from India for its steel plants in South Korea through supply arrangements from the open market. There is a fat margin between the domestic open market (average Rs 4,400/tonne) and the international price (average Rs 7,400/tonne) of iron ore. For 400 million tonnes, it adds up to Rs 1.20 lakh crore at today’s prices.

Posco gets this deal at a delicate time, when the national consensus—of the Government, Judiciary and Indian industry—is moving towards limiting iron ore exports to help the domestic steel industry. India is the world’s largest iron ore exporter after Australia and Brazil. But in terms of per capita reserves, India has only 21 tonnes against Brazil’s 333 tonnes and Australia’s 2,000 tonnes. Various studies have estimated that business-as-usual will exhaust India’s iron ore reserves anytime between 2025 and 2040.

Karnataka banned iron ore exports in 2010, Chhattisgarh is considering the option, and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s own Steel and Mines Minister Raghunath Mohanty floated a similar proposal this January. Even Ramesh, while issuing the final clearance to Posco on 2 May, hoped that ‘the new MoU would be negotiated by the state government in such a way that exports of iron ore are completely avoided’.

Exports apart, the financial implications of subsidising 600 million tonnes of iron ore for a multinational are grave.

State governments earned a paltry royalty of Rs 27 per tonne till the Centre fixed it at 10 per cent of the domestic market price in 2009. But with global prices ruling as high as Rs 7,400/tonne, after accounting for royalty (about Rs 440/tonne) and operating costs (about Rs 750/tonne on mining, freight, etcetera), an extracting company enjoys a margin of around Rs 6,200/tonne on out-shipped ore. So, if Posco bought the allotted 600 million tonnes of ore in the international market, it would have to shell out an extra Rs 3.72 lakh crore at current prices.

That, at the very least, is India’s gift to a South Korean steel-maker in competition with Indian companies. Ore is not getting any cheaper; its price has risen by over 500 per cent in the past 30 years.

All in all, it represents a generosity of scandalous proportions. Indian buyers, meanwhile, will have to pay global prices for steel from Posco’s Odisha plant. Besides, in 2006, the Posco project got an in-principle approval as a Special Economic Zone (SEZ). This means tax sops that will result in the Centre and Odisha government forfeiting a bulk of the projected Rs 89,000 crore and Rs 22,500 crore, respectively, that they would otherwise have gained in revenues from the project.

Moreover, Posco’s SEZ status (read: free export zone) and the captive port will make it very difficult for the authorities to keep a tab on how much ore Posco ships out from its exclusive facilities. Since the government levies no export duty in SEZs, it will also be much more profitable for Posco to export its steel produce from Odisha than to sell it in the domestic market.

Few emerging countries dump their national interest so casually. Posco tried the same deal in Brazil in 2004 when it inked a pact with Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD) for setting up a steel plant at the port city of Sao Luis and sourcing cheap ore from the Carajas mine. But CVRD not only insisted that Posco buy ore at the market rate, but also hiked the 2004 price of ore by 71 per cent in 2005.

So Posco shifted focus to Odisha.

THE DEVIOUS PLOY

Aware of India’s strict green laws, Posco methodically broke down its mega plans into segments first, and then downplayed each component to obtain clearances. The company’s controversial acquisition of 4,004 acres is only for the port and power-cum-steel plant. The project requires another 8,100 acres: 6,100 acres (mostly forest) for mining, and 2,000 acres for two townships (around the steel plant and the mine).

The proposal for the power-cum-steel plant itself is misleading. The application for environmental clearance mentions a 4 MTPA steel plant, not the 12 MPTA one scheduled to come up in six years. The environmental impact of the power plant was considered for only 400 MW installed capacity, not the entire 1,100 MW that would follow.

The primary need, though, is iron ore. Posco is yet to get permission to mine 6,100 acres of lush forest in Kandadhar Hills to extract those 600 million tonnes of ore. On 14 July 2010, the state HC cancelled the out-of-turn allotment of a mining permit to the South Korean firm. In October, the state government moved the apex court against the HC order, and the matter is sub judice.

The second key requirement is water. It is not clear if the approval for fresh water use of 10 million gallons daily (MGD)—slashed from the original approval for 16.5 MGD—is meant for the 4 MPTA production level or the full 12 MPTA level. In 2006, Posco got permission to draw 125 cusecs of water from the Jobra barrage. Following protests by the Mahanadi Banchao Andolan, backed by the BJP, the state asked Posco in September 2010 to draw water from the Hansua River instead. While the company has commissioned a fresh feasibility study, the issue remains unresolved.

Without any certainty on securing ore and water, Posco has frog-leaped itself to acquire land for its plant. The final component—a port to ship its output—was the first unit it got cleared; but again, not without doctoring facts. The captive port was proposed as a minor port to escape the stringent reviews that major ports attract. But the Posco port will construct two massive breakwaters, one 1,070-metres-long to the north and another 1,600-metres-long to the south, to control turbulence. There will be a 13-km-long approach channel, with a minimum width of 250 metres, to allow 170,000 DWT (deadweight tonnage) ships, among the biggest in the business.

Clearly, Posco’s plot is larger than the sum of its parts. Getting started with the port and plant before obtaining rights to ore and water is an attempt to force a fait accompli, a phrase Ramesh himself uses liberally to describe the Navi Mumbai airport, Jaitapur nuclear plant and coal blocks across India.

Not that everyone was blind. In November 2007, the Supreme Court’s (SC) Central Empowered Committee (CEC) in its report noted that ‘instead of piecemeal diversion of forest land for the project, it would be appropriate that the total forest land required for the project, including for mining, is assessed and a decision for diversion of forest land is taken for the entire forest land’. In fact, the SC’s in-principle approval in August 2008 of the diversion of 3,093 acres of forest land for the Posco plant shared these concerns. But the Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF) was not listening.

THE TWISTED ‘PLANT’

Nandigram, Singur, Noida or Jaitapur, land acquisition for industrial use has been a highly sensitive issue in India. Posco’s case in Odisha is even more complex. Since 3,097 hectares of the 4,004-acre proposed project area is classified as forest land, Posco required environmental clearance for land diversion. However, there is no trace of wilderness in the Posco project area. What was ‘dense deciduous forest’ in British records in the 1920s has disappeared since. Betel vines, arguably the country’s finest, and paddy fields have taken over. But the Forest Rights Act (FRA) came into force in January 2008, empowering forest dwellers to determine the nature and extent of forest land use.

Community resistance, however, started snowballing soon after the Odisha government signed the controversial MoU in June 2005. By 2008, the project got a few in-principle green clearances. Then, Ramesh took over the MoEF in May 2009, and, within three months, ordered that no forest land be diverted for Posco without the consent of the affected gram sabhas.

In a volte face five months on, Ramesh granted the ‘final clearance’ for land diversion on 29 December, in violation of his August order. Again, unable to defend the somersault, he had to issue a clarification in 10 days flat. On 8 January 2010, he wrote to the state that ‘final clearance’ was ‘conditional’, depending on the settlement of rights under the FRA.

What followed was surreal. Odisha claimed that there were no tribals or traditional forest dwellers in the project area. In the next few months, two Centre-appointed committees—under NC Saxena and Meena Gupta—nailed those lies. Following the first report, the MoEF stopped land acquisition in August 2010. Based on the second report—that called the state’s claims ‘false’ and‘fabricated’—the Ministry’s Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) on 19 November 2010 recommended temporary withdrawal of the forest clearance.

But Ramesh offered yet another ‘conditional’ final clearance on 31 January this year. The project was on if Odisha could give an ‘assurance’ that there were no ‘eligible persons’ under the FRA in the area. In its ‘assurance’, the state government repeated all the claims earlier trashed as ‘false’ by government inquiry panels. Then, on 29 April, it deemed the gram sabhas ‘illegal’ and the resolutions ‘fake’.

On 2 May, keeping “faith… in what the state government says”, Ramesh gave a ‘final approval’ for land diversion.

THE PARTIAL ‘PUSH’

Ramesh’s apparent leap of faith is not out of sync with the alarming alacrity shown by his predecessors in the green ministry in pushing the Posco project. But were they under pressure from their bosses and colleagues in the Government?

Consider the following:

l In 2007, a file noting on 8 May shows that the Finance Ministry sought an update on the Posco project. The next day, a letter from the Director of Disinvestment wanted the status of the Posco proposal to be sent to the Finance Ministry by

18 May, as the then Finance Minister P Chidambaram was meeting members of the Investment Commission on 24 May.

Within days, a few hours before he relinquished the MoEF to take over the Telecom Ministry on 16 May, A Raja issued Posco’s port its environment clearance, perhaps the last of the 2,016 green clearances he granted in just 36 months.

» Again in 2007, a letter dated 4 June from the Finance Ministry sought the status of the Posco applications by 11 June, for a review meeting on the project’s progress scheduled for 16 June. The MoEF Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) cleared the plant at its meeting on 20 June. The Meena Gupta inquiry committee majority noted that ‘the proximity of dates between the letters from the Finance Ministry and the hasty processing of the approvals by the MoEF and EAC, despite the serious shortcomings and illegalities, is more than a mere coincidence’ and ‘the brazen interference of the Ministry of Finance into [the] functioning of another Ministry is most unfortunate, highly improper and against public interest’.

» Meena Gupta took charge as MoEF secretary on 1 June 2007. Since Raja had already moved to telecom, the MoEF was effectively under the Prime Minister’s Office. Posco had applied for port clearance in September 2006, and it took Raja eight months to okay it. The application for environmental clearance of the Posco plant was filed on 27 April 2007. Under the PMO, Gupta issued the clearance on 19 July, in less than three months. Again, when the Odisha government sought clearance for diverting 3,000 acres of forest land for the plant on 26 June 2007, Gupta promptly obtained an in-principle nod from the ministry’s FAC on 9 August 2007.

» Could it be a coincidence that Ramesh handpicked the same Meena Gupta to head the four-member fact-finding committee in 2010? Unsurprisingly, Gupta was the lone dissenter in the panel and found nothing wrong with the clearance for land diversion that she had issued herself.

» Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, along with Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik, assured South Korean President Lee Myung-bak of the speedy clearance of Posco’s project when the latter was in New Delhi as chief guest for the Republic Day parade last year. Minister of Steel Virbhadra Singh even offered a six-month deadline for the handover of land to the Posco delegation that accompanied the South Korean President.

Dr Singh repeated the assurance at the 17th Asean summit at Hanoi last October. At the G-20 summit at Seoul last November, India’s Ambassador to South Korea SR Tayal said there was “a common desire on both sides to see the project through” and “every effort is being made by all stakeholders”.

It is surprising how such personal commitments were issued on an issue to be decided on its legal merit. It seems the pressure on the MoEF to clear the project before the G-20 meet was enormous. After failing to meet the deadline, Ramesh blamed the FAC for delaying its report and assured the who’s who in the country’s power circles that “the decision will be taken within a couple of weeks”.

Eventually, it took Ramesh a few months to mock the FAC and sundry committees of his own making to clear Posco with a lofty justification: “Beyond a point, the bona fides of a democratically elected state government cannot always be questioned by the Centre”. But can the bona fides of a democratically elected gram panchayat be questioned any more than that of a state government?

For the villagers of Dhinkia, it may be too late for an answer.

Can't Get The Act Together

2011-06-30T14:33:00.001-04:00

The Left Front has been the biggest advocate of the Forest Rights Act (FRA), but its own former rule in home state West Bengal saw its worst abuse as well. Forest villagers dependent on tea garden jobs are indifferent to the Act. Families inside the Buxa tiger reserve are keen to surrender their rights for Rs 10 lakh each. But away from tea gardens and outside the tiger reserve, forest communities have bigger demands than the FRA allows. And a desperate forest department twists the Act to retain control.

Open, 11 June, 2011

JAYANTI/CHILAPATA, WEST BENGAL

Jodi ekta bado hotel na koirte pari, patta-y ki labh (Of what use is this land title if I can’t build a big hotel here)?

Not far from the forest office at Rajabhatkhawa in the buffer of the Buxa tiger reserve, Gopal Sharma walks across his paddy field. Pampoo Basti got its name from a long abandoned pump house. The 19 families settled here during the Raj for forestry work have now multiplied to 44. Today, Sharma and his two brothers cultivate less than 3 acres in a forest fold. A minor change of course by a neighbourhood stream cost them some land in 1993. Among them, the three brothers have eight children.

Sharma is a reasonable man. He walks, pointing out copious elephant droppings in wide clearings of damaged crops, and pauses for a photograph or two. He does not hate the herds. But the forest department, he points out, could have maintained the electric fencing.
Villagers here have heard of the Forest Rights Act (FRA). But there is little excitement. Sharma explains they have no future with such limited land holding and routine elephant raids. Daily transport for good education and healthcare is expensive. So if the forest department extends the Rs 10 lakh per family resettlement scheme to the buffer areas of the tiger reserve, he would take the money and move on.

But why would he risk a new beginning when he is about to get his rights? For the first time, Sharma sounds impatient: “What rights? I will still be tilling the same field, fight the same elephants and stay in this hutment. How can we make a decent living in this forest? Yes, tourists do come here. But I can’t even lease my land for a proper hotel.”

In neighbouring Bamani Basti, Darbahadur Karki describes an aggressive herd of 80-odd elephants that gored two villagers a couple of years back. The jumbos, he says, even raid their houses. All 16 families here are eager to resettle if they get the Rs 10 lakh package. “We have rights. We collect firewood. Our cattle graze in the forest. We get compensation if leopards kill livestock. But is this a life?”

It is the same refrain in Dalbadol, another forest village in the Buxa buffer. Firewood apart, says Subir Chhetri, there is nothing much to collect from the forest. Annual flooding drowns the fields for at least three months, leaving layers of gravel on the soil. The villagers might still break their back ploughing, laments Chhetri, were it not for routine elephant raids. Soon, putting a cricket match on hold, the village youth debate their chances of getting the resettlement offer anytime soon.

Clearly, these forest villagers do not think that the FRA will change their life and Rs 10 lakh is a lot of money when their average monthly family income does not exceed Rs 3000. But, with so many villagers so eager to move out, how many has the Buxa management resettled so far?
Not a single one.

+++

Before conservation became a priority, one could take a train to the Bhutan border. Jayanti was a busy railway station transporting dolomite and limestone. Now it is a large village inside the Buxa core that appears larger with a paramilitary camp and a forest department campus. All that remains of the railway station is the canteen, since converted into a dhaba that serves jawans, forest staff and the occasional tourist.

In 2008, the forest department conducted a survey here for resettlement. By then, some villagers had set up rudimentary tourist lodges on their properties. Quite a few vehicles and guides were conducting jungle safaris around Jayanti. Barring these few, the villagers were willing to move out.
But a gradual realignment of the Jayanti river has been threatening the very existence of the village. Gravel flushed down has almost filled up the riverbed. Each year, the monsoon surge shifts the river towards the village. Eventually, people here would have no option but to move out.
Before that could happen, Jayanti became a political battleground.

Villagers describe the flashpoint as a face-off between the “proxy-Left” forest department and the local guides’ union that declared allegiance to Trinamool Congress, the Left’s main political opposition. Ostensibly to teach the guides’ union a lesson, the Buxa management flashed an advisory from the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) for a gradual shift of tourism activities in all tiger reserves from core to buffer areas. The forest roads around Jayanti were closed to tourists. The guides and drivers became jobless overnight. The lodges lost significant business.

What could have been a smooth resettlement has since become tense, with a section of the village leadership maligning the forest bosses who, in turn, have denied even routine concessions, such as for boulder collection, to the villagers. The build-up to this atmosphere of mistrust, however, began in 2009 with complaints of political partisanship.

In the Left manifesto for the 2009 general elections, the ruling parties claimed credit for backing the FRA in its present form. Even so, Bengal was among the states where implementation of the Act was the most lackadaisical. The Left government in the state needed a face-saver before the polls.
So party functionaries in North Bengal made the administration distribute some land titles in a hurry, without following the mandatory democratic verification process. Not surprisingly, most of the pattas (land titles) were doled out in Left strongholds among party sympathisers, many in tea garden areas.

For example, all 287 families, mostly Ravas, in North Khaerbari got land titles, 7-9 bighas each. Pukar Pradhan’s is one of the few Nepalese families in the village. He says elephants do not venture out to damage crops in this area (where forests are mostly degraded) and the villagers are allowed to collect all the firewood they need. Like Pradhan, many in North Khaerbari work at Hashimara tea garden. Pradhan’s neighbour Gopi Rava says they also get work under the government’s 100-day job scheme. Forest rights have not made much of a difference to their life, but of course, it is a “good thing to have land titles”.

Villagers at Jayanti, however, are not interested in pattas. Under the FRA, non-scheduled tribes (non-STs) are required to furnish proof of 75-year-residency (a tough ask anywhere) to claim rights. More than 90 per cent of Jayanti’s population is non-ST. They would rather move out immediately if the Buxa management offers the resettlement package to all of them and if the money comes in a maximum of two installments instead of the proposed five.
RP Saini, field director of Buxa tiger reserve, says the forest department is waiting for a 100 per cent consensus: “The process is on hold due to the elections. But unless an entire village is shifted, the exercise will be futile. There are some elements who are trying to mislead people. So we want the willing majority to convince those few who are still in two minds.”

Unless the political one-upmanship intensifies, it seems only a matter of time before villages from the Buxa core are moved out. Even the villages in Buxa buffer may be offered the resettlement deal in the near future. But thousands of forest villagers outside the tiger reserve will never have that option. And not all of them have access to tea garden jobs.

So they have other ideas.

+++

Organisations such as National Forum of Forest People and Forest Workers (NFFPFW) and North Eastern Society for Preservation of Nature and Wild Life (NESPON) are mobilising forest villagers in this region to seek community control over forests under the FRA. Such control, they argue, will give them the powers to manage and use forest resources in a sustainable way, like their forefathers did, without any intervention from the forest department.
Forest villages, such as Kodal Basti in Chilapata, put up signposts in 2008, declaring the area as community forests. Subsequently, villagers locked up the forest department’s timber yards, stopped clear felling of trees, and decreed that the forest department had no authority to act without their permission. The department retaliated by demolishing the signposts and arresting a few villagers.

While the flare-up has somewhat eased in the past few months, the tension, and a few questions, remain. Just how did the forefathers of these forest villagers manage the forests? And do such practices guarantee sustainable use of forest resources today?

Across North Bengal, British foresters established forest villages since 1910 as forced settlements of local communities such as the Ravas, and outsiders Nepalese and Jharkhandis. These villagers carried out forestry work, such as plantation and felling, without any wages but were provided with homestead land and cultivable plots. Their rights included collection of NTFP and firewood, grazing cattle, cultivation of vegetables through inter cropping in the plantations, fishing and regulated hunting.

Thus, forest villagers here completely lived off the forests till they started earning wages in the late seventies. Around the same time, the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 and the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, came into being and many of their rights were compromised.Over the next few decades, wages became the prime source of livelihood. Today, minimal forestry work means there is little opportunity to earn regular wages. Moreover, if the villagers intend to control all work undertaken by the forest department, irrespective of the legitimacy of the demand, a hostile administration is not likely to create jobs for them as firewatchers or guards.

Besides, few traditional livelihood practices seem viable if 242 forest villages are to depend on the remaining patches of forests. Hunting is banned and fishing restricted. According to NFFPFW, growing focus on clearing natural forests and commercial plantations over decades led to the disappearance of much of the NTFP. This also caused food scarcity for wild animals and pushed elephants to raid crops more frequently. So leave alone vegetable inter cropping in the plantations, cultivation around the homesteads is not really an option anymore.

Lal Singh Bhujel, who represents NFFPFW at Buxa, sums up the purpose of the “long struggle”. Once the communities have control over these forests, they will shift the focus from commercial forestry and sustain themselves by restoring and conserving natural forests. But this lofty pursuit finds no echo on the ground.

Less than 100 km from Buxa, Chilapata wildlife sanctuary is a tiny green patch in this fragmented forest landscape. One late morning, at least 50 people are seen carrying green branches within a 5 km stretch. A thunder storm brought down many trees the previous night. Otherwise, claims one of the fearless axe-wielders, there might not be half as many.

In Chilapata, about 230 families in Andu Basti, Kurmai Basti and Bania Basti are waiting for land titles. Last year, four families in Andu Basti got lucky. Outside the youth club, Santosh Rava complains that a government survey has placed all the families in these forest villages above poverty line (APL). This, he points out, when routine elephant raids do not allow anything more than a single crop of paddy and NTFP means only some fruits and saplings.

Rava explains that villagers will apply for bank loans once they get land titles: “With cash, one can try different options. We need good irrigation and protection from elephants. Crackers and electric fencing do not work. Irrigation canals may work as ditches. But there are so many restrictions here. I could make about Rs 20,000 if I was allowed to cut down one of these,” he points at a few surviving old trees inside the village. But what happens when the trees are gone? “We know all that… but we have to get by,” Rava walks away, mumbling.

Formation of Forest Development Corporation (FDC) in the mid-70s made forestry operations very lucrative. But already since the 1960s, collusion between a corrupt administration and the timber mafia had cleared large tracts of forest in this region. While some villagers made small fortunes on the fringe of this illegal economy, many others were left out and have since been awaiting their turn.

Till a few years ago, many tea gardens here served bush meat to guests. In 2004, deer delicacies were still available at a few hours’ notice inside Buxa. Now, the impact is visible. Since nobody hunted bisons for meat, they are spilling out of pocket forests on the highways. But it is difficult to spot deer in these forests.

Though commercial poaching seems to be under control now, the timber mafia has not given up yet. In 2008, two villagers died inside Buxa when forest staff opened fire on groups who were allegedly felling trees. In this part of Bengal, where people and institutions never cared much for wildlife and forest laws, an interpretation of the FRA in terms of complete community control over forest resources for sustainable use does not sound too reassuring.

On its part, the forest department is desperate to retain control. Forest villages here came under the Panchayat system in 1996 but the forest department got to control the development funds. Today, the department promptly suspends all development work in villages that challenge its authority. When it came to settlement of rights, the administration did not even bother to convene a single gram sansad meeting and violated provisions of the FRA while selecting members for forest rights committees (FRCs). In December 2008, the state even issued a new circular on joint forest management, restricting forest rights to “usufructs” controlled by the forest department, that too outside Protected Areas.

When NGOs, such as NFFPFW, objected to these violations of the FRA, the administration dubbed them as “disruptive forces” and branded local rights activists as Maoists. In 2010, top officials of Buxa tiger reserve warned this reporter, who had met local NFFPFW functionaries, that the administration tapped all phone conversations of those who “entertain anti-national elements” as evidence.

Amid such administrative paranoia, the political parties are mostly silent. Even during the state elections this April, while all local candidates had a lot to promise the tea garden workers, a huge constituency that can swing results, no outfit, not even Akhil Bharatiya Adivasi Vikas Parishad, talked about implementation of the FRA.

In the nearest town, Alipurduar, says a young timber merchant on condition of anonymity: “Whichever political alignment holds power, it is unlikely to upset the traditional equations. Kono change paba na (you will see no change). Today, the mafia keeps the (forest) department and one set of political bosses happy. Tomorrow, they might be paying another set of politicians and, if this new Act really rolls out, some community strongmen.”

Caught in this political blind spot between the administration and the activists, most forest villagers here are wary of their future. Sitting in his rickety, wooden quarter, Dhanbahadur Chhetri does not understand the fuss about a new Act that will soon make Pampoo Basti a revenue village. Under which law, wonders the octogenarian, did Station Para become a revenue village when a few retired railway staff set up the colony in 2005 right inside the Rajabhatkhawa forest?

“Rules and laws are for the powerful. So everyone is fighting for power. There is no middle ground here, no future for the poor,” says the old man, retiring to his room. His time is up, but Chhetri will not stop his two sons if they get enough money to buy some land away from the forest.

How To Save A Sanctuary

2011-06-30T14:26:00.002-04:00

The Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Wildlife Sanctuary in Karnataka has been notified as a tiger reserve. While this tag will fetch extra conservation funds for the sanctuary, it threatens to displace Soliga tribals from their ancestral habitat. New generations of Soligas may not be content with their forefathers’ way of life, but this forest will lose its soul without them. And India will lose one of its best opportunities to try out a model of coexistence between wildlife and eco-sensitive people

Open, 28 May 2011

BR HILLS, KARNATAKA

Alli nodu dodda nayi (Look, there’s a big dog)!

It cannot be easy living inside a forest. On a bad day, an animal encounter can kill or maim. And bad days, as Soliga tribals around BR Hills count them, are not rare. Still, they go easy on fear, trusting their own jungle sense and natural justice in the wild.

From elephants to wild boars, the mighty animals have long become deities. But between life and death, there is still time for sacrilegious humour. Even a Soliga child knows how to dodge a tiger: just call it a ‘big dog’ when you come across one, and that insult will be enough to drive the tiger away.

Not easy, but simple.

Now try turning the tiger trick on Soligas. Try calling them the vermin eating into this prized forest, the only obstacle to securing a key wildlife habitat. Nothing could insult them more. But no, unlike huliverappa, their tiger god, who, if insulted, supposedly walks away in disgust, Soligas will not concede any ground, forget about leaving the forest.

One cannot fault them if they appear thicker skinned than their deity. Soligas have lived here for centuries and have conceded a lot over time. Originally a cave-dwelling, shift-cultivating tribe of hunter-gatherers, they were forced to settle down in small porus (colonies) when these forests were declared the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Wildlife Sanctuary (BRTWS) in 1974.

It was not a smooth transition. For one, recalls Jede Gowda of Keredimbe poru, they lost access to many of their 500-odd cultural sites strewn all over the forest. Each of the six Soliga clans has its own deities representing the five elements: devaru (god, associated with sun), veeru (demon, associated with stone), maramma (mother goddess, associated with fire), abbi (spring or streams) and kallugudi (the spirit of the dead, associated with wind). Each of these clans also has its own saga (burial ground). Confined to different parts of the forest since 1974, Soligas had to reinvent their cultural and religious symbols.

Jede Gowda’s neighbour Sidda Gowda shows the way to the Dodda-Sampige, an ancient champak tree by a stream, worshipped by Soligas as Mahadeveshwara. Around 70 families of two nearby porus—Keredimbe and Gombe- gallu—are its regular devotees who gather here on all auspicious occasions. If Soligas are moved out, wonders Jede Gowda, where will the young get married?

But culture and symbols are not the only things at stake for them. The confinement of this independent tribe to porus also put an end to the practice of shift-cultivation. Forest laws ended the traditional Soliga practice of carrying out low-intensity ground fires to control hermi-parasites and invasive species in the forest understory. This led to lantana invasion, deterioration of several forest patches, and lowered yields of gooseberry, all of which added to Soligas’ livelihood concerns.

Hunting was banned in 1972, but the traditional food system of Soligas and their rudimentary economy continued to depend on non-timber forest produce (NTFP), including honey, gooseberry and lichen, till the BRTWS management prohibited such extraction in 2005, citing a five-year-old Supreme Court order. After prolonged agitation, it was only in 2009, two years after the Forest Rights Act took effect, that the ban on NTFP was lifted.

Meanwhile, the BRTWS management has been eyeing ‘tiger reserve’ status for over a decade. In 2000, the then Union Minister for Environment and Forests TR Baalu put the plan on hold. The Project Tiger steering committee turned down a second proposal in 2005. Karnataka revived the issue again in 2008. Once R Dhruvnarayan, Congress MP from Chamrajnagar, S Pakkirappa, BJP MP from Raichur, and Vijay Mallya, industrialist and Rajya Sabha MP, repeated the demand in Parliament, the current Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh offered an in-principle approval.

In September 2010, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) sought a detailed proposal from Karnataka. Instead of sending the proposal for NTCA ratification, the state went ahead and notified the BRTWS as a tiger reserve this January, placing a question mark on the future of about 6,000 Soligas in the core area of the tiger reserve and another 10,000 in the buffer zone.

No wonder any insult now only adds to the many injuries, old and new. But unlike the tiger, so easily turned away in Soliga myths, BR Hills’ tribals would rather give it back in full measure.

+++

Nobody is sure who deserves more credit for protecting these forests from mining, timber and poaching mafias. The forest department was not in contention until recently. If one asks Soligas, they are not modest. But that may not be fair on the late Veerappan, whose presence made these forests out of bounds for petty plunderers.

The state has taken over since the brigand relinquished charge. Today, the conservation stakes are high. This 610 sq km forest (of which 540 sq km is the tiger reserve with a core area of 350 sq km) is the critical link between rich wilderness areas of the Western Ghats and Eastern Ghats. A vibrant combination of six different forest types in varying altitude, the BRTWS is home to most major mammals, including tigers, leopards, wild dogs, elephants and bisons; 245 species of birds and 776 species of higher plants. The loss of this forest will amount to surrendering one of the country’s most important elephant corridors and a prolific source population of tigers.

While ‘tiger reserve’ status mandates the highest level of protection, it also demands the resettlement of villages to keep the core area inviolate. On paper, the scheme is voluntary. Already, 787 Soliga families here have got land titles under the Forest Rights Act. The Chamrajnagar district administration assures the remaining 400 families that they will have their titles soon. But the spectre of displacement has already organised Soligas under the Zilla Budakattu Girijana Abhivrudhi Sangha.

Their argument is simple: rather than harm the forest, the presence of Soligas helps conservation. They cite official census figures to argue how tiger numbers have increased while forest use and cultivation of small holdings by Soligas has continued. They point out how a study by the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE) has found that the extraction of forest gooseberries by Soligas is within sustainable limits. Over the years, local Soliga institutions have been fighting anti-conservation activities such as granite quarrying, poaching and timber smuggling.

Understandably, the administration is sympathetic. Barring a confrontation during former deputy forest conservator (DCF) Dr R Raju’s tenure, when NTFP rights were denied and a few Soliga leaders were arrested on charges of sabotage (forest fire), relations between Soligas and the forest management have been event-free. DCF R Ravishankar, presently in charge of the BRTWS, says he is fine with Soligas staying within the tiger reserve so long as they cooperate with the department. And, he agrees, the community has been cooperative so far.

Dr Amar Narayan, deputy commissioner, Chamrajnagar, is busy completing the good work of his predecessor Chakravarthy Mohan, who distributed the first lot of land titles among Soligas. Known for his hands-on approach in the state administration, Dr Narayan has promised to settle the pending claims soon. A little hesitant to comment on a “forest issue”, he nevertheless makes it clear that Soligas should not be resettled because he does not feel “they can have a life outside forests”.

Incidentally, a cluster of private coffee estates stretching over 1,600 hectares in the heart of the core forest liberally uses pesticides and chemicals that threaten the sanctuary’s water systems. While the future of these estates is sub judice, confide top forest officials, the department will not be comfortable approaching Soligas with resettlement offers before the ecologically hazardous coffee estates are shut down.

Soligas enjoy strong support from two large NGOs working in the BR Hills area. While the ATREE has been helping them improve their income from NTFPs and monitor sustainable extraction, the Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra (VGKK) has been working over three decades among Soligas to ensure better healthcare and education. Both organisations are pushing a community conservation model for the BRTWS, drawing on traditional Soliga knowledge.

Even conservationists, often perceived as anti-people, are soft on Soligas. Eminent tiger scientist Dr Ullas Karanth says he had successfully opposed the move to declare the BRTWS a tiger reserve during TR Baalu’s tenure at the Ministry, “to avoid an unnecessary confrontation with the indigenous people”. If the NTCA had to declare another tiger reserve in the region, argues Dr Karanth, Kudremukh would have been a better choice because about 500 families there were keen to relocate, and the forest, clubbed with the Bhadra tiger reserve, formed a vital habitat in the central Western Ghats.

With such unanimity in their favour, then, why must Soligas worry so much about losing ground? Or is their fight about something else?

+++

Gorukana is a unique Soliga narrative form. Like a spider’s web, this ballad is woven extempore by Soligas who take turns to add a few lines each. Traditionally, an entire poru gathers around the evening fire and recounts the day’s happenings in a rhythmic gorukana that, like many subtle symphonies of the rainforest, reveals a lot more than the obvious to a discerning listener.

These days, however, few in the sanctuary appear to be in the mood for gorukana. At Gombegallu, Sarpanch Made Gowda tells the story of how his grandfather saved the Maharaja of Mysore by gunning down a tiger at close range. The feisty grandson vows to shoot down any proposal to displace his family. Will his land title suffice for all his children? Made Gowda refuses to worry about the future since “all one can take care of is the present”. If worse comes to worst, he says, the entire poru will drink poison.

Sidda Gowda of Keredimba has eight grandsons and land title over 25 acres. Since additional land will not be available inside protected forests in the future, he is worried about how the next generation will get by. Four of his grandsons work for the forest department, but he knows that the availability of such jobs will not keep pace with population growth.

After a check-up at a VGKK medical van in Purani Poru, Rangamma closes her wrinkled eyelids to consider the issue of limited resources and a rising population, and wonders if that is not a problem all over the world. Chhluwadi Yogi, disappointed that the VGKK doctor has not found any problem with him, joins in to point out that with proper irrigation, the same land can support a lot more people. He does not understand why irrigation facilities cannot be provided inside a protected forest.

Dr H Sudarshan, a veteran social worker and founder of VGKK, explains at length how the health implications of a life outside forests can threaten the future of Soligas. On the sustainability issue, he argues that better healthcare will eventually reduce birth rate. But better healthcare will also reduce mortality. In any case, concludes the good doctor, the growth rate among Soligas has never been too high and need not stretch forest resources in the near future.

At Kanneri colony, one of the biggest porus, Soliga district committee president Konure Gowda sounds less cautious. An amiable leader, he is not ready to make concessions even for community deities—bisons and wild boars—if they damage crops. He demands effective power fencing and ditches. He is upset that the construction of a 10-km-long power line is yet to take off. He is candid that if enough jobs are not created, future generations will have to occupy more forest land.

The irony is obvious. Thanks to NGOs like the VGKK and ATREE, Soligas have a better life today. With healthcare and education, came awareness. With better returns from NTFPs came buying power. The coffee estates employ hundreds of Soligas at a reasonable daily wage. In recent years, most porus have started growing coffee in their backyards. Coffee does not attract wildlife and fetches good prices. Around 40 families at Keredimbe alone make more than Rs 8 lakh per annum selling the coffee they grow.

This surplus seasonal cash, coupled with exposure to the outside world, has its consequences. Though money has started trickling in, the concept of money management has not. So alcohol abuse is rampant in most porus. The larger picture is even more unsettling. Awareness, exposure and money have triggered new aspirations. While perfectly legitimate, these are threatening to change the near-zero-ecological-footprint lifestyle of Soligas that made them the poster boys of sustainability.

At a meeting chaired by the deputy commissioner at Chamrajnagar, the loudest Soliga voices were not against resettlement, but for power, roads and water. Dr Narayan is used to such demands, but he could not promise bijli-sadak-paani deep inside a protected forest. DCF Ravi - shankar assured them he would provide water by diverting a few streams, but couldn’t promise power lines and blacktop roads inside a tiger reserve. The Soliga leaders were not amused.

While Dr Sudarshan insists Soligas are fine with solar lamps and fair weather roads, leaders like Konure Gowda do not seem to agree. With a younger, more impatient leadership waiting to take over, the limits of coexistence and sustainability may soon be tested at the BRTWS. The social fabric of Soligas is already strained by alcoholism and will be stretched thinner if private coffee estates are shut down anytime soon.

A resettlement of the porus from the 350 sq km core forest at this stage may safeguard this critical wildlife habitat against those eventualities. But such an attempt would convert the BRTWS into a battlefield overnight. For all the churn their lives have undergone, Soligas still cannot do without forests. They will fight any resettlement effort tooth and nail because it is still a question of their very survival.

A not-so-distant future, however, may unfold a different story. Over time, the younger generations of Soligas will determine the course of their ancient community. If they indeed outgrow their forest someday, they may drop their resistance to a rehabilitation scheme that’s lucrative enough.

But this buzz may pass, and there may still be enough voices and stories for gorukana. If these children of the wilderness do not lose their soul, the idea of community conservation may yet work at the BRTWS, a first in India on such a scale. Soligas and their forest surely deserve that chance.

Or try this for corruption

2011-05-25T01:57:00.002-04:00

While the great Indian middle class obsesses with cricket and corruption, an epic three-way battle is unfolding in forests across the country. It is time to take notice, and a stand. Because, more than anything else, the outcome of this tussle will decide India’s future

Open, 15 May, 2011

As the forces of tribal rights, conservation and big money lock horns across India’s forest map, who would you put your money on?

You pass? Not your fault.

For all our love of cricket, we don’t fill up stands during Test matches. Full of righteous indignation we may be, but to express itself, our outrage needs to latch on to figures such as Rs 1,76,000 crore. Give us a T20 encounter or a dozen-digit scam, and we will swarm any stadium or Jantar Mantar any day.

This triangular contest does not fit the TV slots. It has been unfolding over decades in far corners of the country. Nobody can put a figure to what is at stake in this tussle. It is impossible to monetise the cost of ecological damage and social unrest.

But since we love numbers, it is time to add up how many tribals and farmers have been shot dead by the police or the forest department over the past decade; how many cops, forest personnel and conservation activists have lost their lives; how many government and MNC properties have been vandalised and officials injured during protests. Last weekend alone recorded four casualties: two policemen, a farmer (Noida) and a wetland conservationist (Kolkata).

It is also time, as law-abiding citizens, to record how frequently different authorities, from district administrations to the Prime Minister’s Office, have violated various Acts and guidelines to clear (willy-nilly) development projects across India. Start by considering the blatant Posco bailout in Orissa.

Since we so hate corruption, it is time to take stock of the great loot of our natural resources, from minerals to timber, by different government agencies in collusion with private mafia. Since we take pride in our democracy, it is time to measure how many thousand hectares of India’s forest land is under community encroachment, mostly cleared to the last tree. Start from Assam’s Sonitpur district, which has no control over 90 per cent of its “forests”.

As the three forces collide, it is time to take stock of the massive social and ecological churning across the country. Let us not lose sight of ancient forest-dwelling communities, such as the Soligas in Karnataka. As impoverished, forested districts of India continue to be hotbeds of insurgency, it is time we try to understand the desperation of the marginalised millions, from Bengal to Maharashtra.

The only silver lining to this three-way tug-of-war is a government increasingly candid about what it wants. And don’t we love transparency? So after warning that green laws should not bring back the dreaded licence-permit raj, the Prime Minister has struck down a proposal for an Elephant Conservation Authority that would have hampered development activity across vast landscapes.

More recently, Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh admitted how he buckled under pressure and cleared projects that violated green norms from time to time. But, then, Ramesh exhibits the rare skill of routinely playing martyr without ever having to resign. He also has the unique distinction of taking every side in this three-way tussle equally eloquently.

However, even for Ramesh, walking this tightrope is getting increasingly difficult. For the record, the now stark alignment of the three forces began to take shape about six years ago. That was the time when a number of mega projects, such as the Navi Mumbai airport in Maharashtra and the Posco plant in Orissa, were proposed. In 2005, a national tiger task force was set up to strengthen India’s conservation efforts. The next year, after a bitter tug-of-war between rights activists and conservationists, Parliament cleared the Forest Rights Act (FRA). It was notified in 2007 and promised millions of forest dwellers land and other rights. Around the same time, the Wildlife Protection Act (1972) was amended and more than 50,000 families were offered Rs 10 lakh each to vacate India’s tiger reserves.

Unfortunately, barring a few exceptions, the mandate and money meant to free the country’s finest forests of human settlement is going waste (Relocation Rumpus, May 2010) in the absence of practical, transparent and sensitive groundwork. Implementation of the FRA has been equally haphazard and the fate of most forest communities still depends on the efficiency and commitment of the state government concerned.

The contention is simple. Conservationists claim that forests and wildlife do well when protected from people. Rights activists argue that communities are the best defenders of our wilderness when they are offered incentives to do so. While both lobbies are busy fighting each other’s prescription to protect biodiversity, the mighty forces of power and money are silently making inroads. In the past two years, 99 per cent of development projects requiring forest clearance have been okayed. Only one, Vedanta’s mega plans at Niyamgiri, has been stopped under the FRA.

Now with Posco, and a slew of other projects, cleared under duress—and the minister being casually frank about such compromises—it is evident which side enjoys a decisive edge in this triangular contest. Will it be a walkover soon? Or will the tribal and conservation lobbies get real and join hands to measure up to their mighty adversary?

Either way, if we fail to take notice when, in fact, it is time to take sides, the great Indian middle class may well end up as collateral damage.

Tiger census: What lies beneath the numbers

2011-04-04T02:11:00.003-04:00

The science is suspect, logistics inadequate and equipment faulty. But even if taken at face value, the results of the second all-India tiger estimation only signal how our conservation efforts are rapidly slipping on the ground

The Economic Times, 4 April, 2011

It is never easy counting secretive, solitary predators. For decades, foresters studied pugmarks and usually counted more tigers per tiger. Then, in 2002, Project Tiger (now National Tiger Conservation Authority) and Wildlife Institute of India began replacing the human error-prone pugmark census method with a scientific estimation protocol. It was a landmark initiative.

Nine years later, however, India’s tiger numbers remain equally suspect. So far, more than Rs 22 crore has been spent during two all-India estimation drives, in 2006-07 and 2010-11, to scientifically evaluate the status of the tiger. And yet all the government churned out were a few gospel figures for media consumption.

When the subjective pugmark count method was junked, the promise was of moving away from banal number games towards effective monitoring. Yet, the first all-India tiger estimation report said “these population estimates have high variances, but since these estimates are not to be used for monitoring trends… they should suffice the need for converting a relevant ecological index to a more comprehensible concept of numbers.” Numbers make headlines, more so when spiced up by technical jargons.

Sure enough, when minister for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh proudly announced the gain of 225 tigers last week, it made happy headlines. Accounting for the Sunderbans figures (70) that were not available in 2008, the minister preened, the population gain was a healthy 295.

But the lack of due scientific rigour was soon evident when on March 31, three days after Ramesh had charmed the media, WII rushed to correct its own presentation. An email from a WII scientist to NTCA admitted that “there has been a mistake in the computation of the standard error for the tiger numbers for the state of Maharashtra”, with a request for updating the MoEF website. The Press Information Bureau website, however, is yet to drop the incorrect figures.

To be fair, the WII-NTCA presentation – Status of Tigers in India, 2011 -- the one Ramesh appropriately put up on his ministry’s website, does quote biologists Richard Hutto and Jock Young: “Any monitoring program is a compromise between science and logistic constraints.” While the presentation stops at that cryptic disclaimer, the ministry’s own records do not.

Back in 2006, an international team of experts led by John Seidensticker from the department of conservation biology at Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park in Washington, DC did a peer review of the new estimation method. In its report, the team questioned the feasibility of the exercise given that more than 40,000 forest units would have to be sampled, adding that new method, too, relied on the “integrity of the primary data collectors, data compilers and their supervisors.” The words strangely echoed the NTCA’s own justification for discarding the old pugmark count method.

The peer review also warned that the genetic methods proposed in the census were not “fully developed for this application” and that there were not even enough GPS (global positioning system) sets to map out the terrain.

For the record, the new method breaks down the estimation process in three phases. Phase one involves data collection (signs of tiger presence, prey abundance and canopy status) across the tiger landscapes. In the second phase, satellite data is used to assess conditions of habitat. Phase three requires camera-traps to be set up in selected pockets for capturing tiger images to identify the number of individuals in a sampled area. Next, the camera-trap data is extrapolated to arrive at numbers for entire landscapes.

The observations in the peer review on the challenges of logistics and integrity made the phases one and two look suspect during the first all-India estimation. Little has changed since. What is worse, the phase three of the latest count was compromised by too many malfunctioning camera-traps.

WII purchased around 500 Moultrie camera-traps for the second all-India estimation, out of which 300-odd malfunctioned. The official stand remains that the manufacturer replaced the faulty sets. Sources in the field, however, report a different picture.

In Corbett, around 60 camera traps were installed in two phases (pre and post-monsoon) in 2010. Within days of installation, most cameras reported an activation lag: when an animal passed by, the camera would take several seconds to recover from the sleep mode and click an empty frame or only the animal’s hind portion. Even if the faulty cameras were replaced after monsoon, areas surveyed in the pre-monsoon phase with faulty sets were not covered again.

In Maharashtra’s Tadoba-Andhari tiger reserve, around 60 camera sets malfunctioned when the pre-monsoon camera trapping began last year. While a WII field team returned with replacements after monsoon, it barely spent a month in the field. In some reserves, camera-traps reached only in late October.

Across the world, top institutes like International Snow Leopard Trust uses Reconyx camera-traps. In India, camera-trapping pioneer Dr Ullas Karanth has used analog Trailmaster and later Deercam camera-traps. Among the cheaper brands, Bushnell is believed to be the most versatile. For reasons best known to WII bigwigs, they chose to rely on Moultrie camera-trap and its slow reaction. Maybe, our sarkari scientists expected tigers to stand still and be counted in national interest.

But even this piece of equipment did not make it to many non-reserve areas. Not to mention the tiger-bearing forests outside Protected Areas (PAs). For example, no camera-trap was set up in Tadoba’s Kolsa range, let alone the areas outside the reserve notorious for human-tiger conflict.

WII used about 100 cameras to cover just 120 sq km of Nagarjunasagar-Srisailam tiger reserve in Andhra Pradesh. Only seven tigers were identified in that area. Based on these seven tigers in just 120 sq km, somehow the estimate extrapolated a figure of 60 for a 2342 sq km-area of this reserve.

If data was compromised, the analysis was suspect, too. On the extrapolation process, the 2006 peer review cautioned that “there is also no detailed write-up of the technical analysis, explicitly identifying the analytical techniques to be used in each phase of the framework.’’ As mentioned earlier, the 2008 report did accept “high variances” in estimation. In simple terms, it means different results at different estimation attempts, resulting in unreliability. Nevertheless, those unreliable estimates were further extrapolated to larger areas for arriving at “all-India” figures.

Former WII biologist K Yoganand had pointed out in 2008 how the official count only referred to standard errors of estimated densities and population sizes while offering a range of 1165–1657 tigers. He said the report did not use the appropriate confidence intervals which, if standardised, would have stretched the limits to roughly 900-1900 tigers, an embarrassingly unreliable range.

Surprisingly, the estimation process has not been made public in the last nine years. Only one scientific paper -- Can the abundance of tigers be assessed from their signs? (2011) -- has been published and that too explains only a part of the method.

Clearly, after nine years and more than Rs 22 crore spent, the promise of robust science has not materialised. Instead of quadrennial rituals, the ministry should have opted for intensive assessment, using camera-traps and DNA analyses, of all major source tiger populations, allowing for timely management inputs. For example, four years might be a bit too late for realising that a key tiger reserve like Kanha is losing tigers as has been revealed in the latest estimate. Given that NGOs like Aranyak (Kaziranga) or WWF-India (Ramnagar) did a good job of estimate, the ministry could rope in more organisations for logistics and manpower.

While the number game continues, it is important to note that the new protocol does not allow comparison of subsequent results. The 2008 report noted that “these estimates are not to be used for monitoring trends”. Moreover, a number of tiger areas that were left out during the last estimation, have been covered this time. Comparing the common areas assessed on both occasions, the WII-NTCA report modifies the population growth to 12 per cent or 170 tigers. Insiders, however, claim that the 13 new areas that have been added this time account for a total of 288 tigers. This brings down the actual population gain to just seven tigers or less than 0.5 per cent.

But is a there a case for celebration even if we accept the government’s figures unquestioningly? We may have achieved a 12 per cent rise in our tiger population but lost almost 24 per cent of India’s tiger habitat. Do 170 tigers more or less really make a big difference? Carnivores have high turnover and cats are anyway prolific breeders.

Habitat loss or fragmentation, however, is a long term, often irreversible, damage. Given adequate breeding forests, adding 170 tigers to the national population is always a short-term possibility. In comparison, restoring tigers to 21,000 sq km of habitat lost since 2006-07 will be next to impossible. That our conservation efforts, while rustling up feelgood numbers, have actually conceded one-fourth of the tiger’s home in just four years, is the real headline of this census.

How They Count Our Tigers

2011-04-04T02:07:00.002-04:00

How dubious science and faulty equipment created a far-fetched feel-good number. And how the World Bank is back to dominate India’s tiger agenda within three years of a PMO snub

OPEN,28 March, 2011

1706. Tigers are finally making good news with the second all-India population estimation reporting a 12 per cent rise in their numbers. Environment and Forests minister Jairam Ramesh and his worthy babus looked suitably pleased announcing the new census figures, declared 28 March at a quadrennial event, perhaps best described as the Tiger Olympics.

A figure-happy media lapped up the good news: why even discounting the Sunderbans figures (70) not available in 2008, tiger numbers have gone up from 1411 to 1636.

If only the estimate was credible.

When the government (read: Project Tiger and Wildlife Institute of India) junked the traditional, human error-prone pugmark census method, the promise was of robust science. Indeed, pugmark identification is a specialised art that often degenerates into mumbo-jumbo. But what we have in its place is equally dubious.

Back in 2006, an international team of experts led by John Seidensticker of the department of conservation biology at Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park in Washington, DC was invited for a peer review. In its report, the team observed that the new estimation method, too, relied on the “integrity of the primary data collectors, data compilers and their supervisors.”

The peer review warned that the genetic methods proposed in the census were not “fully developed for this application”. It said that there were not enough GPS (global positioning system) sets to map out the terrain as per the methodology, and questioned the feasibility of the exercise given that more than 40,000 forest units would have to be sampled.

The first all-India estimate was due in July 2006. It was delayed by nearly two years. You could call that teething trouble. But the second all-India census experience showed that the establishment had still not got its act together.

Seidensticker’s peer review cautioned that “there is also no detailed write-up of the technical analysis, explicitly identifying the analytical techniques to be used in each phase of the framework.’’ In 2008, the first all-India estimation report accepted that “these population estimates have high variances, but since these estimates are not to be used for monitoring trends… they should suffice the need for converting a relevant ecological index to a more comprehensible concept of numbers.”

High variances mean unreliability. In simple terms, they mean different results at different estimation attempts. Nevertheless, those unreliable estimates were extrapolated to larger areas to arrive at all-India tiger numbers. To quote former WII scientist K Yoganand, this approach “was fundamentally flawed and rendered the whole exercise of estimating tiger numbers in India futile.”

Moreover, the official count only referred to standard errors (SE) of estimated densities and population sizes while offering a range of 1,165-1,657 tigers. Yoganand pointed out that the authors never used the appropriate confidence intervals (CI), which, if standardised, would have stretched the estimation range to roughly 900-1,900 tigers.

Beyond the smokescreen of these technicalities, the planners, it seems, sought to sidestep the enormity of the exercise. Often the sample size was compromisingly small and the extrapolation scientifically unsupportable. For example, the WII used about 100 cameras this time to cover just 120 sq km of the Nagarjunasagar-Srisailam tiger reserve in Andhra Pradesh. Only seven tigers were identified in that area. Based on these seven tigers over 120 sq km, the estimate extrapolated a figure not only for the 3,568 sq km reserve but the entire Western Ghats of the state.

It wasn’t just dubious science, even the equipment and management were shoddy.

The WII used around 500 camera traps for the second all-India estimation. Several officials admitted that about 300 camera traps malfunctioned. The official stand remains that the premier institute got the faulty sets replaced and reinstalled. Officials also claim this caused a procedural delay of about two months.

Sources in the field, however, report a very different picture. In Corbett, around 60 camera traps were installed in two phases (pre and post-monsoon) last year. Within days of installation, the Corbett ground staff cautioned the WII team that most cameras had an activation lag. Meaning the camera would react late and click after the animal was gone or when only its hind portion was in the frame. The young WII field team tried to overcome the handicap by altering camera angles to obtain a wider focal field but that did not solve the problem when animals walked by too close to the camera.

In Maharashtra’s Tadoba tiger reserve, around 60 cameras turned out to be faulty when pre-monsoon camera-trapping began last year. When WII personnel returned with replacements after the monsoons, they barely spent a month in the field. The same problem delayed field installation in several reserves where camera traps reached as late as November 2010.

If high-profile reserves were covered so shoddily, imagine the fate of less known, newly notified tiger reserves. Few non-reserve areas were adequately camera-trapped, not to mention the tiger-bearing forests outside Protected Areas (PAs).

For example, not a single camera trap was set up in Tadoba’s Kolsa range, leave alone areas outside the reserve notorious for human-tiger conflict. In Jharkhand’s Naxal-infested Palamu tiger reserve, no camera-trapping was possible and WII depended on Hyderabad-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology for scat sample analyses and pegged the number of tigers at six.

A WII scientist involved in the census admitted that no camera-trapping had been done yet in at least three stretches. Even in reserves like Maharashtra’s Melghat, sources say, the camera traps are yet to conclude the “recapture process” crucial to statistical extrapolation.

+++
Granted, as a top WII scientist puts it, the camera traps with all their faults have recorded more than 600 tigers across the country. Anyway, the tiger is on a marginal rebound. Protection has improved in many pockets and with so many cubs reported in the past four years, a nominal rise in the tiger population was to be expected.

There are other reasons too for the count to increase. In the first national census of 2006-07, bizarre examples of ill-trained field staff unwittingly under-reporting tigers probably compensated for any over-reporting of numbers. For example, field staff in Uttarakhand’s Ramnagar forest division went for pugmark identification and failed to report each individual tiger track in 2007. Eventually not more than half a dozen tigers were estimated in the entire division. This year, a WWF (World Wildlife Fund) team used its own camera traps and, say sources, as many as 23 tigers have been estimated. That is a near 300 per cent jump, if on an exaggeratedly low base caused by tigers left out in the previous count.

But why does a census operation that cost Rs 13 crore four years ago (nobody has spelt out the cost of the most recent exercise yet but it could not have come cheaper than the last census) and had four long years to iron out the creases, end up being so disorganised and scientifically compromised?

Many expected the second all-India estimation to be a far more intensive exercise in terms of camera-trap intensity or number of camera nights utilised. But WII followed the same routine as in 2007. Blame it on inadequate manpower, lack of planning and faulty camera circuits or plain inertia, the exercise stuttered at different stages. Given that Aranyak, an NGO, did a fantastic job at Kaziranga using WII camera-traps, it is a mystery why the government did not try to rope in more NGOs elsewhere.

For reasons best known to WII, it continues to buy analog cameras from a manufacturer that few user agencies endorse internationally. WII opted for the obsolete Moultrie camera traps that need a recovery time (from sleep to click mode) of 60 seconds. Maybe, our sarkari scientists expect tigers to stand still and be counted in the national interest.
When replacements arrived for faulty sets, were these installed and allowed enough field time to ensure uniform parameters across landscapes? If a dubious purchase and deployment had already delayed the results, what was the hurry to declare numbers with “three stretches yet to be covered”? Were the minister and his bureaucrats desperate to score a few brownie points at the high-profile international summit?

+++
This leads us to another mystery. But, first, a brief backgrounder. In June 2008, the World Bank launched its tiger conservation initiative with much fanfare at Washington DC. India, the most crucial of the 13 tiger range countries, was absent.

It was no coincidence. On the back of a note from the Ministry of Environment and Forests, the PMO had refused to endorse the Bank’s initiative and ruled out seeking a loan to save the tiger. The Bank was told that it did not have the expertise or support of (at least Indian) experts to substantially back any tiger conservation effort. On the contrary, much of its history—from the destruction of the Amazonian wilderness to wiping out Asian mangroves—made its tiger overtures appear plain opportunistic. India’s own dismal experience with the Bank-sponsored eco-development projects in the 1990s had also influenced the PMO’s decision.

But in less than three years, the Bank has reclaimed centrestage, with seven of its top officials—among them three Indians—dominating the proceedings at the March 28-30 New Delhi gala. How did the PMO suddenly change its stance? And how come the ministry that advised him against allowing the Bank in tiger conservation is now toasting the Bank’s who’s who?

The ministry’s advice to the PMO was shaped largely by the views of experts outside the government. The minister himself had made it amply clear in 2008 that he was not against accepting the Bank’s help (read: loan) but had been dissuaded by the collective wisdom of conservationists. So has this mighty consensus suddenly reinvented itself?

The Bank sponsored a host of tiger stalwarts and budding greenies from India at the international tiger conservation forum in St Petersburg last November. But a single junket, however lavish, could not have turned the tide in the Bank’s favour. Only weeks ago, the Planning Commission drastically slashed the allocation for tiger conservation. Was that move aimed at preparing the ground for a loan? You never know what a few old Bank boys can get up to.

No, Prime Minister

2011-02-24T07:48:00.002-05:00

Either abolish environment laws or follow them—undercutting them is not an option for the Prime Minister's Office

Open, 23 Feb, 2011

In this season of scams and rhetoric, we must credit the establishment for coming clean on at least one front. The government has finally done away with the façade that it is serious about saving the environment. After much posturing, the Ministry of Environment and Forests has cleared Posco and Lavasa. No Opposition party has found these fait accomplis worth even a customary dharna. The Planning Commission has slashed the budget of the green ministry. And the Reserve Bank has singled out ‘environmentalism’ to blame for a one-third dip in foreign direct investments. The Prime Minister has cautioned that green regulatory standards might bring back the dreaded licence-permit-quota raj.

To those who follow the growth-versus-green story, this is a welcome development. All these years, many have wondered why successive UPA governments have not delivered on their lavish green commitments. After all, has not there been a Sonia Gandhi, the supreme commander of the Congress, who took personal interest in saving India’s wilderness? Now that the licence-permit-quota-fearing Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister who is barely audible unless he really means business, has spoken, we finally know why.

It was difficult not to be torn between expectation and experience when Rahul Gandhi, the PM-in-waiting who mobilised parliamentarians to set up a short-lived tiger caucus five years ago, rushed to support the Niyamgiri tribals against Vedanta. But the surrender before Posco and Lavasa came as a cold snub to all those unduly optimistic about a bania system that still makes a rubber-stamp ministry approve 99 per cent of projects.

Then again, minister for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh, who never tires shooting his mouth against poachers, encroachers, developers and cabinet colleagues alike, was swiftly capturing the anti-establishment space by winning the trust of even some of the rabid green. Now that he has saved his job by meekly following his masters’ order to allow mega sell-outs, Ramesh will probably stop flailing his recyclable tin sword in polluted air. If he does not, it will anyway look rather quixotic after the RBI snub.

Indeed, it was not easy to decide whether to take Montek Singh Ahluwalia seriously when the suave planning commission deputy chairman (who, last year, publicly committed himself to the cause of “preserving” tigers) approved, in principal, Rs 5000 crore for resettling families from core tiger reserve areas across the country over the next five years. Now that he has slashed a Rs 1,100 crore proposal for the same to first Rs 700 crore and then less than Rs 50 crore, there are no honest doubts about his sincerity.

So the gloves are off and the masks, torn. It is so much more comforting to know who stands where and for what. If diplomatic interest cleared Posco, political interest pushed Lavasa. The Jaitapur nuclear power project in the coastal Konkan got through in the national interest; so did SAIL’s mega mining projects in Saranda’s elephant forests. No wonder Ramesh has already conceded many a mile in negotiating no-go areas with his counterpart in the coal ministry. After all, the spectre of a green licence-permit-quota raj is haunting his Prime Minister.

But, frankly, what does Manmohan Singh have in mind when he airs such apprehension? Does he mean he has inherited particularly unwieldy green laws? If that were the case, his party and government could have easily got those amended in a Parliament that does not have any environmental lobby. Why, whenever there were opportunities, successive green ministries watered down ministerial regulations (from the norms for coastal regulation zones to restrictions on industrial pollution).

Incidentally, thanks to former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, India’s two fundamental green laws—Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980—are remarkably robust and candid. They deny easy excuses for tweaking or room for confusion. The third major law that impacts developmental projects was enacted by the government headed by Manmohan Singh.The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 was a longstanding electoral commitment of his party. Surely, the prime minister is not resenting what his party pitches as one of the biggest achievements of his government?

So is it the Prime Minister’s case that these laws are not applied fairly, leading to a long-drawn approval process? Unfortunately, facts tell a very different story. If India’s green laws were applied fairly, bulk of the projects would have been summarily rejected. But since the establishment wants to get every project cleared, it drags on the clearance process by instituting panel after panel until the facts get lost in a maze of referrals and finally a go-ahead is obtained.

Worse, many projects take off without due diligence, trusting the establishment to clear those as fait acomplis after a suitably long clearance drama. The latest on that list is Jindal Steel and Powers. The company started construction at its Angul plant in Orissa without obtaining clearance on the forest land and was served a notice by the divisional forest officer in July 2009. Last week, Ramesh signalled all-clear to Naveen Jindal, his colleague in the party and in Parliament.

Intriguingly, many development projects incur huge cost escalation due to such delays and, in effect, end up spending much more than what would have cost the developers to address environmental concerns at the conception stage. Take the Navi Mumbai airport project, for example. In 2004, the project cost was Rs 4,700 crore. After a prolonged drama over green clearance, the project refused to retain the current course of the Ulwe river, arguing that construction on stilts etc. was not financially viable as that would cost an additional Rs 4,300 crore. In August 2009, the promoters claimed the delay had already escalated the project cost by 40 per cent. Finally, when the project was cleared in November 2010, the escalated cost was estimated at Rs 9,000 crore. Had the project authority opted for the environmentally sound plan in 2004 itself, the modifications, discounting for inflation, would not have cost more than Rs 2,300 crore. At Rs 7000 crore, the new airport would still have come Rs 2,000 crore cheaper and four years sooner.

Deliberate and organised attempt to bend laws is behind the delay in the environmental impact assessment process. Therefore, to fast track the clearance process, the Prime Minister should know, every project must factor in the environmental costs at the conception stage instead of resisting legally binding green safeguards later. More importantly, both government and private developers should stop eyeing projects in areas that are legally out of bounds. It is unfortunate enough that many such illegal projects manage to get approval after repeated environmental assessments and sustained doctoring of facts.

Now if the Prime Minister wants even such projects to be cleared forthwith, he should, if he can, get the green laws abolished in the House. Or he should step down. Provocation does not become the country’s highest office.

Lies, more lies, and green lies

2011-02-24T07:44:00.002-05:00

It is one thing to watch the nation’s best forests plundered, quite another to be asked to feel good about it

The Bengal Post, 17 Feb, 2011

Steel Authority of India is a maharatna company – one of the government’s crown jewels. Its existing and future expansion plans are supreme in the national interest. The operational mines of the steel major in the eastern region have almost exhausted their ore stock. So the company sought mining leases for Ajitaburu, Budhaburu and Sukri-Latur in Saranda’s Chiria iron ore field, the only “compact deposit” which can sustain large, mechanised mining with an annual yield of 30-50 million tonnes over the next 50 years.

So Environment and Forests minister Jairam Ramesh has overruled the Forest Advisory Committee's recommendations and cleared the proposal. Of course, he cited 13 conditions even though his ministry has no infrastructure to monitor any.

Environmentalists briefly ranted over the sacrifice of Singhbhum’s elephant forests, a decision which will also have serious repercussions for the herds of the Keonjhar district in Orissa. But national interest cannot be questioned too loudly and it was business as usual.

Then SAIL decided to celebrate. After all, nearly 40 per cent of the company's iron ore requirement would be met from Chiria mines in the next five decades. It announced that Rs 5000 crore would be pumped in to develop the mines in Chiria and that the company would start mechanised mining in the next three years to feed its plants in Bokaro, Burnpur, Durgapur and Rourkela. It added that the company had already begun work on development of mechanised mines in Chiria, initially with a capacity of seven million tonnes per annum and appointed Australia’s Hatch Associates for preparing a detailed project report.

Then, SAIL delivered a gem. The company declared that it would leave no stone unturned to ensure mining in Chiria left no mark on the environment. In order to ensure environmental protection, SAIL will carry out only mining and crushing activities in the mines. The iron ore will then be taken out of the forest area through a conveyor system. Installation of the most modern type of conveyor system, with very low-level of noise and without the need for a service road for maintenance activities, has been planned. According to SAIL, such a system will ensure that impact of mining on flora and fauna in the area is zero. Yes, zero; you read that right.

The once virgin sal forests of Saranda, its evergreen undergrowth and two perennial rivers (Karo and Koina) – home to one of the country’s most promising elephant reserves -- have already been decimated by SAIL and others in many parts, such as, Gua, Kiriburu, Chiria or Noamundi. More than one-third of Saranda’s canopy cover is already history, thanks to iron ore mining since the 1920s. Most of Saranda’s elephant herds are fragmented or are cut off from one another. With their traditional migration routes blocked and elephants seeking out new areas in Hazaribag (even Orissa and Chhattisgarh), conflict with the local population is steadily on the rise.

Yet, SAIL wants us to believe that their new, mechanized technology will have “zero impact” on the environment.

This is not the first time a developer or an industry has sought to ridicule the intelligence of India’s citizens. Only a couple of months back, former chairman of Atomic Energy Commission Anil Kakodkar supported the Jaitapur nuclear power project, saying it would have no harmful impact on the environment, water, air or bio-diversity. Needless to say that the green ministry already cleared the power project after 1,000 ha of land in the coastal Konkan was acquired for the plant.

Likewise, the Tatas claimed that Dhamra port does not harm Gahirmatha’s sea turtles. Kashmir’s famed Mughal road refused a minor compromise of its alignment but proposed to launch a Markhor (endangered mountain goat) Recovery Project at a cost of Rs 11 crore. Argument for a proposed thermal power plant in the fragile Sompeta swamp in Srikakulam is reassuring because based on environment impact assessment done in the peak summer months, the swamp is not much of a wetland. The list is long.

The bottomline, however, is clear. Whatever the green laws of the country, ministerial discretion rules when it comes to application. The prime minister’s office has been involved so many times in influencing the environmental clearance of projects that the idea of transparency and an equal playing field seems pretty much a joke.

Environment and Forests minister Jairam Ramesh enjoys the confidence of a huge green constituency. Many were excited after the minister had ruled against Vedanta and when PM-in-waiting Rahul Gandhi rallied in support of the Niyamgiri tribals. But the abject surrender before Posco and Lavasa underlined how the system makes a rubber-stamp ministry approve 99 per cent of development projects.

It is difficult to tell when the joke becomes a snub. When the ministry cleared Posco and Lavasa to appease ‘multinational’ and ‘political’ interests, respectively, no Opposition party in India finds these faits accomplis worth even a mock protest. After approving, in principal, Rs 5000 crore for resettling families from core tiger reserve areas across the country over the next five years, the Planning Commission has in fact slashed the budget of the green ministry. To top that, the Reserve Bank of India has blamed Jairam Ramesh and his environmentalism for a 36% dip in foreign direct investment. The prime minister himself has warned that green regulatory standards might bring back the licence-permit raj.

In the hierarchy of power, it is becoming increasingly evident where the greens stand. At the wrong end of a bulldozer and with an earful of assurance: don’t worry, this won’t hurt one bit.

Sex, Lies and Pugmarks

2011-02-14T08:06:00.002-05:00

For decades, foresters have relied on pugmarks to tell the gender and identity of tigers. But pugs often lie, as they did in Corbett recently. Open tracks a few alpha males with ‘female’ footprints

Open, 5 February, 2011

Six deaths in 10 weeks, terrified villagers and angry mobs, a shrill media and shriller conservationists, harried forest staff and their nervous bosses—even by Corbett’s vintage standards, it was a classic recipe for chaos.

The tug-of-war began three months ago after the first human death on 12 November. Wildlife activists dubbed the first two attacks accidental and blamed the victims for trespassing on the forest. But the kills were partly eaten on both occasions. So when a third victim was consumed on 29 December, it was difficult for the forest authorities to ignore public pressure. The next day, Uttarakhand’s Chief Wildlife Warden, S Chandola, issued shoot-at-sight orders.

The sharpshooters, however, were told to go easy, and trap cages were set up to capture the maneater alive. Barring the second killing, the attacks had taken place within a 6 sq km area adjacent Sunderkhal village where two male and three female tigers roam. By now, rumours were flying thick and fast. Many started blaming a tiger couple for the killings. Otherwise solitary animals, tigers do come together while mating, but it was highly unlikely that they would pair up for two long months and forge a partnership to bring down the unusual prey.

No wonder Ranjan Mishra, field director of Corbett Tiger Reserve, thought the theory deserved some wry humour: “What kind of couple would look for human flesh in the mating season? Is it an aphrodisiac or what?” The tense drama was beginning to border the absurd.

All hell broke loose on 8 January when a male tiger walked into one of the trap cages. UC Tiwari, now warden and an old Corbett hand, had been scanning the sites of the attacks and felt some pugmarks near the kills indicated a tigress at work. It was only a possibility, and not a man to speculate, Tiwari had kept it to himself. But now that a young male tiger faced life imprisonment in Nainital zoo, the warden decided to answer the media.

By the time newspapers confirmed the Sunderkhal maneater as a tigress, on 9 January, the captured male had been tranquillised, and against the pressures of local strongmen, released 40 km inside the reserve in the Dhikala zone. (This was hardly the best option for the male that found itself in another male tiger’s territory. But that is another story.)

The very next day, the maneater struck again near Sunderkhal. By now, the villagers had no patience left for theories. They refused to accept the body and insisted that the tiger be shot when it returned to its kill. Two machans were set up: one overlooking the kill and another a little away on an approach path. The animal showed up in the evening and took a bullet. Surprisingly, the shooters were using .315 rifles—a weapon vastly inferior to the .375 Magnum, the minimum calibre prescribed for shooting a tiger. The injured tiger charged at its adversaries, but broke away when shooters from the other machan fired to cover their men. All that remained was a blood trail and samples for a forensic test.

In the days that followed, the media hammered the forest establishment for leaving an injured maneater tigress at large. Trackers combed the forest in vain. Finally, on 26 January, the maneater made a comeback. On a trip to visit his relatives, 25-year-old Puran stopped his two-wheeler on the highway and stepped a few yards inside the forest to relieve himself. All that was found of him the next day was a piece of leg.

The village turned into a wild mob. Stone pelting and road blockades spurred the gunmen. Within hours, they found a big cat near the spot where Puran’s remains had been found. Desperate, they sprayed bullets from all vantages. It took about 30 rounds to bring down the maneater of Sunderkhal. But when the gunners cautiously retrieved the dead cat, it turned out to be a male!

News spread fast. On the web, conservationists and activists started wagging fingers. After all, this was not the first time a ‘wrong’ maneater had been shot. In 2007, Tadoba’s maneater of Talodi was supposed to be a tigress but a young male was gunned down. In 2009, a Pilibhit tiger was blamed for a series of attacks on people, but when shot, it turned out to be a female.

A dead tiger on their hands, the Corbett brass rushed to the spot. Among them, Tiwari kept his fingers crossed. It was he who had told the media that going by the pugmarks, the maneater was a tigress.

Reading pugmarks has been the most traditional method of tracking tigers. Nearly eight decades ago, A Somerville noted that a male tiger’s toes were square while a female’s were more rounded and slender. In 1934, JW Nicholson of the Imperial Forest Service used pugmarks to count tigers in Palamau. In the 1960s, Saroj Raj Choudhury developed it into a field technique at Simlipal.

Subsequently, many noted tiger experts, including biologist C McDougal and former Chief of Project Tiger HS Panwar, observed that ‘the whole hind pugmark of a male tiger fits into a square frame whereas that of the female fits into a rectangular frame’. They also noted that ‘a female’s toes were slender and elongated compared to a male’s toes which were oval and more circular’ (see above graphic: Tale of Two Paws).

These thumb rules have been the most widely used (and misused) field method to ascertain a tiger’s gender. As late as in 2003, a paper co-authored by Dr Y Jhala of the Wildlife Institute of India confirmed that pugmarks ‘can be used to acquire sex-ratio data of tiger populations’.

An old-school forester, Tiwari trusted his eyes. Now he was cursing his luck that the gunners had probably got the wrong tiger. Then something struck him.
In 2004, a tiger created panic near Mohan in Corbett. It had attacked people and stalked villages. It had even injured a patrol elephant. Tiwari had had a tough time tracking the tiger and was relieved when it died.

While villagers celebrated, Tiwari recalled, he had spotted something unusual about the dead tiger. Its hind pads were shaped like a female’s. I remember the story. But in 2004, I was more interested in the tiger than its paws. So was Tiwari.

Two months ago, when the Corbett maneater was still on the prowl, Tiwari came across puzzling pugmarks again. He was following a fresh tiger trail on his jeep. Everybody in the team expected a female walking ahead, but when they caught up with the cat, it turned out to be a male. In a moment of intrigue, Tiwari recalled the Mohan tiger, and drove on.

But this time, in Sunderkhal, he went for the dead tiger’s hind paws. Déjà vu.

The next day, Chief Wildlife Warden Chandola explained to the press that the dead male’s hind pads had the characteristics of a female, adding that the bullet of the failed shooting was found lodged in its flesh. Whether the dead male tiger was indeed the maneater will be clear in the coming weeks if the attacks stop. But conservationists, eminent experts among them, have already dismissed the claim of “a male with female pugs”.

To confirm this, I sent a photograph of the Sunderkhal male’s rear pad to Brigadier Ranjit Talwar, an author of many field guidebooks for WWF-India. He wrote back saying he was ‘fairly sure’ it was ‘a hind left pad of a female’.

This cleared the gender confusion. But how rare are such exceptions? Five years after the Mohan incident, I was in Corbett to investigate the deaths of four tigers in the winter of 2009-10 (‘Who’s Killing Corbett’s Tigers’, Open, 13 February 2010). The first casualty occurred near Mota Sal at Dhikala. That dead tiger too had hind pads with female characteristics. I thought at the time it was a freak occurrence, and focused on the bigger story at hand.

Corbett field staff have stopped taking media calls following an order from Chandola. So I called up the boss himself. He resolved another mystery that dates back to 2009. Chandola recalled how he had gone by the female characteristics of its hind pads and reported a dead tiger (killed and partially eaten by another tiger) as a female in March 2009 at Dhela in Corbett. During post-mortem, the penis was found inverted inside the flesh and the animal turned out to be a male.

Do these five instances make a case? Dr Rajesh Gopal, member-secretary, National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), thinks they do. “Pugmark reading is not a reliable field tool for individual or gender identification. That is why we have moved on to better technologies. Yes, pugmarks can indicate tiger presence and possibly direction of movements. Demand anything more and we get into the realm of uncertainties.”

But is there a fool-proof way to identify maneaters and deal with them? Dr Gopal recommends camera traps: “Used intensively and at innovative angles, cameras can tell the gender of a tiger. But to be certain that we are eliminating a maneater and not a wrong animal, there is no other option but to target it at a human kill. We must also use the right weapon so that the animal does not escape hurt. We need professionalism in handling such situations.”

Chandola agrees that the right weapon should be used, but defends his field staff’s decision to go ahead with what was available in an emergency. “The first time they tried to shoot the tiger, the operation was carried out at night with the help of searchlights. They had to go ahead with whatever weapon they had. Also, it is not easy to shoot accurately under such conditions,” he explains.

The larger issue, however, is the triggers for such conflict. Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh has already written to Uttarakhand Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhariyal Nishank for speedy rehabilitation of Sunderkhal village to ease pressure on a key forest corridor. Sources in NTCA have claimed that a new tourism policy would soon deal with the walled resorts that block movement of wildlife.

Corbett field staff refuse to comment on village relocation and tourism pressure. Field Director Mishra says there are policy issues involved that are beyond his span of influence.

But will the killing spree stop for now? Can Sunderkhal sleep peacefully before it decides on relocation? Tiwari answers the questions with a deadpan “wait-and-watch”. But the warden has learnt a new field lesson: never again will he take tigers at pug value.

A tiger’s paw has a pad and four toes. A fifth toe commonly called the dew claw, is placed high on the front limbs only. Front pugs are larger than hind pugs. The pad is three-lobed at the rear end. Pugmark Length or PML is the measurement from the tip of the farthest toe to the base of the pad along the line of walk. Pugmark Breadth or PMB is the measurement between the outer edges of the first and last toe. In a front pug, the forwardmost points of the two middle toes are almost at the same level. In hind paws, the forwardmost points of the two middle toes are distinctly at different levels. In male tigers, the PMB of the front pug is mostly greater than its PML. The pugmark of a male almost fits into a square. In contrast, typically, the pugmark of a female fits into a rectangle. The shape of a male’s toes is more rounded. The shape of a female’s toes is elongated.

(Source: ‘Reading Pugmarks: A guidebook for forest guards’)

Man Bites Dog

2011-02-06T03:50:00.000-05:00

…in a manner of speaking, that is. For it is the irresponsible behaviour of pet owners that is to blame for the menace and misery of street dogs

Open, 5 February, 2011

First, some figures. The Indian pet dog industry has long crossed the Rs 100 crore mark and is eyeing a projected market worth Rs 350 crore by 2012. We have an estimated 10 million pet dogs in India (3.6 million in six major cities). The country’s pet dog population is growing by an estimated 26 per cent, a rate second only to Japan’s. There are dog restaurants (Bow Wow, Gurgaon), dog parlours (Scooby Scrub in Delhi, Fuzzy Wuzzy in Bangalore and Tailwaggers in Mumbai), dog insurance (Bajaj Allianz General Insurance) and dog yoga (doga).

Now, some more figures. India has more than 25 million stray dogs. Few of these strays survive disease and vehicular accidents to die natural deaths. Nearly every second, someone is bitten by a dog. That amounts to more than 20 million bites a year, of which 30,000-40,000 turn out to be fatal. Dogs spread more than 60 diseases to humans. Rabies alone claims three human lives every hour. More than 80,000 quintals of dog shit and 3.3 million gallons of dog piss is discharged on Indian roads and fields daily, causing major health and environmental hazards.

The second set of data testifies to an alarming state of affairs that you can correctly blame on a callous society. But before you seek hope in the first set of data that speaks of how man’s best friendship is growing by the day, think again. The plight and menace of stray dogs in India are a direct consequence of irresponsible pet rearing.

Before the animal lover in you contests the statement, consider why we have not succeeded in controlling India’s stray dog population. Historically, we tried to reduce the number of strays by killing them, and we killed enough before giving up in frustration. Much before it became an animal rights issue, it was evident that killing, unless done en masse, could not bring down the numbers. With increasingly abundant resources (such as food in garbage dumps), the partial elimination of a population only reduces competition for resources and boosts breeding.

From killing, we moved on to sterilisation. Since 1992, the Government and NGOs have been carrying out Animal Birth Control (ABC) programmes in several cities. But unless at least 70 per cent of a canine population is sterilised within a six-month window, ABC drives fail to have any stabilising effect. Left to a few NGOs, no Indian city has yet achieved this target that requires neutering 600-800 stray dogs every day over six months. But even if we expand capacity and manage to hit the target, the stray dog population will continue to swell.

To understand why, we have to look beyond the apparently happy picture that dog owners and their pets present. In India, dog owners are not required to register their pets. It is not mandatory to get one’s pets sterilised or vaccinated. Owners simply do not need to be responsible for their dogs or their dogs’ pups. So every day, hundreds of unwanted pet dogs and pups are abandoned on Indian streets. Also, thousands of pet dogs are allowed to roam or break free and romance the strays.

The result? Governments and NGOs keep neutering a few street dogs while the country’s pet dogs, thanks to callous owners, keep adding to the stray population. It is like an attempt to mop the floor, to quote activist and researcher Meghna Uniyal, while leaving the tap open. It is commendable to adopt and shelter strays, but it is useless if these animals are not confined or sterilised.

Besides, the so-called Indian street dog has very little Indian about it. The stray population is mostly mongrels of various crossbreeds. Uniyal emphasises that ABC drives must target pedigreed pets with high breeding frequency. Like in Taiwan, the Government could offer incentives to owners to get their pets sterilised. To ensure that the carrot comes with a stick, a steep tax can be levied on breeding pets.

But reckless pet owners are responsible not just for the growing population of stray dogs. They must also take the blame for most dog attacks on people.

In The Ecology of Stray Dogs, possibly the most authoritative work on the subject, Dr Alan Beck observed: ‘Loose or straying pets and stray (feral) dogs are different. True stray dogs form somewhat stable packs… are more active at night and cautious about people. In general, straying pets have smaller home ranges and (are) active when people are.’

Merritt Clifton, editor of Animal People, observes that ‘street dogs are relatively non-territorial because they do not have any particular home or anyone to defend except their own pups. But dogs that are often kept in homes and fed by specific individuals at specific places tend to become territorial and protective’ and lose inhibitions.

In simple terms, pets and abandoned pets roaming free on roads are likely to be less fearful of people than strays are. Around its owner’s house, such a dog is likely to act strongly territorial and aggressively protective.

And then there is petting outside the home. We all know our neighbourhood good samaritans who feed a few stray dogs outside their homes or workplaces. This has the same effect as petting, turning stray dogs territorial and aggressive. Such feeding has also created monsters of monkeys in many parts of India. Be it religious or compassionate, Indians are never short of inspiration to feed feral animals. Why, even the Union Ministry of Culture in 2001 doled out Rs 10 crore to various organisations on Mahavir Jayanti for feeding stray animals.

Barely two weeks ago, amid demands for culling stray dogs responsible for killing 18-month-old Prashanto in Bangalore on 13 January, all media reports glossed over a vital detail. After the death, the police arrested one Gonti Yadav around whom the stray dogs lived. Apparently, Gonti used to routinely feed them and they followed him to the victim’s hut when he visited the child’s parents that night. Responsible for the killing or not (no scratch mark was found on the partially mutilated body), the stray dogs in question were not, to borrow from Dr Beck, ‘true stray’ dogs. Indeed, animal welfare is not as simple or straightforward as it sounds.

Merritt makes a compelling point when he offers medical statistics from the US where the last street dog disappeared sometime in the 1970s. But a 300 per cent growth in the number of pet dogs between 1950 and 2010 resulted in an 800 per cent rise in cases of dog bites requiring hospital treatment. In a
country without any stray population, then, 4.7 million people are still bitten by dogs every year.

An impromptu survey of 20 friends in different Indian cities tells me that nine of them have been bitten by dogs. Strays were responsible in only two cases. My family’s last dog died when I was eight. She bit me once. I was too young to follow the don’t-disturb-during-meal rule.

Irresponsible pet owners are the species’ biggest enemy. There are few sights more pathetic than orphan pups scrounging on the roadside. Tokenism in the name of animal welfare only increases the population of strays. It gives dogs a bad name as aggressors. It creates an environment of hate that seeks to justify culling. I am not sure if environmentalist Edward Abbey saw it coming, but yes, when man wants to be seen as dog’s best friend, the dog has a problem.

Why It Need Not Be Such A Lonely Battle

2011-02-06T03:49:00.001-05:00

Conservation, as a cause bandied about by the elite few, has alienated its most natural and powerful ally: the marginalized millions

The Bengal Post, 3 February, 2011

What is the biggest challenge facing conservation? Over the years, I have been asked this question many a time. Borrowing from the experts, I have peddled most stock options -- development rush, population boom, vote politics etc – to offer perspective. Today, when I ask this question myself, I realise I have been always naïve with my answers.

Market economy will always try to maximise growth, just like all life forms are programmed to multiply and colonise more bio space. It is in the nature of every being to be earnest to its purpose. We do not resent a conservationist seeking out a patch of welcome green in a high-rise complex. So why should we blame a miner for seeing only prize minerals in a lush forest?

In any natural order, counter-forces maintain the balance. Likewise, in the real world, conservation concerns are supposed to force the checks and balances in a fair competition with the GDP rush. We know that has not happened. Even under Jairam Ramesh, the green ministry has been clearing 99 out of every 100 development projects. It is hardly a contest. No wonder the frustrated greens are reduced to branding the GDPwalas evil, blind or suicidal.

But how has the growth-versus-green contest become so one-sided? The answer is scary.

India is a vastly unequal society. Our growth machine has little pretense of being inclusive. Businesses make profit for a privileged few. Industries thrive on cheap labour. Development projects displace the poor almost at will.

India is also a democracy. Big money may still rule us by proxy but the rulers are careful not to appear autocratic. The power of the people, the poor majority, still decides a lot. Elections often spring surprises. Mass movements are never easy to quash.

Simply put, India’s economic growth has failed to substantially benefit most Indians. In fact, this growth is at the cost of many Indians. Also, much of this growth is at the cost of conservation. So why do we not have mass participation of the marginalized and the poor in the green movements against unscrupulous projects? Surely, that would have made a huge difference in a democracy.

Unfortunately, if “inclusive growth” has been a false promise, “inclusive conservation” is just an oxymoron. From online discussion forums to top government panels, conservationists are full of contempt for the poor, marginalized majority of India. Left to them, these encroachers or poachers should be “thrown out”, “put in jail” and even “shot at sight”.

About five years ago, the tiger-versus-tribal debate generated heated exchanges. I remember many big names that claimed only guns-and-guards could save the tiger. To be fair, the other camp was pushing for a free-for-all. With no middle ground in sight, saving the tiger soon became yet another upmarket fad and the tribal the biggest threat to conservation.

A few of those gun-toting conservationists have subsequently shown the courage to accept that conservation needs people’s support. The rest still continue with their shrill anti-people tirade. Such shocking elitism has completely alienated the green lobby from the marginalized. Little wonder the moneybags, and the crumbs they throw, find enough takers among the poor. Their choice, if any, is simple. GDPwalas may dupe them; conservationists just deny them.

Though unfortunate, this elitism is not surprising. Synonyms of welfare include aid, assistance and dole. This idea of charity has a noble aura that suits the elite. But for the average Indian, the one conservationists snigger at, acceptance of the wild has always been a way of life. While the sparsely populated West eliminated much of its wildlife, many species of large, potentially dangerous animals still survive in a crowded India.

Yet, conservation as we practise it here is a Western concept, with over-emphasis on protected areas. Is it possible to insulate free-ranging elephants and large carnivores in a country of a billion? We surely need undisturbed wilderness but much of our wildlife will keep dying outside those pocket reserves if we antagonise the people.

Our greens have already done everything possible to ensure this fate. They stay in walled resorts and blame open villages for obstructing wildlife corridors. They do not push the tourism industry to share profits with the communities but condemn villagers for entering forests to collect firewood. They refuse compensation if cattle are killed inside a reserve but persecute livestock-owners even if a wild animal is found dead outside reserves. They dismiss six human deaths in 10 weeks as insufficient ground for shooting a rogue tiger. And they also want the poorest and their subsistence economy to bear the cost of conservation.

The same lack of inclusiveness makes our so-called conservationists stonewall new knowledge. Almost none of them ever had anything do with wildlife or conservation sciences. Their expertise is built on anecdotes and experiences. Naturally, they are too insecure to make room for scientific or technical inputs. As a result, our green movements are mostly all action and no direction.

The biggest challenge facing conservation today is rescuing the green cause from this exclusivity. The community of Page3 conservationists and their followers on the web appears ridiculously out of depth against the mighty GDPwalas. Our green movement urgently needs some substance – the quantity of mass support and the quality of scientific guidance – to stand up and play a balancing role against our growth rush.

For that to happen, we urgently need a paradigm shift in thinking. Few experts evolve with time and none comes with a sale-by date. So, to break new ground, a fresh green leadership may exclude some old (and not so old) baggage.

PS: This is by no means a call for group retirement. What may not be good conservation can always be good television. The doting members of so many green groups on the web will still be watching.

Shattered Windows And Leopards In The Alley

2011-02-06T03:33:00.002-05:00

Why memories of mean, paranoid neighbours banning galli cricket may help us understand the real factors behind increasing man-leopard conflict

The Bengal Post, 20 January, 2011

If you grew up in Calcutta like I did in the 1970s, you would remember those heady days of galli cricket. For us kids, this was serious business. We knew that Sunil Gavaskar could perfect his trademark straight-drive thanks to a Dadar alley that offered little incentive for cuts and pulls. We were no Gavaskars, and we took cuts and bruises fielding on blacktop ground to ensure that no batsman pretended to be one.

It was also a competition between the decibel level of pesky neighbours (who refused to appreciate a few broken window panes as sporting milestones) and our dogged insistence to free our arms. Nevertheless, our dubious skills flourished between intermittent injunctions and temporary ceasefires. On days, we also enjoyed an indulgent fan following in the balconies overhanging the makeshift pitch.

Not that there were no playfields nearby. In my neighbourhood, we had two dusty squares where the college boys played. They did not let kids play with them. On rare occasions when they did, they considered us dudhe-bhate (inconsequential) which was hardly acceptable to any boy of honour. Anyway, we found them too big to handle. Even holding an occasional side game, on days when they were not having a match, was fraught with the danger of getting knocked out by a cork-and-leather ball flying from their practice pitch. It was only in galli cricket that young boys could come to their own.

In the early-eighties, those two playfields were being marked up for building apartments. The local youth clubs, backed by community elders, tried to reason with the builder. But compelling financial logics won the argument. But do I recall any of the builders ever suggesting that the big boys of the sporting clubs could do without those fields and take to galli cricket after the kids? I do not. Such a suggestion would have anyway led to violence.

Did the game of nerve intensify along our alley after those sporting fields were lost? It did, actually. No, not because the big boys with bigger back-lifts and stronger swings replaced us kids in the alleys. A couple of them joined bigger sporting clubs. The rest simply hung up their keds and concentrated on management courses.

What eventually drove us out was the increasing hostility of the neighbours. Quite a few families had already moved into the newly built apartments. Earlier, cranky aunts and uncles would go ballistic every time a ball sought out a window but everything would be forgotten the next day once we offered an impish apology with a casual promise that it would “never happen again”.

But the new neighbours were strangers and too protective of the glass panels in their posh apartments (or an occasionally parked car in the afternoon). Some of them even found us too noisy. When they started petitioning our parents too frequently, the more notorious among us broke a few eggs in their letter-boxes. Needless to say, cricket was soon banned in the galli.

I am not feeling nostalgic. Last week, a friendly conservationist asked me to accept that deforestation was the reason behind the rising human-leopard conflict. It has been conventional wisdom. But it is outdated and too simplistic. I tried to explain that increasing intolerance, and not deforestation, has been the biggest trigger for the recent escalation in conflict. After a prolonged exchange over three days, the noted expert called off the discussion. I was at a loss. If my technical case failed to move an expert, why trouble my readers with it?

So I felt some childhood memories might illustrate the point. Be it in sugarcane fields or village alleys, many leopards have been living close to and even among people, feeding on smaller domestic and feral prey, far away from forests. They have been doing so historically without causing major conflict.

Why do leopards stay close to people? Because wherever we have protected forests, we have or aspire to have tigers. Leopards usually do not share space with tigers. In the winter of 2004-05, presence of too many leopards in the Sariska valley was the first sign for me that the tigers were missing. In many places, leopards are fringe forest animals that make frequent forays into villages. Elsewhere, leopards use any vegetation cover available to stay close to villages.

It is ludicrous to suggest that anyone can misuse the fact that most leopards live in non-forest habitats to justify deforestation. There are enough animals -- like tigers or elephants -- that cannot survive outside forests. But we know that tigers disperse. So we need buffers. We know that elephants migrate. So we need corridors. Even leopards that live in fringe forests need such wilderness protected. They also need vegetation cover in their natural non-forest habitat intact. But what they need most is acceptance -- of the fact that a mere sighting of leopards near a human settlement is not a sign of danger, that the animals have been around us for a long time without harming any, that we need not rush to capture or kill them.

I have known many old-timers who testified how leopards have always been a part of their life, how they overlooked losing occasional livestock, knowing well that leopards would never harm people unprovoked. What has tipped this balance recently is the intolerance of the younger generations that wants neighbourhood leopards killed or captured (and released far away) for their perceived safety.

Yes, with growing population and shrinking space, chances of accidental face-offs have grown over the years. Yes, occasional problem-leopards will have to be culled. But instead of securing us, random killing and capture-translocation only fuel conflict. Unless we accept that leopards have been and will always be around us, that they do not harm us if left alone, our fight against deforestation alone will not be able to secure the spotted cat.

Back in the mid-80s, we lost our alley to increasing paranoia of new neighbours. Around the same time, the mecca of galli cricket was also weaned off this tradition. Though organized coaching nets have mushroomed in every available ground of the city since, no great Mumbai batsman has followed in the footsteps of the great galli icons Desai, Gavaskar, Vengsarkar or Tendulkar in the last two decades.

But who cares for nuanced batsmanship in the time of cheerleaders?

The Long Walk of a Single Mother

2011-01-19T03:12:00.006-05:00

It is a reckless script gone so horribly wrong that a happy ending is unbelievable, if not impossible. A desperate mother seeking shelter far from her forest home in the fields to save her two cubs from murderous males; villagers living the terror of running into big cats amid standing crop they cannot afford to abandon; forest ground staff trying hard to avert conflict that could end all hope for the tiger family. This could well be a tragedy of circumstance but for the villains of the piece

Open, 15 January, 2011

It was nearing noon. Standing on the high western bank, I could see a broken layer of mist still hanging on the Chambal river. The gentle slopes leading to the water glistened with promising crop. About a hundred yards to my left, the slope became steeper where the Kharad nallah, a minor tributary, joined the mighty river. Behind me, red gram (arhar dal) crop stood four feet tall on a rectangular field. Less than 50 yards to the right, shrubby growth of thorny vegetation broke the monotony of green.

Walking single file, forest officials were looking for pugmarks so that they could warn the farmers working nearby. A tigress and her two cubs had killed a cow barely a kilometre away four days ago. Range Officer Jodhraj Singh Hada had already deployed eight men to keep track of the runaway family. Now he was out in the field himself to assess the ground situation.

Clearly, nobody except me was expecting any miracle. But then, these were hardened forest hands, and this was only the fifth time I was looking for tigers on foot. So while I wistfully surveyed the vegetation around, most eyes scanned the ground next to their feet. If we spotted fresh pugmarks, I was told, we would count ourselves lucky.

Walking about 50 yards ahead of me, Hada spotted a lonely farm hand and stopped to give a routine warning. Forester Mahavir Sharma was keeping pace with me. Earlier, as we drove past sprawling mustard fields, he had laughed off the possibility of black-and-golden stripes darting out of a sea of yellow. “Try spotting a tiger here,” he chuckled again, pointing at the standing red gram crop to our right that shuttered vision more effectively than Venetian blinds. I smiled sheepishly and stopped looking.

Two forest guards who were painstakingly scouting the slopes below for pugmarks suddenly decided to catch up with us. Possibly their upward momentum took them a few yards inside the red gram field. Ahead of us, Hada was now standing in an open ploughed ground, looking for that farm hand. Mahavir and I also veered to the right to cut distance.

Perhaps the four of us formed a human chain too close-knit for comfort. Out of the blue, I heard an angry rumbling. Through the corner of my right eye, I caught a glimpse of at least two big cats making a dash in our direction barely ten yards away. The next second, I could only see the vegetation sway and Mahavir dash away. The rumbling of the growl only got louder. Unsure and terrified, I blindly lunged forward.

+++

My desperate lunge got me entangled in a bush of thorny Prosopis juliflora. But the tigress, known as T13 in Ranthambhore, had no intention to harm any of us. She was worried for her cubs and had just warned us before we got too close for mutual safety. For more than a month now, her close vigil against people has worked. But the next time, her nerve may not hold.

On 26 December, the Ranthambhore management launched a search after T13 and her cubs had been missing for 22 days. On 29 December, forest guards found their pugmarks, and the same day, a blue bull kill made by T13 was spotted near Senwati Dharmpuri, more than 10 km from her home range inside Rajasthan’s famous national park.

Bodol forester Sudarshan Sharma saw the family the day the blue bull kill was found. He noticed that one of the cubs was bigger, implying a male. But why did he lose track of the family? How did the three big cats leave the reserve unnoticed? Sudarshan claims the canny tigress took the hilly ridge behind his range via Bheronpura village and then took the Kundli riverbed to reach the Chambal. To be fair, if tigress T13 had managed to give her murderous suitors the slip, Sharma stood little chance.

To complicate matters further, T13’s aging mother, T14, has also been pushed out of the reserve by younger competitors. The old tigress is now fighting her last battle for survival in the same ravines not too far away from her daughter’s family. While T14’s days are numbered, aged tigers wandering close to habitations have a history of getting into conflict with humans. If the old granny ends up attacking people, the mother and cubs may have to face the ire of villagers.

Meanwhile, out in the ravines, T13 made her first cattle kill on 2 January near Lasora village. Ranger Hada promptly swung into action. Forest guards recovered the remains of the kill the next day to leave no room for poisoning. On 7 January, a local NGO raised funds through its volunteer network to compensate for the kill. With Rs 5,000 each coming from the volunteers and government, Bhuvanya Bairwa admitted that he would make a small profit on the bull he lost to the tiger.

Lasora sarpanch Tej Singh appeared a reasonable man. Before posing with Bairwa and Mahavir for photographs while handing over the compensation, he did ask Hada how soon the ranger would take away those tigers. But when told that the mother and cubs might turn the village’s fortune around, Singh listened carefully. Hada explained that thanks to the tigers, Lasora had already been added to a list of villages that will benefit from a new Rs 12 crore ‘tiger fund’ meant for micro development. Now Singh was nodding easily; so a little routine advice followed on the precautions to be observed while the tigers were around. It was a breeze. The few villagers present readily agreed to comply. Relieved, a confident Hada went scouting for pugmarks.

But the growling, darting tigers were surely more than what the forest staff had bargained for. Immediately after the scare, Hada readily accepted suggestions from Dr Dharmendra Khandal, noted field biologist who generated supplementary compensation for the cattle kill, to preempt conflict. With a frown on his forehead, the ranger set out to plan daily village meetings, pamphlets for distribution and even media advertisements.

But the media has already lapped up the story, explaining the runaway tigress as a victim of over-population. Intimidated by too many males, forest bosses explained, tigress T13 fled the reserve to save her cubs. For the record, the tigress was photographed on 1 October last year. Next morning, she was seen fighting and pushing a male tiger, T28, almost 3 km back from Ranthambhore’s Ada Balaji main road to Goolar Kui. That night, she was seen by the forest staff at the main road barrier with her cubs. The next day, she boldly crossed the tar road with her cubs and probably started her journey away from the nasty males.

In the absence of the tiger that sired T13’s cubs, any other male tiger seeking to mate with her would first kill the cubs to establish its own bloodline. Also, it is not rare for a male tiger to be killed or chased away by a more able adversary. But the father of T13’s cubs was not eliminated by nature. Tiger T12, one of Ranthambhore’s four dominant males then, was airlifted to Sariska last year in a joint exercise by the state forest department, Wildlife Institute of India and National Tiger Conservation Authority.

After the first three translocated tigers turned out to be siblings (‘Conservation: the New Killer,’ Open, 24 July 2009), the Sariska repopulation drive was put on hold and a thorough DNA test was ordered (‘Centre Orders DNA Test for Tigers,’ Open, 24 February 2010). The fourth tiger was to be picked up based on this DNA report (‘DNA Tests Confirm Sariska Siblings,’ Open, 26 June 2010). But the officials inexplicably decided to overlook other crucial criteria. A Union ministry guideline clearly stated that only young transient tigers could be selected for translocation. Nevertheless, forest officials shifted a mature male tiger, which had already impregnated a tigress, T13 (‘Dispatched to Die,’ Open, 19 November 2010).

It was nothing short of a pre-natal death sentence for the cubs. Only a really exceptional mother could raise her cubs in the absence of their father. And so far, T13 has done a great job.

+++

But life around Lasora is on the edge. The people here are simple, unlikely to target the big cats if they get timely, adequate compensation for livestock losses. Between Hada and Dr Khandal, they have a sound assurance. But an accidental attack on people—a distinct possibility during the crop gathering due next month—can change the entire equation. T13 needs to shield her seven-month-old cubs for another 13-17 months. Major conflict is inevitable if the family stays put in the cropland and ravines for that long.

Presence of ample livestock and some wild prey in the fields along the Chambal river may discourage major movement of the family. However, it is not really practical to tranquilise all three tigers simultaneously, which is essential to keep the family together. In any case, taking the family back to the national park will again expose the cubs to dominant males, and the tigress’ courageous foray into the unknown to save her young ones will come to naught.

The tigress has not tried to cross the Chambal river yet, probably because her cubs are too young to risk the tide. But if the trio does move onto the other side of the river in the months to come, they will enter a very crowded landscape and may run into poachers. While gunmen may hit them even at their present location, it is easier to secure the area, flanked as it is by the tiger reserve and the river. In recent times, few Ranthambhore tigers that crossed the Chambal have survived.

So, is there no hope for T13 and her cubs? Nature is never short of possibilities. Male tigers do not harm young females that are potential mates. So if both cubs of T13 are female, the family may well be rehabilitated if it moves back to Bheronpura area in the Sawai Man Singh sanctuary, about 6 km from its present location. Bheronpura has a small but good tiger habitat without any resident tiger and is only occasionally scouted by a couple of male tigers.
However, if Sudarshan’s observation is right, T13 will be wary of venturing anywhere close to the forest with a male cub. Unfortunately, a growing male cub in the cropland may also increase the chances of conflict.

Ranger Hada and his team of ground staff have a thankless job at hand. These foot soldiers of conservation are now expected to undo the damage done by their mighty generals. Rajasthan’s chief wildlife warden HM Bhatia went on record last week accepting that T12 is the father of T13’s cubs, but did not explain why the tiger was packed away. The WII scientists who picked up T12 after handpicking three siblings are still at the helm of the country’s most ambitious conservation project. The NTCA has not explained why it flouted its own guidelines by allowing the translocation of a dominant male.

It will take great resolve and much greater luck if the ground staff are to secure the future of T13 and her cubs. However, it should take Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh much, much less to fix some accountability, somewhere.

Just laugh it away, Mr Ranthambhore

2011-01-19T03:06:00.003-05:00

Though stunning in its winter splendor, Ranthambhore is incomplete till the resident tigerman returns from his sickbed in Jaipur

The Bengal Post, 13 January, 2011

“What do you do with so much mustard?” The question came from an American couple who clearly had a taste for that yellow sauce (the more innocuous French versions of it) but were at a loss, considering the quantity of paste those hundreds of acres of standing flowers would amount to.

It was heartening to note that in a sea of tiger-hungry tourists, there were a few who drove away from Ranthambhore, cutting across those luscious mustard fields in search of blackbucks. The Americans went back with happy photographs and the knowledge of a new cooking medium. Ranthambhore always has a surprise or two for every visitor.

My friends among those blackbuck spotters recalled the collective “whoa!” that went up earlier in the day as their vehicle bounced up the undulated entry road on way to Jogi Mahal, throwing open the spectacular horizon. Under a mystical aerostat of bluish mist that masked the sun, the panorama was complete with craggy rock faces and majestic fort walls draped in winter vegetation of green and yellow.

It is difficult to feel partial to any particular forest. But Ranthambhore feels almost like home. Though I do not even remember the last time I entered the national park for a safari, this amazing forest has never failed to surprise me with its bounty of wildlife and stories. In fact, some of my best tiger encounters happened outside this national park, including the surreal leap of a young male tiger that cleared my jeep as I watched his white belly fly overhead.

My first Ranthambhore trip of 2011 was a short one. Yet it packed the usual punch -- two playful leopards by the road near Kushalpura village, a growling tigress with two cubs in the Chambal ravines, villagers negotiating the demands of conservation, and the customary evening debates in the open by the fireside.

But something was amiss. Ranthambhore’s resident tigerman Fateh Singh Rathore was away in Jaipur, in hospital for more than a week now. One who refused to lose his hearty laughter even after losing much of his voice, Fateh is a rare life force. But those close to him said he was not too well.

I know Fateh, Fatji to his innumerable admirers, for many years. He is the man who had virtually created the Ranthambhore national park as its first conservator. A true old world forester, he lived inside the forest and often put his life at risk to protect the park. A number of broken bones in his body still testify to those wild days.

I have never written anything on Fateh’s immense contribution to tiger conservation (lest it appeared a puff job). But some of my news reports did show him and his NGO’s early dealings in a not-so-favourable light. Not too long back, Fateh spoke to me of the injustice done to him and his family by the forest department when parts of their properties were demolished but I did not report (it was not national news). In short, Fateh had enough reasons to resent me.

However, I do not recall a single occasion when Fateh closed his doors to me. Every time he learns I am in town, he gets a beer or two placed in the freezer in case I drop by unannounced during the day. Age has forced him to give up drinking but it is still my privilege to light up a cigarette for him every time we meet. On occasions, I have simply walked in and shared his lunch.

Why has Fateh been so indulgent to a journalist who did him no favour? Is it because he believes my stories help his cause of tiger conservation? Possibly, yes. But I think it is in his nature to show warmth and trust people. He has many detractors, some among his friends, who routinely let him down. Some of them were jealous of his global fame, some others gloated whenever he was harassed by the establishment. A few still call him farji (fake) behind his back. For all his rustic charm, Fateh is sharp enough to know who stands where. But time and again, I have seen him open up with childlike spontaneity to his detractors when they need him. One requires a lion’s (or tiger’s) heart for that.

Dr Dharmendra Khandal came to Ranthambhore to work in Fateh’s NGO, TigerWatch, in 2003. Today, he is recognised internationally for his successful anti-poaching operations. I have never seen the boss rankled by his protégé’s meteoric rise even when occasional reporters left Ranthambhore with Dr Khandal’s quotes, without even meeting Fateh. Instead, he has happily given his protégé more space with each passing year.

To be fair, Fateh is no saint and he never claimed to be one. Like many Rathores, he has a weakness for land, lager (or whiskey) and ladies. Like most of us, he loves attention. His famed knowledge of tigers, though unmatched among his contemporaries, is largely anecdotal. At times, he overstates his cases against the establishment. When he is angry, he is usually abusive.

What distinguishes Fateh though from more visible tiger experts is the ferocity of his passion. He often concludes our discussions with a simple vow: “So long I am alive, come what may, I won’t let tigers disappear from Ranthambhore.” I often hear such lines in my job. I can tell Fateh does mean it.

But, like Ranthambhore, Fateh also keeps surprising me. In a world where experts are life prisoners of their early convictions, I least expected Fateh to be an exception. A man of modest education and feudal upbringing, he set up Ranthambhore by resettling villages and fighting poachers in the only way he knew: with an iron hand. Decades later, he was asked to accept that only guns would not save tigers, that poor tribal poachers were also victims of their circumstances. It required a paradigm shift in thinking that more erudite conservationists struggled with. But Fateh was up to it and soon, TigerWatch started rehabilitating poachers and educating their children.

For me, Fateh is as special a person as Ranthambhore a place. It is difficult to think of the two in isolation. The place owes its coming-into-being to the man. The man loves the place so much that he refuses to stay away one extra night than necessary. I am sure Fateh is laughing away his damned sickbed in Jaipur and itching to return. Ranthambhore is waiting.

Why the ‘real world’ does not get real

2010-12-23T02:23:00.005-05:00

In this age of activism, do-gooders get to choose what good they may do; besides, it is really tough to fix real problems

The Bengal Post, 23 December, 2010

How much do you think is a forest guard’s salary? I popped the question when a fellow delegate at a neat little film festival on tribal arts in Bhubaneswar paused for a breather last week. She was lamenting the sorry state of our forests and wildlife and wondering if corporate-media initiatives were the last hope to save the wilderness.

I stood nodding for a while and when she sounded positively pained by the plight of poor forest guards, asked my first question. “Salary, well,” she said, “could not be more than three-four thousand for sure.” I told her that a forest guard, depending on seniority, took home Rs 10-18,000 a month. “Oh, I see,” she instantly wondered, “that’s quite a lot more than what we pay our driver.”

Now, for the first time, she seemed to be thinking. Surely, with that kind of salary, those forest guards did not require any charity. But then, she asked me, why was conservation still in such a mess? What was the problem?

The evening nip in the air was comfortable for northerners and we could go on discussing the issue. But artist Jatin Das, the one-man army organising the film festival, walked by. Like most artists of his stature, Das commands a lot of attention. As the delegates craned to hear him talk, the issues changed fast.

But the question returned with my fellow delegate later in the evening. Over a smoke, in a corner of the tastefully landscaped plot owned by Jatin Das Centre for Arts, I tried to find her answers.

No, forest guards do not need charity if they get their salaries on time (which does not happen in a few states like Bihar or Maharashtra). They earn enough to afford two uniforms, a jacket, a torch or even a tiffin box. But they are too few. In most states, vacancies are huge and the new recruits are mostly hired on contract for a maximum of Rs 3,000 a month. Corporates and NGOs can buy these temporary staff this and that. But they will still lack the authority and, more importantly, the accountability of a bona fide forest guard.

So one problem is the unwillingness of the states to fill in vacancies and ensure a workforce of well-paid regular forest guards who have a career and a pension to look forward to. Temporary ground staff can still be hired seasonally to supplement this workforce and to keep the local communities involved.

The second part of this problem is the states’ refusal to bear the recurring costs of conservation. A recent corporate-media telethon raised some Rs 5 crore to buy some sets of vehicles and an assortment of equipment for some tiger reserves. The Centre spends hundreds of crores for tiger conservation and makes such one-time purchases at a simply incomparable scale. But even if the Centre buys a jeep for each range officer and a motorbike for each forest guard, the fleets will need fuel to run on -- a recurring cost the states are supposed to bear and, in most cases, refuse to.

If the number of regular staff is one problem, the unreasonable workload is another. Forest staff must focus on protection. They should not be burdened with tourism duties, including facilitating VIPs, or relocating villages or doing research. Regular tourism duties make them corrupt. They become servile handling VIPs. They are often highhanded in negotiations and usually bad researchers. We need specially trained and specifically assigned personnel at different levels for such work. The regular sanctioned staff strength of a forest should do only what they are supposed to: watch over the forest and its wildlife.

The next problem, I told her, was of training. From a guard to a conservator, everyone must be trained adequately before serving at a wildlife area. The long-term solution is to create a wildlife service, perhaps a specialised short service, within the IFS. For now, we need specific and practical field courses tailor-made for all levels. We also need to churn out a bunch of good wildlife veterinarians to be deployed as regular/contract staff in each of our wildlife units.

This brought us to an even bigger problem: the sensitive issue of political will. Committed and performing field officers are always rare. Time and again, those few who actually make a difference are shunted out for offending powerful interests. But even state-of-the-art kits will rust if we do not have officers to lead from the front in an hour of crisis. Take the recent example from Ranthambhore. Range officer Daulat Singh was not mauled because he did not have adequate equipment. He suffered injuries because he was forced to act unwisely by his seniors. Availability of a few fancy kits may only encourage such foolhardy bravado in the absence of able and informed leadership.

The last on my list of administrative problems was the issue of mishandling losses suffered by local communities. Be it crop or cattle loss or restriction on livelihood practices, compensation has to be reasonable, transparent and prompt. At present, the process brings more agony than relief. In case of crop/life loss, assessment of damage should not be a bureaucratic (hence corrupt) process. For the larger issue of livelihood losses, benefits of tourism must be shared generously with the communities. Locals should also get preference for jobs with the forest department.

No, this list of problems, I told the now-exhausted delegate, did not include pressure of development (for profit or survival) and population. Those are almost philosophical debates nobody can win. However, redressing the administrative issues listed above is very much within our mortal scope. Yet, corporate-media spectacles are happy to donate some clothes and a few cars. Why, they could at least buy single-premium insurances to cover all forest guards in the country.

It was probably a giveaway and the keen delegate asked me if I had anything against a certain telethon. On the backfoot, I ducked, kind of. The media’s job is to correct public policies. The corporate’s job is to make profits out of ethical businesses. If both had even limited success in their primary jobs, the crisis they joined hands to fight so spectacularly on live TV would not have existed.

She dismissed me. “That’s a different thing, haan. We know how the real world works. But, at least, they did something, no? Spread so much awareness, no?”

I could see they really did. I nodded. She shuffled on her feet. Jatin Das walked by with an announcement. The bar was open.

Now, Who’s Crouching?

2010-12-16T02:33:00.003-05:00

Open mag does its turn to stall an eco-tourism scam in Rajasthan
Taking note of the report Crouching Tourists, Hidden Tiger (Open, 28 November - 6 December 2010), Environment and Forests minister Jairam Ramesh has shot off a letter to Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, requesting his “personal intervention…for preventing the Kankwari fort from being put to use for tourism”.

In the report published in Open, Rajasthan’s Chief Wildlife Warden HM Bhatia admitted that the fort renovation was funded by the state tourism department. “Our policy is to promote eco-tourism. We do not allow people to stay inside forests, but we will work out an arrangement keeping the safety of tourists and the security of wild animals in mind,” he said.

In his letter dated 2 December, Ramesh wrote: “It is learnt that the said fort has been restored with support from the tourism department, perhaps with a view to foster tourist visitation/stay. This is a matter of serious concern as it violates the norms of inviolate space. The government of India has been providing considerable central assistance (100 per cent under Project Tiger) for making the core area inviolate through village relocation. The core areas been to be kept inviolate as per Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 and hence, tourism activities need to be strictly regulated, with a view to foster them in a passed manner in the buffer area. Hence, I request tour personal intervention in this regard for preventing the Kankwari fort from being put to use for tourism.”

Meanwhile, in Madhya Pradesh, RTI activist Ajay Dubey sought protection from the Jabalpur High Court, following the expose in the same Open report that state Chief Wildlife Warden HS Pabla emailed some of the state’s top tourism players, warning them of the PIL filed by Dubey that sought a ban on tourism in core tiger reserve areas as per the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, and urging them to “take whatever steps…to protect” their interests. The case will again come up in January next year.

While the National Tiger Conservation Authority in its reply before the high court admitted that Section 38V (4) (i) of the WPA provided for keeping the core/critical tiger habitats inviolate, a number of conservationists, including National Board for Wildlife member Kishore Rithe, have sought Ramesh’s intervention in the matter.

STOP SAMBAR TRANSLOCATION

In the same letter, Ramesh also pointed out that a large number of sambar was being captured and translocated from the core area of Sariska to Kumbalgarh wildlife sanctuary. Requesting Gehlot to inquire into the matter and stop any further sambar translocation, Ramesh wrote: “Such operations can have considerable ramifications on the predator-prey balance in the habitat. The NTCA, the statutory body in the context of tiger conservation, has not even been consulted in this regard. As you are aware, we are in the process of rebuilding Sariska, and considerable effort and resources have gone into the translocation of tigers. Hence, a drastic intervention involving removal of a major prey species from the core area of a tiger reserve, without any technical advice is a very serious issue.”

Crouching Tourists, Hidden Tiger

2010-11-26T05:25:00.007-05:00

Behind the face-off between the wildlife tourism lobby and the Ministry of Environment and Forests lies a network of hidden interests that exercises monopoly power and prospers on hypocrisy and corruption. While one state forest official helps hoteliers protect their businesses, another develops a tourism facility on the very spot from where a forest village is being evicted. More than stricter regulations, it’s time for transparency
OPEN | BHOPAL, JAIPUR AND RAMNAGAR | 26 November, 2010

HOW COME a country that is losing acres of forests and dozens of wild animals by the hour has time to debate, of all things, wildlife tourism?

It was late evening at Delhi’s India International Centre. After a rare screening of Pradeep Krishen’s Electric Moon, an excellent satire on desperate brown sahibs and their ingenious ways of conning unsuspecting foreign wildlife tourists, a few guests were animatedly discussing the merits of a proposed ban on tourism in critical tiger forests. An elderly lady stood there listening for a while, before popping the exasperated question.

The answer may seem obvious, but it is not. Wildlife tourism is mostly concentrated in areas where tigers and other big animals are relatively abundant. So the nature of tourism has a direct bearing on India’s more successful conservation stories. Since such success stories are still few and far between, the country had better not take chances.

On the surface, battlelines appear drawn between the Government and the wildlife tourism lobby on this very idealistic premise. Scratch this surface, though, and it becomes a no-holds-barred battle between sarkari power and private profit. What makes this an almost even contest is the presence of big corporate chains, the not-so-secret stake of many renowned conservationists, and the unusual interest of many top forest officers in wildlife tourism.

On 9 September 2010, the Jabalpur High Court asked the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and Madhya Pradesh forest department to respond to a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking an immediate stay on tourism in core forest areas. Chief Wildlife Warden HS Pabla, the top custodian of wildlife in Madhya Pradesh, was on a tour, but he promptly swung into action. A few minutes before the midnight of 14 September, he emailed some of the state’s top tourism players, warning them of the PIL and urging them to join hands ‘to protect’ their interests.

Open has a copy of this tell-tale email sent out by Pabla. It reads:

‘This is to let you know that a PIL (WP no. 12352/2010 – Ajay Dube Vs NTCA and Others) has been filed in the high court of MP Jabalpur, which, among other things, seeks a ban on tourism in the core zones of tiger reserves. The applicant has also preyed (sic) for an iimmediate (sic) stay. Although the government of MP will oppose this application, lodge owners, travel operators, guides etc may also like to implead themselves as affected parties if you want to be sure that this PIL doesn’t succeed. As the case may have serious consequences for you people, kindly take whatever steps you think will be appropriate to protect your interests. As I am travelling and do not have the mail IDs of all of you, kindly inform others who will be affected by this case.’

Not surprising, then, that when the PIL subsequently came up for court hearing last week, around a dozen interventions were submitted. Among the interveners were a slew of hotel associations from Bandhavgarh, Kanha and Pench, and a few NGOs.

While the NTCA told the court that core critical forest areas were “required to be kept as inviolate for the purpose of tiger conservation, without affecting the rights of Scheduled Tribes or such forest dwellers”, in his reply, Pabla claimed that he (as chief wildlife warden) was the supreme authority on such decisions in the state, and that tourism aided the protection of forests and wildlife. The next hearing is scheduled on 6 December.

Meanwhile, in Rajasthan, there are some questions best answered by Principal Chief Conservator of Forests RN Mehrotra, the man who orchestrated the controversial tiger reintroduction programme that suffered its first casualty last week, when a male tiger was poisoned to death. Busy relocating a few villages in order to secure an ‘inviolate tiger habitat’ in Sariska, Mehrotra must have had his hands full. But the boss of the state forest establishment has still got time for a new, and secret, pet project.

For many decades, the medieval fort of Kankwari, where Aurangzeb is said to have imprisoned his brother Dara Shikoh, lay in ruins deep inside the Sariska reserve. Today, while hundreds of families are being moved out of Kankwari village, the fort atop a hillock a few hundred yards away is getting a silent makeover.

Forest officers in the field are tight-lipped, and Mehrotra has not replied to queries, but state Chief Wildlife Warden HM Bhatia admits that the renovation was funded by the state tourism department. “Our policy is to promote eco-tourism,” he explains, “We do not allow people to stay inside forests, but we will work out an arrangement keeping the safety of tourists and the security of wild animals in mind.”

In New Delhi, NTCA officials say they are not aware of any renovation or eco-tourism proposal at Kankwari, adding that any non-forest activity would need official clearances from several central authorities. Says former Rajasthan PCCF BD Sharma: “If the tourism department has funded the renovation, the purpose is obvious. But eco-tourism cannot happen inside core areas. Whether they make it a day or night facility, how will they justify the disturbance, especially after removing an entire village from that area?”

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THE PROPOSAL to ban tourism in critical tiger forests was not an idea chanced upon by a bureaucrat in a eureka moment. It has been a legal necessity since the 2006 amendment to the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, that requires all critical tiger habitats to be ‘inviolate’—out of bounds for human use. As a result, more than 50,000 forest dwelling families have been earmarked for rehabilitation, and many thousands have already been moved out.

To many, it does not make any moral sense to have lodges and resorts inside a forest where villages have been uprooted to facilitate conservation. Ashish Kothari, member of several government panels and a champion of forest dwellers’ rights, feels such hypocrisy that allows speeding safari cars and plush tourist facilities in national parks after forcibly evicting local villagers only results in loss of popular support for conservation.

But when Dr Rajesh Gopal, member-secretary of the NTCA, accepted that government policies had no room for double standards, the tourism lobby went up in arms. Ironically, most conservationists who have always been quite vocal in demanding the eviction of villages from core forests have somehow preferred to maintain a diplomatic silence this time round. Not surprising, because most of them either run businesses or have made serious investments in high-profile reserves across the country.

Soon, Environment & Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh stepped in to issue a statement that the Ministry never had any plan to ban tourism, but it would be strictly regulated in the 39 Project Tiger reserves, particularly in designated core areas. He also said that the Ministry was working on detailed guidelines for promoting eco-tourism in line with the carrying capacity of individual reserves.

Far from clearing the picture, this has triggered fresh speculation about the nature and extent of ‘strict regulations’. So even as the Ministry works on the promised guidelines, some industry bigwigs and conservation heavyweights are busy finding ways to influence these clauses.

In public, the tourism lobby has been arguing its case on what it calls four crucial spin-offs for conservation. First, tourism brings in money and can make our cash-starved reserves financially self-sufficient. Second, wildlife tourism creates awareness and builds a stronger constituency for conservation. Third, the presence of tourists keeps a forest safe from poachers and other intruders, as evident from the relative abundance of animals and trees in tourism zones in any forest. Fourth, tourism absorbs local workers and reduces their dependence on forests for livelihood.

Forest officials promptly counter these arguments. They point out that the forests are not leased out to private managements in India, and anyway, the Centre has increased the budget manifold in the past five years. While accepting that tourists do amount to extra pairs of vigilant eyes, they add that all tourism zones already had a hearty abundance of animals before they were designated as such, and, in fact, successful conservation efforts behind such abundance were the reason these areas were earmarked as tourism zones in the first place.

Samir Sinha, a senior forest officer now with Traffic-India, wants the wildlife tourism sector to put its money where its mouth is. “On paper, wildlife tourism creates mass awareness for conservation and financially empowers the local workforce. What we have on the ground are mostly tourists who casually litter our forests and bribe guides to chase wild animals. Most resorts hire locals for menial jobs and pay a pittance,” he rues.

Dr Gopal points out how tourism has become brazenly intrusive: “Isn’t the result (of irresponsible tourism) there for everyone to see? They surround animals with vehicles, build resorts blocking wildlife corridors, dump garbage in eco-sensitive areas, and even exploit local villagers. Even the Tourism Ministry accepted such issues in a recent report. Nobody is against tourism, but they must act as responsible stakeholders.”

Many in the wildlife tourism sector, on the other hand, wag fingers at the dictatorial, corrupt and vindictive ways of the forest department. In most upscale reserves, last-minute permits and reservations are available at an extra cost. In Ranthambore, for example, hotels could get away with almost anything if they obliged forest officers by hosting their private functions or offering jobs to their relatives. In Corbett, if a hotel-owner pointed out instances of illegal tree-felling, he would be singled out and his safari permits would get squeezed. The list of such backroom manoeuvres is long.

A senior officer in the Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF), in fact, accepts that a section of forest officers are against the so-called proposal for a blanket ban on tourism in critical tiger habitats as it would affect their earnings. Now, he adds, these officers should be happy, as stricter regulations would offer better avenues for “milking” tourism.

+++

THIS TRADING of charges blurs the larger picture. And that picture is scary. Each upscale tiger reserve has its ‘carrying capacity’ (maximum number of tourists it can accommodate in a day) worked out. Compare that figure with the annual occupancy count in the hotels around that reserve. Depending on a reserve’s profile, the occupancy will be 30–100 per cent higher than the maximum number of people who can enter the forest for a safari.

Unfortunately, exact occupancy figures are not available simply because nobody is keeping a tab. But take Corbett, for example. Even in the peak season with all tourism zones in operation, the reserve cannot accommodate more than 700 tourists on safari a day. The hotel occupancy ought to be significantly less if you factor in day visitors (who do not stay overnight) and tourists who go on both morning and evening safaris.

There are about 100 small and big hotels around Corbett. At a conservative average of 30 double-bed rooms per property, that amounts to 3,000 double-bed rooms or 6,000 tourists a day. At an average high-season occupancy of 25 per cent, it translates to 1,500 tourists a day—more than double the number that can enter the reserve.

On a yearly scale, the mismatch looks more ominous. Factoring in the monsoon closure, a maximum of 190,000 tourists can enter Corbett in a year. In 2008-09, actual entries were recorded at about 180,000. But non-wildlife tourists visit Corbett round the year. Based on our previous assessment, a more modest average occupancy of 20 per cent adds up to 220,000 double-rooms a year or more than 400,000 tourists.

Clearly, hundreds of thousands of tourists, who apparently have no interest in forests or wildlife and do not even bother to visit the reserve, crowd around our forests regularly. Some come for extended sessions of corporate unwinding, others for rowdy weddings. More and more multi-star hotels come up behind high walls to accommodate them and choke forest corridors. These throngs, almost entirely with no motive other than leisure, end up raising levels of sound and light pollution with their late-night parties, draining vital resources like water, and leaving behind tonnes of garbage. Whether tourism is banned or regulated inside core forests, this monstrous non-wildlife crowd will continue to swell beyond the jurisdiction of the forest department, unless other agencies of the Government step in to staunch the flow.

Hotels within a stipulated distance from a forest should be allowed only if they maintain a generous open land to built-up area ratio. Any use of water and electricity by a hotel, above a reasonable quota specified according to its land size, should be steeply charged. A strict no-sound-no-light policy should be enforced in the late evenings, and a steep garbage tax levied with a carry-it-back policy. Once non-eco establishments transfer this substantial extra cost to non-wildlife tourists and refuse to offer them DJs by the pool, this crowd will gradually shift their corporate junkets and marriages away from forests.

+++

WHAT ABOUT the other bulk of tourists who insist on entering forests for wildlife safaris but are usually in picnic mode? Is it not the responsibility of hoteliers and tour operators to ensure that their clients follow rules, learn to respect the wilderness and possibly go back better educated?

Unfortunately, just about no one follows even the basics of the existing MoEF guidelines dating back to 2003. For example, the minimum mandatory distance between two safari vehicles should be 500 metres. At all times, a tourist vehicle or safari elephant should maintain a minimum distance of 30 metres from a wild animal. The photographs on these pages tell the real story.

While a number of players blame such irresponsible tourism for hurting the reputation of this sector, there is little effort to form a self-regulatory body to enforce strict industry norms. Instead, some pass the buck to forest staff, blaming them for turning a blind eye to such unruly tourists just because they come from ‘friendly’ hotels or tour operators. Others shrug, saying that “the good guys are just too few to control the bad ones”.

The result is one big mess. Travel Operators for Tigers, a campaign for responsible use of wild habitats in India, sums up the malaise by observing that wildlife tourism often suffers from badly motivated tourists, poorly informed guides, apathy towards local communities, excessive tiger-centricism, and vexed relations with park officials.

So, even the strictest of regulations will remain vulnerable to manipulation, unless the new guidelines institutionalise some transparency. There are a few pioneering eco-tourism projects that stand out in forests otherwise overrun by the rent-a-tiger tourism mafia. These rare green efforts may soon be forced out of business if the profit-spinning mafia continues to buy its way and forest officers get away with bending rules.

Says PK Sen, former director, Project Tiger: “The new set of guidelines should be made binding through legislation, with provisions for strict punishment for violation. However, its implementation will still depend on individual states. Legally, a shift from the core to the buffer areas is inevitable. We may not have too many good buffer forests today, but if the tourism lobby really means well, it can use its clout and money to encourage community conservation efforts around critical tiger forests. It will help both conservation and tourism.”

Implemented fairly, no pro-conservation regulation may hit the wildlife tourism sector too hard. The few who already have their eco-advantage will find it easier to cope, because, as conservationist Bittu Sahgal points out, it is high time “we offered real nature experiences and not expect tourists to just gawk at the tiger and pay for the privilege”.

Successful eco-tourism businesses can inspire a paradigm shift. As for outsized luxury properties, there is no reason why they should mind investing in buffer conservation so that the big animals begin to show up there. The rest, who have made crores by exploiting the Government’s investment in conservation and vulnerability of officials to corruption, might also continue to do well in whichever sector they switch to.

The author is an independent journalist

Debating media ethics? Go, get a life

2010-11-26T05:14:00.004-05:00

With internet abuzz with unusual tapes and mainstream media silently closing ranks, it is very much business as usual

The Bengal Post / The Hoot, 25 November, 2010

Media is all about rights. So when it wrongly feels wronged, two wrongs give it the right to censor news. Pity, no one can blackout what is, literally, in the air. So a total ban in the mainstream media notwithstanding, many of you have read the transcripts and heard the tapes of the telephonic conversations of a professional lobbyist with a few renowned “journalists” on the internet.

Among the bigwigs heard are two almost iconic faces -- a columnist better known for his discerning palate and an anchor for her opulent screen energy. Soon after the tapes became public, both expressed shock at how some vested interests were trying to hear too much in what were routine, polite parleys with a news source.

Since none of them dismissed the tapes as fabricated, I thought it gave lesser mortals in the media fraternity an opportunity to learn the fine art of chatting up a source from their two very successful colleagues. So when a student of journalism asked me what to make out of the tapes and the subsequent clarifications, I told her she should not hesitate meeting the two media icons asking for a job once she got her degree. But she had an immediate concern. Working on a course essay on ethical reporting, she wanted to score a point by touching upon the tape issue. Shameless, I saw an opportunity.

If she was keen to scoop a government decision, say, on a few mining bids, I told her, she must do whatever it took to be in the loop. No matter if it required helping the mining lobby influence a few bureaucrats or a minister or taking an underhand offer from them to the industry, but she had to be always on top of the story.

But, the bright little thing asked, did it not make a bigger story that both sides were engaged in dubious bargaining on an issue that was supposed to be decided on objective merit? Hell, that was not her story, I told her, and that was not ethical either. She must stay with her story, whatever the temptation, and facilitate it along the way so that when a much-bargained decision was arrived at, she became the first person to scoop, well, only the decision. Was not that the story she had set out to do?

The expression on the young student’s face told me she was not convinced. I blamed my presumably limited communication skills. Why, the energetic anchor stated pretty much the same in her defense and I am sure she would not have done so unless she expected the world to understand and appreciate the point. Surely, allocation of cabinet portfolios was the news, not the dirty arm-twisting or compromises made behind it. She could not have been insulting her viewers’ intelligence; come on, not again.

A little disappointed with myself, I decided to have another go. If she ever gets important enough, I told the student, and gets to write columns to influence, I meant, guide her readers, she should learn to both retain and lose her humility.

Noticing her quizzical expression, I quickly explained that she should always be open to education and should always hardsell the reach and impact of her columns so that people find her worth educating. Come on, game changers are expected only to write on everything, not know everything. Besides, from Confucius to Dalai Lama, all wise men seek a teacher in everyone they meet. So every source matters, however dubious. She should listen to each and, as part of her learning, take a few dictations every now and then.

Almost excited, she said she always thought it was a great idea to put all viewpoints in a piece. How she broke my heart. I sternly told her that she would never make the cut if she did not learn to master the authority to choose which viewpoint to present. It was all in public interest, I went on to explain, and it was her duty to tell readers or viewers what is right. One could not make it big by shunning big responsibilities, even if that meant scripting and rehearsing an interview to make it appear, what else, right.

Midway through this conversation, a baby-faced friend of hers had joined us. Watching her leaning against the table with a frozen smile, I really did not see it coming. The moment I paused, she let go.

Picking her words with care, she told me that she could shove those tips you-know-where and that she was in fact quietly listening so far just to figure out what an old you-know-what like me (that was alright since she could not have been more than 22) thought about those two. Before I could protest, she dismissed one of those two as India’s most self-important foodie who made little impact and less sense, and the other as the Tulsi of English news TV minus the jewellery.

As I stared bemused, she fired away. When did those two last do any reporting, the true test of a journalist? Not columns or reviews or chat shows or breast-beating at disaster zones but hard news reporting?

But then, I pointed out, that even abroad, most star reporters, Pulitzer and Emmy winners, usually got promoted to appear as presenters in big reporting shows (like 60 Minutes on CBS) that were in fact researched and scripted by their producers who were fine journalists themselves. She sized me up with a cold look. Could I please point out one 'Pulitzer-type' story done by either of those two?

I would have really broken in a sweat but she relented with a smile, offering to make my task easier. Could I think up any news worth its headline that those two ever unearthed (she chewed the word to emphasize), news that nobody knew till exposed?

Then, her smile broadening, she abruptly left with her slightly embarrassed friend, admonishing her within my earshot: “I know your media types. There was no point debating if those two flouted any journalistic ethics. Get a life!”

Oh, yes? I sat there, slowly finishing my coffee already gone cold. Maybe there was no point fretting over the stance of the mainstream media either.

Tell you, these kids are not funny.

Author is an independent journalist

Dispatched to Die

2010-11-21T05:59:00.001-05:00

The latest death of a translocated tiger reiterates how Sariska continues to stand for everything that could have gone wrong with conservation in India

Open magazine, 19 November, 2010

What do you do when you cannot save the tigers in your custody? In Rajasthan, you blame the tiger. So when the rotten carcass of the first of five tigers translocated to repopulate Sariska was found this Sunday, the officials were quick to explain the death as a result of infighting.

Five tigers – two males and three females – were shifted to Sariska between June 2008 and July 2010. Even before a post mortem was conducted on male ST1’s carcass, forest bosses told the media that he was killed by the other male ST4 who has been missing for a couple of weeks now. They knew that the decomposed body would not have revealed much.

However, the skin on the dead tiger was intact and it showed no scar indicative of any fight. There was no sign of any struggle on ground. Sources in the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) pointed out that the death was caused by poisoning. But they would not go on record refuting the claims of their Rajasthan counterparts.

“There was no indication of any fight at all. Though the decomposed visceral organs may not give out any trace of poison, what else could have killed a healthy tiger in its prime? Remember the carcass was found close to a village at the edge of the reserve,” says an official on condition of anonymity. Indeed, it was not difficult to poison a kill since both male tigers of Sariska were frequently preying on cattle.

Two days after the carcass was found, Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh rushed to the field after NTCA chief Dr Rajesh Gopal briefed the minister about the circumstantial evidences of poisoning. With their infighting theory tottering, the state forest bosses are now trying to find new excuses, blaming the death on tuberculosis or a snake bite.

While the authorities may yet not succeed in hushing up the poisoning, what irks a number of conservationists is the total lack of professionalism and transparency. They point out that the joint monitoring teams of WII and state forest department are supposed to have daily records of land use and prey habits of the five translocated tigers and a death cannot go unexplained.

“If there was no sign of a fight, the viscera should have been sent to an advanced forensic lab to establish if the tiger was poisoned. It was clearly not poaching for skin. Either some locals were avenging regular loss of cattle or some vested interest instigated them to take out tigers. In either case, it’s a failure of management and monitoring science and needs to be investigated by an independent agency,” says PK Sen, former director, Project Tiger.

To many, it was a disaster waiting to happen. The tiger has long become a pawn in an open gamble of power and money in the state. What is worse, some of India’s top sarkari wildlife scientists have reduced themselves to rubber stamps to give this sacrificial game the sanctity of scientific conservation.

As early as 2005, soon after Sariska had lost all its tigers, an empowered committee set up by the Rajasthan government identified the factors responsible for the local extinction and mandated that any attempt to reintroduce tigers without securing the reserve would put future populations at risk.

The state administration slept over the recommendations for almost three years and yet managed to secure the Union ministry’s nod, cleared by an office no less powerful than the prime minister’s, to launch a tiger reintroduction programme.

So with villages still dotting the core area, pilgrims bound for Pandupol temple moving unhindered inside the forest and heavy traffic speeding along state highways SH13 and SH29A across the reserve, Sariska was declared ready to host tigers again. In a tearing hurry, a WII team flew in the first tiger from Ranthambhore in June 2008. After all, the state elections were due in a few months, tourism needed an urgent revival, and a top official in the union ministry fancied a historical photo-op as her farewell gift.

Two tigresses followed shortly but months into regular mating, there were no cubs to celebrate. It soon turned out that the tigers – sent without any checks for breeding compatibility -- were siblings, fathered by one male from two tigresses. Even if their mating had led to an offspring, it would have posed the risk of inheriting the recessive gene, crippling the founder population.

So in 2009, the reintroduction drive was put on hold for more than a year and a thorough DNA study ordered. But when the fourth tiger was to be picked up from Ranthambhore, based on the DNA report, the officials inexplicably decided to overlook other crucial criteria. A Union ministry guideline clearly stated that only young transient tigers could be selected for translocation. But this time, they shifted a mature male tiger, which had already marked its territory in Ranthambhore and impregnated a tigress.

This compromised the chances of the male settling down in its new habitat – all resident animals when uprooted try to home back to their erstwhile territory. It also spelt doom for the tiger’s cubs in Ranthambhore. In his absence, any other male tiger seeking to mate with the tigress would first kill the cubs to establish its own bloodline.

Months after the release, the male ST4 still remained restless and has been missing for the last three weeks. He was “lost” on a few occasions earlier as his radio collar stopped sending satellite data within days of his arrival in Sariska. Then the back-up VHF signals that are supposed to be available to handheld antennas within a 3 km range weakened to just a 1-km radius. Meanwhile, the cubs he fathered in Ranthambhore have been spotted only once since the reserve opened after the monsoon.

Last week, busy looking for male ST4, the WII monitoring team forgot about ST1. So nobody was alerted even though the tiger sent death signals (stationary) for 3 days. The village Kala Khet where the carcass was found lies close to the medieval fort of Kankwari in Sariska’s core where major renovation work is going on. Kankwari and Kala Khet both have permanent forest posts. Even without a radio collar, the dead tiger should have been traced much earlier had the forest guards followed the rigours of regular foot patrolling.

In fact, the reintroduction drive in Sariska started under Rajesh Gupta, an able officer who was specially brought in from Bharatpur for the purpose. Within months, the staff revolted against his tough work ethics and he was shunted out. From that point, the management continued to slide as top posts either remained unoccupied or were filled up with officers least interested in field work. The present director K K Garg runs Sariska from his Alwar office 30 km away and many old-timers who were suspended after the 2004 debacle are back on duty.

But such anomalies are not unusual in a state that refuses to budge even after the union ministry repeatedly urges its chief minister to stop mining around Sariska. As the tug-of-war continues, the number of mines inexplicably doubles up from 32 to 68.

So much under the media spotlight, the continuing mess at Sariska has been the most arrogant statement of the establishment that it just could not care less. Six years back when the reserve became a death trap, the authorities suspended a few staff but did precious little to secure the ground. The response appears to be the same this time as they continue to be in denial mode. It may not be too late yet for all to learn some lessons from history. Otherwise, it has a tendency to repeat itself.

The author is an independent journalist

A power statement we should be ashamed of

2010-11-21T05:53:00.004-05:00

Ramesh must review sending elephants to Turkmenistan; we must rethink why so many animals and birds locked up in zoos

The Bengal Post, 11 November, 2010

The 2010 vision statement of the Central Zoo Authority says that zoos “will have healthy animals in eco-system based naturalistic enclosures, supportive to in-situ conservation with competent and contented staff, good educational and interpretive facilities, support of the people and be self-sufficient."

I do not know how many zoos in India fit that description. But Turkmenistan’s Ashbagat zoo surely does not. The authorities have revamped the zoo last month but the past experience was appalling. From what I have read about this facility, the management seemed to have little regard for the wellbeing of its animals. The enclosures had tin roofs in a temperature range of 46 to -5 degree celcius. The cages were almost never cleaned. Population monitoring was considered a luxury.

Not a place you would fancy visiting after a good meal. But your government, responding to a diplomatic request, has agreed to send two elephants to this desert. Since gifting wild animals is no more legal, the jumbos will be sent under an exchange programme.

Since elephants have been designated as national heritage animal, one would have thought their welfare would figure above petty diplomatic interests. Not too long back in 2005, the government eventually dumped a similar proposal to send an elephant to Armenia’s Yerevan zoo, infamous for its high elephant mortality. Then we sent two young elephants from Jaldapara to Japan’s Okinawa zoo in 2007. Three years on, the duo remains chronically depressed and difficult to control (read frequently tortured).

But these precedents seemed to have taught us nothing. If lack of understanding of the issue prompted Jairam Ramesh to sentence two elephants to a lifetime of misery, he still has time for a rethink. After all, he supported the proposed Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare, an initiative at the United Nations, earlier this year.

Of course, the conditions of most zoos at home are not any better. Since 1992, the CZA has evaluated 347 zoos, out of which 164 have been recognized and 183 refused recognition. Out of these 183, 92 have been closed down and their animals relocated suitably. The future of the remaining 91 derecognized zoos is currently under review. So far, only 34 zoos have their master plans approved by the CZA.

That brings us to the larger question: do we really need zoos? Yes, distressed animals deserve some dignity and a home. Also, captive breeding programmes may offer certain species a second, however thin, chance. But, surely, the thousands and lakhs of creatures confined in zoos world over are not all rescued specimens nor are they there to facilitate some breeding opportunity or other. For example, why on earth India should have more than 36,000 animals and birds in zoos?

Perhaps, Professor Randy Malamud was correct in his bold Reading Zoos: “What people see inside the zoo cage is a symbol of our power to capture and control other aspects of the world. They see what was once a marvellous, vibrant, sentient creature, full of instincts and emotions and passions and life force, reduced to a spectacle, a prisoner, a trophy of our conquest of the natural world. They see a celebration of the human power to displace and reconfigure an animal’s life for our own amusement and supposed edification.”

If that appears too strong an opinion, sample some amazing data from Craig Redmond of Captive Animals’ Protection Society. Take elephants, for example. A government-funded study by Bristol University scientists in 2008 looked at all 77 elephants in UK zoos, concluding ‘there was a welfare problem for every elephant’. They spent 83% of their time indoors and 54% of them showed repeated obsessive performance of apparently purposeless activity. So prevalent are degenerative foot and leg problems in captive elephants, caused in part by hard flooring and the inability to walk far, that only 16% of them could even walk normally.

Redmond punctured the myth that animals in zoos live longer than their wild counterparts. Some 40% of lion cubs in zoos die before one month of age – in the wild only 30% of cubs are thought to die before they are six months old and at least a third of those deaths are due to factors which are absent in zoos, like predation. Elephants in the wild live up to three times longer than those in zoos; even those born in logging camps have lower mortality rates.

Redmond also pointed out how many conservation scientists criticised captive breeding as a diversion from the reasons for a species’ decline. As one paper in Conservation Biology put it, captive breeding programmes give ‘a false impression that a species is safe so that destruction of habitat and wild populations can proceed’.

What about education, though? David Hancocks, a zoo veteran who worked across continents, dismissed the idea: “If zoos were as effective as they claim to be, surely after so many millions of visits by so many millions of children over so many decades we would have a society that was very knowledgeable of, concerned about and enthusiastically supportive of wildlife conservation. I strongly suspect that much of what is learned at the zoo, especially subconsciously, is in fact detrimental to the development of supportive and considerate attitudes towards wild habitat conservation.”

But do not we at least get to see species that we would never have otherwise? Malamud has a completely different take on this: “What’s most amazing about, say, a giraffe or a panda, is that a person like me who lives in Georgia, is not supposed to see these animals. They just don’t belong here. Making these fascinating creatures so easily available greatly diminishes their real beauty, their authentic existence. Secondly, zoos teach us that habitat, environment or ecosystem is not very important. Why bother trying to protect the environment when we can just scoop up all the interesting animals who live in it and put them on display? Naturalistic education should, on the contrary, teach us in the strongest possible terms that our awareness of living beings must be inextricably connected with their contexts, their life-spaces.”

I have been to better zoos and met rare dedicated managers. But I have been to many more zoos that made me cringe and puke. So I dare agree with Redmond that zoos infringe on the basic needs of animals in order to benefit the secondary desires (amusement or enlightenment) of humans.

Those who cannot imagine a world without zoos, rest assured. Zoos are not going to disappear overnight. But please do not forget to petition the friendly minister against shifting those jumbos to Ashbagat, and slip in a line or two demanding radical zoo reforms. The American Heritage Dictionary may define the word zoo as “a place or situation marked by rampant confusion or disorder” but let us all agree that animals deserve a choice outside frying pans or fire.

Caring To Death

2010-10-30T14:31:00.002-04:00

Animal welfare is not conservation. That is why our emotional meddling, however well intentioned, poses a menace to wildlife

OPEN magazine, 30 October, 2010

The latest tragedy from Ranthambore, the death of a three-and-a-half-year-old male tiger, did not make big headlines. After all, the death was the result of infighting: male tigers often engage in mortal territorial battles. So the forest department decreed that the T36 male died a natural death.

Or did he?

The story goes back roughly two years. In September 2008, Ranthambore’s famed Guda tigress died of suspected poisoning, leaving two sub-adult cubs. The forest department dragged its feet over investigating the poisoning, but helped the cubs promptly, then about 16 months old. Since then, T36 male and his sister T37 have been enjoying routine baits handed out by well-meaning officials.

Raised on calves left for them, the brother-sister duo possibly lost or did not get to acquire the skills needed to survive in the wild on their own. The sister has a better chance, since females seldom face deadly challenges from other females. The brother’s luck ran out when he walked into a probing male last week. The adversary was just three years old. The natural advantage should have been with T36. But it was an unequal battle between a raised tiger and a wild one.

Once orphaned, 16-month-old T36 would have died of starvation. Or perhaps necessity would have made a wild tiger out of him. But by offering him baits, forest officials made his end an inevitability. Poor T36 was dead the day his ‘petting’ began in the wild.

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For generations inspired by the 1966 blockbuster based on Joy Adamson’s Born Free, the idea of ‘nursing’ wild animals, particularly big cats, in distress and ‘restoring’ them to the wild is still one of the loftiest goals of conservation.

So, across the country, old and injured tigers are being baited and treated, orphaned cubs are being brought up in ‘natural enclosures’ in different reserves. Not to mention the smug celebrations every time a man-eater is packed off to some zoo, instead of being shot dead.

But animal welfare is an ethical and not ecological concern. At best, these efforts have no bearing on wildlife conservation. At worst, they defeat its purpose.

In nature, the weak and the injured must perish so that the fittest may flourish. An aged tiger will die of starvation or at the claws of a young adversary. The reign of Charger, revered as the mightiest ever of all Bandhavgarh tigers, ended in a deadly fight with one of his grandsons in 2000. The forest staff tried to feed and treat the mauled, half-blind oldie in an enclosure, but Charger never recovered and died after a couple of months.

Had Charger survived thanks to human benevolence, his young grandson (B2) would have had to get into another fight to kill him, thereby inviting fresh injuries to himself and possibly jeopardising his own future as a dominant male.

Yet, we love to treat the wild like pets. The doomed T36 male was not the only victim in Ranthambore. Another brother-sister duo, orphaned when tigress Berdha died in April 2009, have been routinely fed by park officials since. This July, Simba, the three-year-old brother, seriously injured himself attempting a wild hunt. He was spotted in sorry shape during the monsoon, still suffering from deep wounds caused by porcupine quills. His fate remains uncertain.

Our heart bleeds for the young and old alike. Machli, the grand old matriarch of Ranthambore, has long lost her canines and cannot hunt anymore. So she is being fed with much fanfare. The park officials are also baiting her contemporary T2, a really aged male. In the same reserve, a young injured male (T24) was operated upon in April last year. It is another matter that Ranthambore’s tiger population shows a skewed sex ratio, with far too many males, and nature must eliminate a few to restore balance.

This August, over-protection led to the killing of three cubs from the first litter born since the high-profile experiment to re-populate Panna took off last year. An official report admits that while the father tried to approach the mother and cubs soon after they were born, the monitoring staff ‘did not allow such meetings’, essential for natural familiarisation through odour identification, etcetera.

Repeated fights broke out between the tiger and tigress when they were finally allowed to meet after four months. The father could not identify the cubs as his own, in all likelihood, and tried to kill them so that he could mate with the tigress again. Like any tigress, the mother resolutely defended her cubs, at the risk of injuries to herself, but could not save all of them. Conservationist Valmik Thapar recalls several instances of male tigers helping tigresses bring up cubs by sharing kills and so on. It is only when a father is ousted by another male that infanticide takes place, with the new male trying to kill his predecessor’s cubs—partly to establish his own bloodline and partly to free the tigress that refuses to mate while bringing up cubs. Since the father in question is the only male tiger now in Panna, Thapar finds it inexplicable why the authorities invited trouble by denying him access to his own cubs.

In neighbouring Bandhavgarh, another welfare drama is being played out in the wild. When the Jhurjhura tigress was killed in a shocking road accident this May, the future of her three small cubs in the wild was sealed. Soon enough, one of the cubs was killed by a male. Still, the other two cubs are being raised in an enclosure at the heart of the reserve, affecting natural use of the habitat.

In Bandhavgarh again, an injured Sidhbaba female has been struggling to raise her two cubs. Given her limp, she rarely hunts wild prey, making do with occasional village cattle. Whenever she fails to make a kill, officials offer baits to keep the family alive.

The obvious downside is that Sidhbaba’s cubs are learning the tricks of the trade from their mother who only hunts cattle. The family might have died without regular feeds, but in the present scenario, the department, in effect, is raising the cubs to be cattle-lifters who will eventually run into major conflict with villagers, perhaps leading to their death or captivity.

Not too far, in Maharashtra’s Bor sanctuary, three orphaned Tadoba cubs are being hand-raised in an enclosure, and local NGOs want them released. Even if the three survive in the wild, it is sure to result in conflict.

Sceptics will remember how Billy Arjan Singh’s controversial experiment with hand-raised big cats led to conflict and the poisoning of two female leopards he named Harriet and Juliette.

Wildlife biologist Dr Dharmendra Khandal offers a recent example. Last year, when a hand-raised leopard, Lakshmi, was released on the outskirts of Ranthambore, the people-friendly cat ran after local villagers, spreading panic. Lakshmi is now confined to an enclosure deep inside the reserve, much to the annoyance of the wild cats of the area.

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Evidently, we love to play God, but to what end? Hand-raised cubs, for instance, have rarely succeeded in the wild. They lack hunting skills and fail to defend themselves. Also, bereft of any fear of humans, they tend to get into conflict all too often.

Captive females do stand a chance, since wild males accept them as mating partners. For a hand-raised lioness, such acceptance even compensates for her lack of hunting skills as she gets to feed with the pride. After rehabilitating Elsa the lioness, Adamson successfully

returned two more hand-raised cats to the wild. It’s no coincidence that Pippa the cheetah and Penny the leopard were also females.

In India, Billy Arjan Singh experimented with four hand-raised cats. Tigress Tara and leopardesses Harriet and Juliette had cubs in the wild, but the whereabouts of Prince, the male leopard, remained uncertain. More recently, in 1999, Gajendra Singh released two leopards near Bandipur. While the male was killed soon after, the female survived.

Male cubs or hand-raised male adults cannot survive challenges from other males. When Raja and Rani were orphaned after tigress Begum was poisoned in Palamau in the early 1990s, they were both about six months old. To bring up her cubs, Begum had moved to a 29 sq km forest compartment that was separated from the rest of the reserve by a railway track. After she was gone, the forest staff occasionally assisted the cubs with live baits, but never tried to handle them. However, it was the railway track that saved Raja from Palamau’s other males.

Almost a decade ago, an orphaned brother-sister pair of cubs was helped by live baiting in Ranthambore. The presence of the tiger that fathered them probably helped their survival.

But few are as lucky. The small cubs of the Jhurjhura tigress, the orphaned Bor cubs, the hand-raised Lakshmi of Ranthambore—none of them have a future outside captivity. But instead of taking them to zoos, to quote wildlife photographer Aditya Singh, we are deluding ourselves by bringing zoos to the forests.

This blinkered welfare motive works everywhere. For example, sending a ‘man-eater’ to a zoo does save its life, but, in terms of wildlife conservation, the effort is no better than shooting the animal dead. In both cases, the result is one animal less in the wild.

Our excitement about saving ‘man-eaters’ distracts us from the real problems—absence of buffer forests, faulty land use around forests, and so on—that push predators to chance encounters with people, thus creating ‘man-eaters’ in the first place. If these primary causes are not addressed and if we do not learn to differentiate between accidental and deliberate attacks, we may soon be left with empty forests, once we have happily ‘rescued’ all tigers by whisking away these ‘man-eaters’ to zoos.

It will certainly not harm the wild if we care a little less. Less enough to stop meddling—like those who proudly treated, in a rescue centre, a two-month-old rhino calf that was attacked by a Kaziranga tiger in 2007. Touching, but that left a captive baby, its estranged mother and a hungry predator. I do not know which one deserves our apology most.

Few news are good news for conservation

2010-10-30T14:23:00.004-04:00

Last weekend seemed to have given green brigade hope but the brazenness of our political masters grounded it soon enough

The Bengal Post, 28 Oct, 2010

The week closed with good news and it came from the horse’s mouth. At a small gathering organized by tiger author Valmik Thapar last weekend, minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh shared the news that his government was about to double staff allowances across the board in all Project Tiger reserves. After approval from the Planning Commission, the Finance Ministry has cleared the file this month and formal announcement is due any day.

A major boost for the forest personnel who work under extremely tough conditions, this was the first piece of good news of the evening. A few minutes back, plan panel head Montek Singh Ahluwalia had inspired a few chuckles by earnestly pledging to “preserve” the tiger. Surely a slip of tongue but I distinctly heard a young lady in a smart black dress mutter behind my shoulder that she did not know they also taught the art of pickling tigers at the IMF kitchen.

So we all laughed when Ramesh asked his senior colleague (plan panel head is a Cabinet post) if he would commit Rs 5000 crore over seven to eight years for relocating 50,000 families from our forests. An assurance from Ahluwalia could have topped the other good news but his turbaned head ducked the bouncer. Nobody, however, seemed to mind: Rs 5000 crore appeared quite a lot of money to be bargained over at a public place.

Meanwhile, Ramesh was trying to score a few political points by branding the GDP-wallahs as a bigger threat than poachers. Between his lines, we could quickly read a range of names, from Kamal Nath to Shekhar Gupta. And much as I fault the green minister for double standards and media fetish, he sounded genuinely brave for a moment. But Ramesh changed his tone soon enough. Why not? His numerous fans love that angst of a martyr-to-be when he speaks these days.

Just when I thought the good news bulletin was over for the evening, Wildlife Trust of India veteran Ashok Kumar briskly waved at me. Yes, the West Bengal forest department had finally engaged WTI to find a solution to the problem of recurring elephant deaths on the railway tracks between Siliguri and Alipurduar, he told me with a confident smile.

Unlike some of his influential colleagues at WTI, Ashok-ji is usually candid with me. He told me that speeding might not be the real issue and that no overnight solution was expected. I learnt that his WTI team took about six months, through a trial-and-error process, to come up with effective recommendations that have stopped the killing of elephants on the railway tracks that cut through Rajaji national park to keep Dehradun connected to the rest of the country. Since a solution for north Bengal would naturally have to be site-specific, it could take as many months to figure out.

I travelled along that track -- from Malbazar to Alipurduar via Rajabhatkhawa -- during this Durga puja. It seemed that the idea of pinpointing a few parts of the corridor was futile as elephants could walk across the track almost anywhere along that stretch. If one wanted to limit speed, trains would have to ply slow throughout and Siliguri to Alipurduar would take double the time. It required more realistic solutions. Frankly, I did not think six months was too long a window if that was all it took a WTI team to find ways to stop or minimise the killings.

Reality struck soon enough after the closeted feel-good evening. Over the next two days, Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot ruled out revoking mining leases around Sariska and his Madhya Pradesh counterpart Shivraj Singh Chouhan refused to notify buffer zones for Panna.

These were simply amazing turns of events because these are the two reserves that had lost all tigers in the recent past, severely embarrassing the respective state governments. But few ground lessons seemed to have been learnt since, even after relevant laws have been amended with much thoughtfulness and the Supreme Court has issued several harsh judgments.

Busy finding legal loopholes to circumvent binding commitments, if the chief ministers were to deny the basic prerequisites of conservation, what was the point in launching high-profile repopulation drives by flying in tigers from other reserves for Sariska and Panna? Good publicity, perhaps?

What was more appalling was the way the chief ministers made their statements in public. Through an overdose of populist grandstanding, the message came out loud and clear: no question of tiger conservation at the cost of the people. Really? Even after the majority of villages concerned around Panna have already consented to buffer notification?

Did you say our chief ministers were playing in the hands of the mining mafia? Take a walk. Mines employ people and certainly all our leaders had in mind was the livelihood issue of such labourers.

Indeed, sanction for anything seems to come easy in India, "in public interest". That is why we can silently lose all tigers from national parks, fly a few in with much fanfare, and arrogantly decree that we do not mind losing them again.

What happens if you dare question public interest? The money-media-mandate troika will simply play the ultimate trump – an one-weapon-arsenal that enables the economy to plunder, the media to solicit, and the government to silence. So let forests be cleared for many more mines, factories, dams, highways, airports, anything in the name of “national interest”.

Preserve the tiger, indeed.

How they killed the poster cubs of Panna

2010-09-16T07:30:00.003-04:00

Exposed: Monitoring team did not let the Panna father meet his cubs for 4 months since birth

Open Magazine, 15 September, 2010

With cubs from the only litter born to reintroduced tigers missing for three weeks now, authorities seem to be at a loss to explain the setback to the government’s high-profile drive to repopulate Sariska and Panna. One of the three missing cubs has apparently been traced, but even the authorities have given up hope for the other two following reports of repeated fights between their parents.

While Dr Rajesh Gopal, head of National Tiger Conservation Authority, went on record saying that “such conflicts are common among tigers leading to the death of newborn cubs”, Panna Field director SR Murthy found it “intriguing” that the lone Panna male tiger that fathered the cub got aggressive with the mother and the babies.

Official reports, however, reveal that the deaths are neither intriguing nor common. The conflict was the result of an inexplicable intervention, in violation of the basics of cat biology, by a joint team of state forest department and Wildlife Institute of India that monitors the three reintroduced big cats in Panna.

In his note sent to HS Pabla, Principle Chief Conservator of Forests, Madhya Pradesh, on September 13, field director Murthy admitted that while the father (T3) tried to approach the mother (T1) and the cubs soon after they were born, the monitoring staff “did not allow such meetings”, essential for natural familiarisation.

According to this report, the litter of four cubs was born on April 15/16. Shockingly, it took the monitoring team four months to get “technical and scientific opinions from all quarters and the project team of WII” before allowing the father to meet the tigress and the cubs on August 19.

Murthy reported repeated fights between T1 and T3 once they were allowed to meet. In all likelihood, the tiger could not identify the cubs as his own and tried to kill them so that he could mate with the tigress again. Like any tigress, T1 resolutely defended her cubs, at the risk of injuries to herself, but apparently could not save all of them.

Male tigers are instinctively protective about their cubs and there are several recorded instances of them helping the tigress bring up the babies by sharing kills etc. It is only when a father is ousted by another male that infanticide takes place with the new male trying to kill his predecessor’s cubs – partly to establish his own bloodline and also to free the tigress that refuses to mate while bringing up cubs.

Since T3 is the only male tiger in Panna, it is inexplicable why the authorities denied him access to his cubs. “Normal course of familiarisation would never have allowed such aggressive behaviour. Someone needs to explain how such a decision to keep the father away was taken under the nose of top forest officials and in the presence of experts from WII,” said tiger expert Valmik Thapar, who recorded, as far back as in the 1980s, how male tigers took care of their cubs in Ranthambhore.

The elusive tiger and too many loud, blind men

2010-09-16T07:25:00.004-04:00

Pet theories are emotional, and generalizations naïve, but it is dangerous when these threaten the fate of a species little understood

Bengal Post, 1 September, 2010

Do I agree that all tigers in Sunderbans are maneaters? That was the angry question hurled at me over phone last evening by a wildlife enthusiast who runs an NGO in Kolkata. I was stumped. Could I answer such a question? Was not it like asking if (all) Indians are corrupt? Or (all) cricketers greedy?

When I pointed out my problem with the question, I was told, more angrily, that anyone who knew Sunderbans would agree that the tigers there were all maneaters. Did not I know how many hundreds were killed by tigers historically in this mangrove delta? Or that even the watchtowers were secured with tough fencing? Would I dare take a walk along one of those creeks?

I humbly pointed out that if we were to believe in anecdotal records, thousands of people had died of tiger attacks all over India in the past and such figures did not necessarily single out Sunderbans tigers for their maneating propensity. I added that if I found a dog confined behind a bolted door at a friend’s house, I would rather attribute the unusual move to the host’s concern for my safety than to the animal’s obvious ferocity. And I really might not walk the Sunderbans forests partially because I fear encountering a problem tiger disturbed by the practice of frequent capture-release and partially because mangroves do not offer a particularly pleasant walking experience.

At that point, the wildlife enthusiast hung up on me. But what triggered this angry call got me thinking. Dr Monirul Khan, a tiger expert from Bangladesh, was in Kolkata to attend a tiger meet last week and he was quoted in the media, saying he thought one out of every ten tigers in Sunderbans were maneaters. No, he did not furnish any proof. I expressed my reservations to such regressive fear-mongering and a mini-hell broke loose.

Even before I received this angry call, some friends from Kolakata pointed out Dr Khan’s “excellent credentials”, daring me to doubt his maneater theory. To be honest, all I knew about Dr Khan until last week was that he pioneered a model that used dogs to ward off tigers. The effort was documented by none less than a BBC crew. Not much has been heard of it since.

Then, I stumbled upon Dr Khan’s paper on the dog experiment. He said use of domestic dogs to ward off animals was not a new idea and gave three examples. His first example – driving wild boars into forests in some areas in the US – is not relevant since wild boars do not usually eat dogs. Then he mentioned how Jim Corbett’s dog Robin used to track leopards for him, and how trained dogs were used to locate individual tigers in the Russian Far East. So dogs can surely get you to a big cat. But what about getting away?

Dr Khan claimed dogs were trained to alert wood gatherers or honey hunters of tiger presence nearby and that the “success rate in distinguishing the tiger was 62 per cent”. If I were to trust my life on a dog, I would prefer him to be slightly more accurate. Moreover, how was this success rate determined? Well, “either immediately, by observing the animals or their signs, or the next day (to avoid the risk of encountering any tiger) by observing pugmarks or scat.” Next day, did he say? I guess wild animals were expected to be cooperative enough and not trample upon those sites till researchers returned 24 hours later.

But there is more. Dr Khan assumes that tigers prefer humans to dogs and this makes the dogs on duty safe. Again, by his own admission, tigers attack people in Sunderbans only when they enter the forest and not in villages. But there are records of tigers picking up village dogs. The last recorded instance in Sunderbans was in November last year when a dog was killed in Gosaba's Pirkhali village.

So, tigers do hunt dogs. Now if a dog barks inside a forest at the sight of a deer or a boar, there is a high probability of a tiger picking up the noise from half a kilometer away. So far from alerting people, the presence of a dog inside forests may actually attract predators and endanger people accompanying it.

On the maneating debate, let us assume that all Sunderbans tigers consider humans as food. A tiger makes roughly 50 kills a year to survive. Sunderbans’ 300 tigers would make at least 15,000 kills every year. If humans are part of the normal prey base for Sunderbans tigers, and since humans are easier to hunt, one would expect a sizable number of these 15,000 kills to be humans. Even at 10 per cent, we are looking at a human casualty figure of 1,500 per year. However, the total annual human death toll across Sunderbans barely ever touches 100. The figures just do not add up.

In fact, between 1984 and 2006, tigers killed 490 people in Bangladesh -- at an annual average of 21. 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 we go on making casual remarks on how the love for human flesh is getting embedded in the Sunderban tiger’s gene. No scientist will even dignify such claims with a response.

So, do I believe all tigers in Sunderbans are maneaters? Frankly, I do not know. These mangrove tigers do kill humans opportunistically. But very little ground research has been conducted in this hostile terrain for anyone to reach a conclusion yet. Fortunately, a few very able scientists are at work on both sides of the border and their findings will hopefully throw some light on the behaviour of these much-misunderstood tigers in the near future. Till then, we better hold on to our pet theories. Let’s not play blind men around a tiger.

Some Easy Steps To Kill Tigers

2010-09-01T07:03:00.001-04:00

How does a tiger become a good candidate for a new breeding programme? Forget science and genetics. The first tiger spotted is the first tiger shipped out

TEHELKA, 22-28 August, 2010

Journalists who cover ‘sensitive’ sectors such as the Ministry of Defence or External Affairs are used to restricted access. These ministries often cite national interest to make it difficult to question some of the “stories” they dish out. One would not imagine the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to be so secretive. But the green ministry plays the same power game in protected forests off limits for the masses and the media.

No one would grudge the ministry its clout to quietly and quickly secure ecological interests in a squabbling, dithering democracy. But these secret machinations can be a dangerous game. Last month, one such move went horribly wrong, rubbishing credible science, betraying public trust and wasting crores of rupees in public money.

In a joint exercise, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), the Rajasthan Forest Department and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) shifted a fourth tiger to Sariska on 20 July. There has been a 17-month moratorium since the last tiger was shifted in February 2009. The media was told that the delay was due to a thorough scientific exercise that was necessary to ascertain genetic compatibility after the first three tigers shifted to Sariska turned out to be siblings and also failed to breed. When the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) finally cleared two tigers for relocation after matching the DNA of the Ranthambore tigers with the ones shifted to Sariska, the officials claimed, the operation was resumed.

A triumph for science and conservation, the media was told. Well, almost. If only the officials shifted the right tigers, the ones cleared by the NCBS.

DNA analysis is done either from blood or scat (droppings) samples. WII scientists have been involved in a radiocollaring exercise in Ranthambore for more than three years. Though it is mandatory to collect blood when a tiger is tranquilised for radio-collaring, and they have collared many, no blood sample was sent to NCBS. So the DNA tests were done with scats and two samples were found suitable.

The next logical step was to find the two tigers whose scats were cleared. Since nobody saw any tiger defecating while collecting the samples, this was the tricky part. One collection point near Kamaldhar was frequented by five tigers — three males (T12, T28 and T38) and two females (T17 and T19). The other collection point was at the edge of the park, visited by a young male (T24) and also by T12.

The two females (T17 and T19) are known to be closely related to the females already in Sariska. So the officials knew that these DNA results would not come handy for identifying a suitable female and any selection would be random without further studies. For a male, they had four possibilities (T24, T12, T28 and T38) to check.

But within 48 hours of receiving the NCBS report, without even trying to ascertain which individual was actually cleared by the DNA test, the officials picked up the T12 male. Why? Because T12 had hunted a cow on 18 July and was the easiest target when the darting team arrived on 19 July.

It did not matter that T12 was six years old, had an established territory and was one of the four dominant males of Ranthambore. It did not matter that a 2008 NTCA directive prohibited shifting settled, territorial tigers and allowed relocation of young floaters still on the lookout for territories. It did not matter that a similar mature, settled tiger shifted from Pench to Panna started walking back home, risking its life and triggering panic among people. It did not matter that all the other three candidates were younger than T12 and two of them were floaters ideal for shifting.

On 28 July, days after shifting T12, officials sent a tigress to Sariska (T44) who was recently photographed while mating by many Ranthambore regulars. If she is indeed pregnant, her cubs will be doomed in Sariska in the absence of their father. So will be the cubs of the tigress that paired with T12 days before he was removed from Ranthambore.

ASOURCE IN WII revealed that the tiger reintroduction project was initially conceived as part of the ongoing WII research at Ranthambore. As the researchers kept collaring tigers, they were supposed to keep checking their blood samples for genetic compatibility and shift suitable candidates that met other criteria like age to Sariska as and when possible. Then, a sudden populist rush, he rued, hijacked the project.

But it is shocking that our officials would brazenly repeat the same mistakes that they were forced to own up to only recently. What was the point of the 17-month moratorium, sundry committees, repeated field surveys and DNA analyses if they were to again pick up whichever tiger they found easy to dart?

It may appear a fait accompli but the WII must make public how they identified the right tigers from the scat samples cleared by NCBS. The NTCA must spell out who is responsible for shifting resident and breeding tigers from the core population, violating its own guideline. The MoEF must send blood samples of the new Sariska tigers, collected in the presence of independent observers, to NCBS to confirm if the right individuals were selected.

Unfortunately, the only heads that ever roll in our forests belong to tigers.

The writer is an independent journalist and a filmmaker