Why Omar Can’t Save The Hangul From Sheep

State-run farm defies CM’s orders to vacate the home of the state animal

Tehelka, 27 September, 2013

Under normal circumstances, the 200-odd Kashmir stags or Hanguls, the last population of the only subspecies of red deer found in India, would worry about the resident leopards or the rare wolves that pass through Dachigam. Instead, the biggest threat to their survival is flocks of resident sheep, and an assortment of livestock that take over their national park every summer.

Imagine the marvel of the higher Himalayan wilderness. The Dagwan river springing to life from Marsar, a pristine lake at the edge of the Zanskar range, and flowing through deep gullies, alpine forests and flowering meadows to feed the Harwan reservoir, which supplies drinking water to the entire Srinagar town. The river valley and the higher slopes are the last stand of the critically-endangered Hangul, the state animal of Jammu & Kashmir.

Now imagine a sheep farm in the heart of this wilderness. For over five decades, in a brazen violation of the Jammu & Kashmir Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1978, a state-owned breeding farm has flourished inside a national park, its flocks scaring away the shy Hanguls from much of its former range. For over eight years, the Sheep Husbandry Department is sitting on a state Cabinet decision to move the farm out. Instead, there is now a demand that the 100 hectares occupied by the farm be declared non-forestland.

Dachigam and its Hangul have too long a conservation history to deserve this fate. The erstwhile maharaja of Kashmir declared this forest a hunting reserve (rakh) in 1910 and secured it with game guards by evicting 10 villages (hence, dachi-gam) by 1934. Soon after Independence, it was notified as a sanctuary. In 1981, 141 sq km of Dachigam — the rolling grasslands in the west separated from rocky outcrops in the east by a stretch of temperate forest — became a national park.

Yet, the majestic Hangul dwindled steadily. From 4,000 in 1900 and 2,000 in 1947, its only surviving population in Dachigam shrank to 140-170 in 1970. The recovery has been disappointingly slow and the last count claimed only 218 animals. One can’t blame the usual suspects here. There is no agriculture, tree cutting or village inside Dachigam and deployment of an infantry unit in the late 1970s brought poaching under control.

But the state had already set up a sheep farm inside Dachigam in 1961 and shifted animals from Banihal to breed the Kashmir Merino. To be fair, the farm preceded the State Wildlife Act (1978) but it was anyway a bizarre decision, coming two-and-a-half decades after all the villages were moved out of Hangul habitat. What possibly prompted the move was the increasing presence of herders who made use of the chaos that followed Independence (and the absence of royal game guards) to drive their animals inside upper Dachigam during spring-summer.

Soon, the state came under pressure to issue official permission to the herders. Bakarwals from Jammu were first to get the right in 1972, followed by the Banyaris and local Gujjars. Together they herded thousands of livestock, including buffaloes, but the damage was limited since most herds would use Dachigam as a transit halt on their way further north.

Things changed with the onset of militancy in the late 1980s. The army took control of the Gurez and Tulel valleys, making the pastures out of bounds for the herders. Upper Dachigam suddenly became the permanent summer grazing ground of thousands of livestock. Meanwhile, the state-owned sheep farm — illegal since 1978 — contributed 3,000-5,000 sheep that shuttled between upper and lower Dachigam following the winter-summer cycle.

Before this takeover, Hanguls used to spend the summer months — May to September — in the alpine meadows and the conifer forests of upper Dachigam. This was also the fawning season as the young ones are born in May-June. For a long time, the Hanguls are mostly confined to their traditional winter habitat of lower Dachigam, only one-third of the national park area, throughout the year. Even here, the resident flocks of state-owned sheep have virtually monopolised more than 10 sq km.

As a result, the Hangul population is static at best. In the 1960s, biologist George Schaller reported a ratio of 45 fawns to 100 adult females, which has since come down to 21 fawns which are vulnerable to sheep dogs minding the flocks. With only 18 permanent staff and 30-40 casual labourers, the park authority has no way of monitoring the scale of poaching or habitat destruction in upper Dachigam where too many outsiders roam free.

A proposal to increase the shockingly inadequate staff strength of Dachigam is pending for two years now. But that is par for the course given that the Cabinet’s decision to shift the sheep farm has not been implemented since 2005.

Four years passed by before the chief wildlife warden sent a reminder to the Sheep Husbandry Department, which wrote back claiming that no alternative site could be found. In November 2009, the chief secretary quoted Chief Minister Omar Abdullah to reiterate the government’s resolve. Another reminder from the Forest Department followed in 2010.

At the February 2012 meeting of the state wildlife board, the CM finally set a deadline: the sheep were to go before the Durbar moved in May. A joint committee set up for the purpose reported in July that a site was found in Dingibal and the sheep husbandry department pegged the shifting cost at Rs 11 crore. But nothing moved until July this year when the government identified a different farm in Ganderbal for shifting 475 sheep.

Then, in August, the state came up with another committee to examine, among other things, if the sheep farm could continue in Dachigam. As outraged experts cornered the CM at the annual state wildlife board meeting on 16 September, Omar again asked the officials to “get it done” before the Durbar move in November. The next day, the new committee had its final meeting where sheep husbandry officials sought to buy time.

Within 25 km of Srinagar, Dachigam is a convenient field posting for the 50- odd farm officials and workers. A group of veterinarians from Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences has written to the CM, ruling out chances of disease transmission from sheep to Hanguls, inflating the cost of shifting the farm from Rs 11 crore to Rs 300 crore, claiming that sheep, in fact, help the Hangul by reducing its chance of becoming leopard prey. The setback to Kashmir’s economy from the farm’s removal, their letter claimed, would be irreversible.

At the time of going to the press, the new committee is yet to submit its report. If the Sheep Husbandry Department manages to drag its feet for another month, the farm and its 800-odd sheep will stay put till next summer when yet another panel may take over. Meanwhile, the first radio-collared Hangul approached upper Dachigam areas this May before retreating in the face of too many livestock.

The army, say forest sources, is ready to welcome the livestock back in the Gurez meadows but the herdsmen are no longer willing to trek longer distances. They have the blessings of Forest Minister Mian Altaf Ahmad. Last summer, five forest staff faced departmental action for taking on the bakarwals.

If the state continues to give the Chief Minister’s deadlines a miss and the Forest Minister’s vote bank a wide berth, J&K may win a dubious national race by losing its state animal before Chhattisgarh loses its last wild buffalo. But then, Omar may not mind looking sheepish naming the obvious replacement.

Man-animal conflict: Testing India’s traditional tolerance

Conservation takes the tolerance of the rural poor for granted as only 1 out of 8 households gets any compensation for losing crop to wildlife

FirstPost, 23 September, 2013

More than two-thirds of India’s 650-plus protected forests have permanent human settlements that support an estimated four million people. But they are a handful compared to another 150 million who live around forests and suffer frequent losses to wildlife. At a conservative average damage per household of Rs 6,000, 15 million families could suffer a cumulative loss of Rs 9000 crore every year. 
That’s a lot of money to lose, particularly if you are poor. Before eyebrows are raised at this ballpark estimation, here is a comparison. The US loses roughly $1 billion in agricultural damage alone to wild herbivores. Without being harsh on the rupee, that works out to be Rs 6000 crore. And we have not taken into account the loss due to livestock predation by wolves, cougars or coyotes. 
So what do the Americans do? They kill approximately 2.5 million wild animals annually. In 2004, for example, the toll included more than one lakh wild carnivores, including at least 3000 of threatened or endangered species. Things are looking up though for a number of nearly exterminated species such as grey wolves, primarily due to a shift from agriculture that is allowing significant expansion of forests. 
But the pressure on land in a crowded India means there is little room for increasing our green cover. So the man-animal interface is frequent and the conflict desperate. Yet, the poor villagers erect physical barriers, stay up all night, light a fire, make noise and try just about everything before considering the lethal option. 
Those gruesome media images of a leopard being lynched or a bear being burnt alive are mostly urban phenomena. But for the largely tolerant rural communities, we would have lost most of our big mammals long ago in the absence of any effective mechanism to compensate villagers for damage caused by wildlife. 
Fascinated by this traditional tolerance, scientists often get drawn into the daunting task of understanding conflict. Among them is Krithi Karanth of Wildlife Conservation Society, New York. She, along with three colleagues from universities of Columbia, Wisconsin and Oxford, has quantified in a recent paper — Living with Wildlife and Mitigating Conflicts around Three Indian Protected Areas – that one out of eight households seeking compensation for damage receives any. 
The study surveyed 398 households from 178 villages within 10 km of Ranthambore (Rajasthan), Kanha (Madhya Pradesh), and Nagarahole (Karnataka) tiger reserves. While 80 per cent of the respondents reported crop damage, only 11 per cent received any compensation. And yet, over 99 percent of these families did not kill any “problem animal”. Put in hypothetical situations, though, some of them appeared less forgiving. But their hostility remained proportional to the damage suffered. 

So while the authors express surprise that households reported greater inclination to kill herbivores destroying crops (or carnivores harming people) than carnivores preying on livestock, their paper itself justifies the reaction by recording 82% crop loss against 27% livestock loss. This also explains why almost all mitigation efforts are aimed at reducing crop losses while very little is invested in safeguarding livestock. 
Of course, even rare loss of human lives (or injuries to people) triggers strong retributive emotions. But it is not difficult to see why people are usually more concerned about losing their crop than livestock. Unless a carnivore gets inside a pen, the loss of livestock is sporadic and limited to opportunistic killing. But herbivores raid cropland in herds and can inflict consistent and widespread damage. 
Also, the livestock, particularly cattle, is usually of inferior breed with many unproductive animals. Few resent losing a dry or diseased or old cow. But loss of more expensive buffaloes often leads to retaliatory action. The study, however, does not get into the relative impact of losing different types of livestock.
Interestingly, the study observes that crop loss (but not livestock loss) did not vary with proximity to the PA, suggesting that crop raiders do not necessarily emerge from PAs. But it is possible that the density of resident wild herbivores within a 10km ring of a PA depends on the dispersal rate of animals from that PA. It would be interesting if the study had included a fourth site further, say 100km or more, away from any PA to examine the conflict dynamics of a PA-independent wild herbivore population. 
Karanth’s paper confirms a few popular hunches. Wild boars and leopards are identified as the most conflict-prone species causing crop and livestock loss, respectively. Higher crop loss is associated with more cropping months per year and greater crop variety. Carnivore attacks on livestock and people are higher in areas where animals graze and people collect fuel wood, water etc from inside PAs. 
“India’s current compensation policy,” the study points out, “is oriented more toward alleviating economic hardship (versus discouraging retaliation against endangered species). At one level, our study suggests that this policy is on target given that so few respondents reported a wish to kill wildlife raiding crops or hunting livestock… For most scenarios, frightening and deterring animals was the most popular choice, although some respondents might have been reluctant to report their approval for killing animals in light of conservation rules.” 
Clearly, it will be foolhardy to take the traditional tolerance for granted. At the same time, offers of compensation usually invite more complaints of damage. Therefore, as a combination of entitlement and incentive, compensation can be linked to certain responsibilities. A decade ago, the India Eco-Development Project failed to inspire any difference in conservation attitudes between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries around Periyar tiger reserve because the lavish benefits came across as mere entitlement. 
Also, compensation schemes should not target any “species of focus”. It is a recipe for corruption when a villager must establish that his field was raided by blackbucks and not boars, or his goat was taken by a leopard and not a hyena, to claim his due. As long as damage is caused by wildlife, he deserves timely and just compensation. His community deserves sarkari investment in site-specific mitigation efforts such as fencing, trenches and corrals. 
The thing with tolerance is that over time it only runs thinner.

After losing 24 rhinos in 8 months, Kaziranga gets Rs 1 lakh for intelligence gathering

With poaching at its peak, Kaziranga receives a princely Rs 1 lakh for intelligence gathering as part of the central assistance worth Rs 9.33 crore for 2013-14

FirstPost, 18 September, 2013

Barring in June, Kaziranga has lost a rhino almost every week to poaching this year. These are the worst figures since the bloodbath witnessed during the height of militancy in the 1980s and 1990s when the park lost an estimated 550 rhinos in less than two decades. In the presence of too many guns and splinter militant groups, it is very difficult to physically defend this crowded mosaic of wetland and grassland without having eyes and ears on the ground to preempt poachers.

The Environment ministry has been doubly worried because Kaziranga is also a tiger reserve since 2006. So, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) sanctioned a generous Rs 9.33 crore annual central assistance for Kaziranga on 26 August. While Rs 3.60 crore was meant for building anti-poaching infrastructure, Rs 1 lakh was earmarked for intelligence gathering.

Only this Monday, Kaziranga authorities arrested two men for poisoning a tiger. Another three involved in the poaching are still absconding. While this was the first case of tiger poaching in Kaziranga this year, as many as 18 rhinos have already been killed right inside the national park while another six fell to poachers in the peripheral forests of Karbi Anglong and the north bank of the Brahmaputra.

Following a poaching spree that wiped out much of the insurgency-ridden state’s prized wildlife during the 1980s and 1990s, a semblance of political stability and shoot at sight orders against poachers in Kaziranga slowly helped the rhino bounce back. From 1999 to 2006, the park lost 41 rhinos to poaching at an annual average of just 5 animals. Then, the 2006 Assembly elections unleashed what many called “reward killing”. The toll jumped to 20 in 2007.

Not coincidentally, around two dozen rhinos were killed after the 2009 Lok Sabha polls till late 2010.  After a brief lull till the Assembly elections in May 2011, poachers were back again. Kaziranga witnessed the worst this winter when 14 rhinos were poached between January and March.

All this while, Kaziranga’s tigers were seldom targeted. Shooting a big cat in grassland is not as easy as gunning down a rhino. Unlike sawing or hacking off a rhino horn, skinning and deboning a tiger carcass takes a lot of time and skill. While poachers would barely make Rs 10 lakh from bulky consignments of 10-12 kg of tiger bone, the pelt, claws, whiskers etc, an average-sized rhino horn weighing 1 kg fetches at least eight times the price in Guwahati.

Yet, the seizure of 20 kg of tiger bone from the Guwahati airport in 2010 was an indication that Kaziranga’s 150-plus tiger population was always vulnerable to poaching. Therefore, Monday’s arrest is a big breakthrough. Sources say that an ‘accomplice’ volunteered to lead the investigating team to the gang. The man, it is learnt, was denied his promised ‘cut’ for helping the poachers and wanted to make a few bucks as a ‘reward informer’.

Whatever be the details of this case, there is no substitute for developing local intelligence in combating poaching. We need the Special Tiger Protection Force in every tiger reserve. The NTCA has introduced a high-tech thermal imagery system for round-the-clock surveillance last year and also proposed to procure drones to watch over remote forest terrains. But it is logistically impossible to watch over every patch of our open forests.

We can construct watchtowers and install thermal cameras every kilometer. But we cannot follow and guard every animal that walks out of protected forests every now and then. For that, we need reliable local intelligence. It requires staff who can cultivate local sources. It also requires funds for developing and retaining an informer base.

Unfortunately, the forest bureaucracy is usually reluctant to invest in intelligence gathering. Since funds for intelligence is never accounted for – one cannot keep public records of ‘spies’ and still expect them to deliver – senior forest bureaucracy refuses to sanction any substantial amount lest it is misused at the field level. The NTCA’s standard monthly budget for intelligence gathering is Rs 4,000 per tiger reserve.

This is ridiculous because rhino poachers offer Rs 2-4 lakh to their ‘informers’ every time they escort a gang safely inside Kaziranga. While an NTCA official refuses to get into any “competition” because “there is no end to it” and “the government cannot pump in that kind of money”, anti-trade experts maintain that “even two or three sound intelligence-based operations” are sufficient to keep poaching under check.

In Kaziranga, 19 rhinos were poached this year till May. Then, park authorities got some leads and conducted several raids to pick up nine poachers – some with arms, ammunition and cash – who operated in the eastern range of Agaratoli. Not a single rhino was poached in June. All five poaching cases that have been reported since were from the western range of Burapahar where the forest guards stand little chance against AK-toting militants belonging to outfits such as Karbi People’s Liberation Tigers and Kuki People’s Army.

Sources claim that the Kaziranga administration sought a modest Rs 10 lakh for intelligence gathering and the state forest bosses slashed the budget before forwarding the annual plan to Delhi. A senior NTCA official assures that there is “no question of denying what Kaziranga wants” and that the authority has “sanctioned double the amount it usually sanctions” for intelligence gathering.

Since the usual sanction is Rs 50,000, Kaziranga got a princely Rs 1 lakh. For each of Kaziranga’s five ranges, that works out to be less than Rs 1700 per month. Of course, there is Rs 3.60 crore for building physical anti-poaching infrastructure such as watchtowers, thermal camera network and control rooms. But let’s not get into a brain versus brawn debate.

Gatekeepers With Baggage

The MoEF puts yet another growth hawk in charge of environmental assessment

Tehelka, 12 September, 2013

On 5 August, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoFE) reconstituted the Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) that examines major irrigation, dam, hydel and river valley projects. Former coal secretary Alok Perti was selected to head the panel. This is the same person who pressured the MoFE last year for prompt clearances to coal projects and was quoted by the media saying, “India has to decide whether she wants electricity or tigers.” But Perti is not a surprise choice for an EAC chairman.

His predecessor, Rakesh Nath, headed the Indian chapter of the International Commission on Large Dams, a rabidly pro-largedam lobby, while serving as the EAC chairman. Nath’s predecessor, former power secretary P Abraham, had delinked the green clearance of the Demwe hydel projects from the cumulative impact study of all the projects coming up on Arunachal’s Lohit river. He had to resign when it was pointed out that he was a director on the board of PTC India Ltd, one of the project’s co-promoters.

Before Abraham, chairman MA Chitale brought to the EAC his long experience in building dams and irrigation canals as the water resources secretary and Central Water Commission chairman. Then there was PG Sastry, a civil engineer, who, after completing his term as the EAC chairman, helped the Sikkim government push itsdam projects. Like all these men who had no green credentials or understanding, Perti has been conditioned only to push big projects.

In 2004, NGO Kalpavriksh studied the composition of six EACs. It found that only two out of 64 members were wildlife experts, nearly half the members were from government or government-affiliated agencies and not one member was from a tribal community. Nothing has changed in terms of undermining expertise, independence and democratic representation.

Given the hydel rush in the Himalayan states and the lessons learnt in Sikkim and Uttarakhand, the absence of a single independent member with environmental credentials in the present EAC on dams and river projects is particularly worrisome. But the role of other EACs constituted by the two UPA governments on mining, thermal power, industries, etc also needs scrutiny because among them they surrendered nearly 4 lakh hectares of forestland since 2004, while the first 24 years of the Forest Conservation Act, 1980, recorded a total diversion of 5 lakh hectares for development purposes.

What allows the MoFE to compromise gatekeeping is its current rules that say “the chairperson (of EACs) shall be an outstanding and experienced environmental policy expert or expert in management or public administration with wide experience in the relevant development sector”. There is nothing on conflict of interest and any convenient bureaucrat fits the bill.

Unsurprisingly, a ‘conflicted’ Abraham was not the ministry’s only embarrassment. In 2009, the Delhi High Court pointed out that “appointing a person who has a direct interest in the promotion of the mining industry as chairperson of the EAC (mines) is… an unhealthy practice that will rob the EAC of its credibility since there is a direct and obvious conflict of interest”. The man in question, ML Majumdar, served as a director in four mining companies.

In 2011, a frustrated DC Goswami of the Guwahati University resigned from the EAC ondam and river projects, citing lack of transparency in the assessment process. But such lessons have not deterred the MoFE from picking Perti to give the UPA’s growth story a desperate push in its last lap. “Is expertise found only outside the government? There is only one Chair in an EAC. Will it be fair to pick an activist or expert who has opposed every dam and mine all his life?” argued an unapologetic MoFE functionary. 

Of course, the green ministry can pack its EACs with growth lobbyists as long as it includes environmental experts in equal numbers and appoints retired Supreme Court judges as chairpersons to ensure informed, democratic and fair assessments. For now, the MoFE wants us to believe that asked to guard the sheep, wolves lose appetite.

Congress vs BJP: Damned if they name PM candidates, damned if they don’t

Why his party keeps silent even after Manmohan Singh names Rahul Gandhi, and why the BJP has held back from anointing Narendra Modi even as its cadres get restive

FirstPost, 9 September, 2013

The Congress has no alternative. The Prime Minister’s two USPs have been compromised. It’s quite some time since Dr Singh the reformist lost his midas touch. Then the incorruptible Mr Clean bit the dust with investigations in multiple scams finding their ways to the PMO. The party cannot fight a tough election under a leader whose liabilities are no more limited to bouts of suspicious silence and inaction (not to mention that torturous drone).

The only other eligible Congressman whom the first family could have trusted has already been kicked upstairs to Rashtrapati Bhawan. No, Ahmad Patel was never South Block material. P Chidambam did manage to upstage Pranab Mukherjee to reclaim his preferred North Block office but that will remain his biggest intra-party coup. Anyway, the first family is unlikely to trust a Chettiar from the South after its experience with a certain Telegu Bramin. Besides, any member of the UPA cabinet will carry the burden of the scam-raj still unfolding.

That makes Rahul Gandhi the only PM candidate the Congress can and must project, if only for the fact that he has not been part of this scam-tainted, or any, government. In him, the party can hope to project an alternative to the corrupt and failed leadership. No, the party cannot invent a new cabinet and voters know that given another mandate, most of its dubious ministers will return. Yet, projecting an untested (hence, baggage-free) leadership is the party’s best, even if diversionary, strategy under the circumstances.

The BJP has no alternative either. Not a single national leader in the party generates much hope. LK Advani has tripped twice: first as the ‘ironman’ in 2004, after prevailing upon Vajpayee in 2002 to abandon his rajdharma; then on his own in 2009 after failing to do a Vajpayee with his Jinnah comment in 2005. Even the fast-receding ranks of his loyalists do not expect him to pack enough punch to get third-time lucky.

None of the party’s other national leaders enjoys a truly national profile; certainly not outside news TV studios. Barring Narendra Modi, none of its chief ministers is articulate or charismatic enough to sell themselves beyond their states. That makes Modi, the party’s most recognizable face today, the obvious PM candidate. He has successfully fought three elections as chief minister and projected himself as the vikas purush. He is the only leader who, his party workers believe, can swing a general election.

Yet, while individual leaders are leaving little to conjecture, both Congress and BJP have tiptoed around formally naming their PM candidates. Not without reasons.

Rahul Gandhi is untested and baggage-free only as far as governance is concerned. He has led the party’s state election campaigns in the past. His Mission UP increased the Congress vote share but achieved nothing to back the ‘miracle man’ image pumped up so assiduously under his party’s Mission Rahul. Consequently, the party projected him as a man not in a hurry and on a learning curve to deflect criticism from the tired symbolism of his politics and speeches.

While the return of a Gandhi after two decades may appeal to certain segments of the electorate, another sizeable segment of it is already suspicious of his credentials, abilities and motive. After claiming repeatedly that he would first take up a ministerial position to prepare himself for the big job, Rahul will struggle to explain what, if not desperation, suddenly made him take the plunge. His appeal to young voters is also suspect. Within the party, his youth brigade is a collection of scions of other political dynasties and a few first-generation sycophants whose bright ideas include a proposal to gag the press.

Moreover, the Congress risks further alienating the pro-reform youth, middle class and industries – already a strong Modi constituency – by projecting Rahul as its PM candidate. For some time now, the party’s two-pronged policy – the pro-poor initiatives, such as the tribal rights, food and land Acts, of Sonia and her NAC; and the thrust on big ticket reforms by Team Manmohan (Chidambaram, Montek, Kamal Nath etc) – catered to two opposite spectrums of the electorate. By making headlines with Odisha tribals, UP farmers or Vidarbha widows, Rahul has positioned himself closer to Sonia. He cannot reinvent himself overnight as a champion of reforms to calm frayed nerves.

The BJP, on the other hand, is very much aware of the divisive powers of Brand Modi. With him as the official PM candidate, the party knows it will have to sacrifice minority votes. That is why party units in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan are apparently pleading with the central leadership to avoid formally naming Modi as the PM candidate till the November-December Assembly elections get over.

Ultimately, the success of the BJP in 2014 will depend on Modi’s ability to garner enough majority votes for the party to offset the impact of minority votes gravitating to its opponents. But unless it emerges as the single largest party with at least 220 seats, the BJP may struggle to find allies necessary to back Modi for the prime ministership. On the other hand, without a pre-designated candidate, the BJP may attract enough allies with even 180 seats if now-secular-in-comparison Advani is propped up as the PM candidate after the poll.

But can the BJP expect to bag even 180 seats without Narendra Modi as its official mascot? Can the Congress afford to face the electorate without changing its scam-tainted face, even if it has only Rahul Gandhi to draft in? Neither of the parties may eventually benefit but they don’t seem to have an alternative.

Firming Up The Wildlife Act

A draconian clause and a few missed opportunities mar the proposed changes

Tehelka, 6 September, 2013

We still know very little about the wild, and still less about how to protect it. But our understanding of these subjects has evolved dramatically since the Wildlife (Protection) Act (WLPA) was enacted in 1972. Consequently, a series of sporadic amendments to what originally was a legislative marvel has created much confusion.

The initiative to streamline the WLPA began with Jairam Ramesh at the helm of the environment ministry. His successor Jayanthi Natarajan tabled the amendment Bill in the Rajya Sabha on 5 August. It has since been referred to a standing committee, which will accept submissions from the public until 15 September.

Some amendments are pro-people. The hunting rights of the tribes in Andaman and Nicobar islands will be protected. The Bill will recognise the local community’s right to drinking and household water and won’t bar grazing or movement of livestock inside protected forests. Creation of new sanctuaries in Scheduled Areas will require consultations with the local gram sabhas.

The Bill aims to prohibit the use of animal traps. It will check import of exotic species, protect the indigenous gene pool and include a list of animals and plants to regulate international trade under CITES (Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species). Chief Wildlife Wardens will now have to grant permits to researchers, if they meet prescribed conditions, and convey such decisions in a time-bound manner.

The existing penalties under the WLPA range from 3-7 years of imprisonment or a fine of Rs 10,000-25,000 or both. The amendments reserve the strictest penalty for trading in Schedule I animals — a jail term of seven years or longer and a fine of Rs 15 lakh (double for repeat offenders).

Hunting inside or encroaching into a tiger reserve will also merit a minimum of seven years and a fine of Rs 5-30 lakh (Rs 50 lakh or more for repeat offenders). But similar offences inside a sanctuary or a national park land will attract lesser punishment — five years and a fine of Rs 5- 25 lakh (Rs 30 lakh for repeat offenders).

The punishment for hunting will be less severe than trading. Tribal hunters, often victims of their circumstances, are routinely lured by trading syndicates. So, hunting Schedule I animals will be punishable with a jail term of 5-7 years and a fine of Rs 1-25 lakh (Rs 5-50 lakh for repeat offenders). In all cases, a repeat offender will get a minimum of seven years. Trading in less-protected species will attract 3-5 years and a fine of Rs 1-3 lakh.

Another amendment seeks to punish offenders who breach any term of a licence or permit, with imprisonment of up to three years and fine of Rs 25,000. Repeat offenders will attract 3-5 years and a minimum fine of Rs 50,000. Clearly, the target here is the tourist, photographer, documentary filmmaker and researcher.

While it is necessary to rein in the unruly and unscrupulous — tourists who jump routes to chase animals, photographers who destroy rare nests, researchers who offer tours of their field sites for a fee — such offences can always be tackled under the regular provisions against trespassing, destruction, etc. On the other hand, the lopsided new clause can send a researcher or filmmaker to jail if he/she refuses to overlook something inconvenient, particularly outside the stated purpose and subject of his/her research or film.

There are quite a few grey areas in the Bill that misses three key opportunities. In Section 32 — no use of chemicals, explosives or any other substances or equipment inside sanctuaries — the amendments should explicitly add ‘polythene’ that chokes water courses and herbivores alike. The Bill may yet consider specifying stringent penalties for violation of conditions set by the National Board for Wildlife as mitigation measures while clearing development projects.

As our wilderness keeps getting rapidly fragmented, the word ‘corridor’ occurs only once in the existing WLPA. Instead of mourning the loss of connectivity wherever earthmovers roar, conservationists may push for a legal definition and provision for notifying wildlife corridors to defend a few key ones realistically.

Hanging rapists: Justice is one thing, deterrence quite another

The juvenile in the Delhi gang rape deserves adult punishment. The probe in Jodhpur must discount Asaram’s mass following. But justice for the victims alone may not change the ground reality

FirstPost, 2 September, 2013

The outrage is justified. The severity of a crime should determine if an underage accused be tried in an adult or a juvenile court. I am not sure how many delinquents were informed enough to have factored in their legal impunity, but now that the media has made it common knowledge, we should push for a law that brands rape an adult crime. It is possible to cause even death without meaning to. But rape does not happen accidentally. Whatever his age, a rapist knows what he is doing.

Now if all that happens with retrospective effect and happens fast enough, we may yet get the juvenile accused in the December 16 gangrape hanged or shifted from the reformatory to a prison proper for a suitably longer term. In Jodhpur, if an uninhibited probe finds Asaram guilty as charged, he should be convicted irrespective of the violence unleashed on the streets by his followers.

That, we believe, will serve two purposes: one of justice and the other of deterrence. The first -- justice -- is a construct in philosophy and there can never be a consensus on what really constitutes it. Deterrence, on the other hand, rests on the rationale of negative motivation, of facing the consequence of one’s action.

While I agree that acceptable standards of justice demand stricter punishment -- a life term or even death -- for the exceptional cruelty perpetrated by the accused in the Delhi gang rape case, I doubt if even such punishment will have the expected deterrent effect on potential rapists of that age group and socio-economic bearing.

For negative motivation to work, one must have one’s faculties at hand to consider the possible consequence of one’s action. One may fear loss of reputation more than one fears death. Scores of rape victims, and some rapists when caught, commit suicide. The idea of being snatched away from the good things of life and one’s loved ones make most fear long imprisonment. Capital punishment, of course, hits the most primary of our instincts. But what happens when one has no sense of good and evil? No reputation, no family, and no life worth caring for?

If you believe this is an irrelevant argument, I don’t blame you. Nor do I expect you to explore the underbellies of our big cities and check for yourself the unsettling process of dehumanisation that goes on. Children, as young as five years, addicted to drugs. Boys, some born in city ghettos and others sent out from villages, fending for themselves even before turning eight. No home or family, at least not functional ones. So routinely abused that many learn to enjoy, or at least make peace with, sodomy.

We may still reason that not all such boys turn out to be rapists but we will only delude ourselves. Just scan the media and see how frequently such kids are finding victims. Remember, only a fraction of rapes get reported and most victims anyway belong to socio-economic classes that are rarely entertained at police stations or considered headline material. Try talking to domestic helps and many will tell you why they stop sending daughters to school after a certain age and “keep them locked up at home till they are marriageable”.

Why only women, everyone is a potential victim here. How many headlines bemoan the fate of young executives from small towns who were victims of Gurgaon’s infamous share-cab killers who murdered dozens of unsuspecting passengers for as little as fifty bucks in their pocket? How many corpses lying in the roadside ditches of Ghaziabad -- robbed, slashed and thrown away by three-wheeler gangs -- make news?

Unfortunately, there is nothing that deters this wasted lot. What possibly do these ‘delinquents’ have to lose or care for? If you meet these hollowed addicts, you can tell many of them will anyway not go on to live very long. When they are not trying to make an illegal living, they loiter around in bunches, drinking, smoking, snorting and looking for easy targets. Do they even discriminate between snatching and rape?

I am not even remotely suggesting that the plight of these youngsters justifies any leniency. Every single crime needs to be punished. But what do we do when punishment loses its deterrent effect on its most notorious target group? Do we propose a social ‘cleansing’?

Since last week, I have met dozens of devotees of Asaram in Gujarat and elsewhere. The top sevaks who run his many ashrams may have vested interests in assisting the godman in his shady operations. But what about those crores of devotees who swear by his controversial teachings and seemingly murky dealings? If he is found guilty, do we expect the tens of millions of his followers to denounce him and, more importantly, not fall for another Godman in the future? Will an exemplary expose of one guru act as a deterrent for such blind cult following that emboldens individuals to consider themselves above the law?

The problem is far too big than we are perhaps ready to accept. Given the magnitude of this social rot, amputation cannot be the only remedy. It demands an internal cure. The government must be made accountable for thousands of kids who slip through its social safety net long in tatters. The society needs to deal with the insecurity that makes millions gravitate to false hope.

We will never be able to forget what happened in December. We will find some peace if all four surviving accused are hanged. But let’s not fool ourselves by claiming that such punishment alone will make women safer.

The Saint And His Taint

Who is Asaram Bapu and what keeps his cult going

Tehelka, 29 August, 2013

Once his name is mentioned, almost everybody seems to have an Asaram Bapu story. A popular Bollywood director known for his comedies with a message recalls how Asaram’s men were after him to get him to popularise the idea of celebrating Matri Pitri pujan diwas, Bapu’s brainwave to counter Valentine’s Day, even offering to fly him to “locations” in the ashram’s chartered planes.

A prominent foreign tour operator recalls how a group of clients insisted on making a payment of several lakhs through Dubai and confided, after a sundowner too many, that the hawala transaction was done through “Asaram’s ashram channel”, only to laugh away the conversation in the morning.

One of 400-odd shopkeepers of Revdi Bazaar, an Ahmedabad market originally meant for Sindhi refugees from Pakistan, whispers that “Asaram’s crores” keep circulating in loans to businessmen, at interest rates ranging from 1.5-4 percent a month, depending on the amount and the paying capacity of the borrower.

Then, of course, there are the devout and the renegade. Neelam Dubey, Asaram’s PRO in Delhi, gushes that Bapu freed her from “the habit of drinking 35 cups of tea daily”. Virendra Mehta of Rohtak memorised all 80,000 words of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary along with their page numbers to find a mention in the Limca Records after “receiving mantra-initiation” from Asaram. If these seem like minor miracles, a paralysed OP Mall, chairman of Howrah ( jute) Mills, apparently walked out of an Indore nursing home to attend Asaram’s discourse.

Shantibhai and Praful Vaghela, who admitted a son each at Asaram’s Sabarmati ashram only to recover their hollowed corpses by the river, accuse the godman, his son Narayan Sai and the ashram management of conducting black magic. Amrut Prajapati, Asaram’s personal physician of 10 years, accuses him of sexually exploiting women. Raju Chandok, Asaram’s secretary who fell apart with him, accuses Bapu of plotting the assassination attempt he survived. Mahendra Chawla, who looked after Narayan’s accounts, accuses him of forgery in land deals.

But even as charges piled up, nothing seemed to hamper Asaram’s phenomenal rise as one of India’s foremost gurus with millions of devotees and the biggest landholdings. “For us who have followed his activities from time to time, it is very difficult to escape a sense of something sinister about his operations,” says a veteran journalist in Ahmedabad. “This time, he seems to be somewhat vulnerable. But then, you never know.”

Indeed, few seem to know enough about Asaram, the guru, or his past. Those who do are either his own men careful not to reveal anything beyond his public persona, or people who know better than to offend the man they know so well.

THE LEGAL cell at the Motera ashram was working overtime. Minutes ago, Asaram had left for the airport to shift base to Indore. The day before — three days after a 15-year-old girl accused the “self-realised saint” of raping her — he had held a brief satsang to dub the charge a conspiracy. But his key aides in white robes were feeling the heat of an unrelenting media.

On the other side of the phone, Asaram’s chief media manager Dr Sunil Wankhade had sounded reluctant, wondering if he could trust the press not to hurt the ashram’s interests. Face to face, he asked me if I would “do sting” on the ashram. Soon, his obvious scepticism gave way to desperation and he called for help from the legal cell.

“He will do a big magazine story, cover story,” Dr Wankhade informed Vikas Khemka who had just joined us with an incessantly ringing mobile phone. “We do not give time to the sold-out media. Bapuji doesn’t care what they write or show. You will not distort our words, will you?”

My nod made Khemka draw closer to ask me if I went to Delhi University. “No? I did. BCom honours, in 1993.” Dr Wankhade intervened to underline that Khemka’s family was into “big business” and that he had given up a “monthly income of lakhs” to serve Bapuji. “We are not uneducated, ordinary people here…”

Khemka’s mobile rang yet again and this time he promptly took the call. “Kya bola channel? Bhag gaya bola? S****…!” he asked Wankhade to make someone fall in line with a “defamation threat” and “Jo bhi karo (whatever it takes)”. Then he picked up the conversation from where he had left it. “…And yet people talk about black magic and all that.”

In the next couple of hours, the two of them made an elaborate defence of Asaram. “Tell me, can anyone encroach upon a riverfront? We planted trees, checked erosion and put up pandals for a few days during Guru purnima (Asaram’s birthday) when lakhs of devotees need space. In Surat, we built a park by the river,” explained Khemka.

He dismissed “Chandok, Prajapati and Chawla” as “opportunistic, corrupt people” out to malign Bapu’s name. “How can Bapu harm anyone, even these people, when he always says ‘sabka bhala’? Yesterday, he asked devotees to take care of even this Jodhpur girl,” said Khemka.

But the highlight of his defence was the Supreme Court ruling that turned down the demand for a CBI inquiry into the death of two ashram students and modified the charge against seven ashram officials, including Khemka himself, from culpable homicide to causing death by negligence. “More than 90,000 children go missing in India; 30,000 for good.”

After the bodies of two students — Dipesh and Abhishek — were found in July 2008 by the Sabarmati river close to Asaram’s ashram, with internal organs missing, it took the state government more than two weeks to initiate a CID probe. Blaming media for the “harassment”, Khemka explained that they “might be guilty of failing to look after the boys, but were in no way responsible for what happened after the two ran away or were abducted”.

Dipesh’s father Praful Vaghela claims that only a CBI probe would have revealed how the boys went missing systematically as part of dark rituals performed at the ashram. “It took Asaram three years to appear before the (DK) Trivedi Commission and even when he appeared, he behaved as if he were delivering sermons. The case is still open and the commission report (submitted on 1 August) has not been made public yet,” he says.

But wouldn’t other parents have also complained if their sons went missing in the past? Vaghela nods. “Call it hypnotism or helplessness or whatever you will. Most of Asaram’s followers have absolute faith in him. When two boys were found dead in his Chhindwara ashram, soon after our tragedy, the parents of the first victim refused to press charges.”

The two five-year-old Chhindwara boys in question, Ram Krishna Yadav and Vedant Manmodhe, were found dead in a bathroom in Gurukunj. Despite the mass outrage, Ram Krishna’s parents Mohanlal and Manorama blamed the loss on their destiny. “It’s our fate that we lost our son.” Within a week, the police claimed to have solved the case by arresting a “mentally unstable” Class IX student for the twin murders, dismissing his parents’ plea that their son was made a scapegoat.

Apart from these high-profile cases, detractors point out more than a dozen instances of murder that apparently led to Asaram Bapu. For example, Sandhya, a teacher at the same Chhindwara Gurukul, died under suspicious circumstances. Vashi, who worked for ashram publication Rishi Prasad, was apparently killed for protesting against his sister’s sexual exploitation. The death of a 10-year-old Gurukul student from Muzaffarnagar was blamed on suicide. No FIR was lodged when Zandu alias Narender, the head of Asaram’s Virangham ashram near Ahmedabad, was found dead. But the details in these allegations remain sketchy.

“Asaram believes in catching them young — the younger the better — for a thorough brainwashing,” says ayurveda physician Prajapati, who was picked up by Kota Police from Ahmedabad on 22 August in connection with what he claims is a false case of cheating. “He can be ruthless when it goes wrong. I asked Chandok to give up two-wheelers before he was shot at. Chawla uses only public transport. We fear for our lives.”

AT THE ashram, Khemka had returned to the legal cell. I watched a flurry of activities — media updates pouring in, sevaks shouting commands or brainstorming in a huddle — until Wankhade was back after offering a lengthy byte to a TV channel “with a good viewership in the Gulf”. He looked smug. “Their TRP goes up when we give exclusives. Now all other channels will call up asking what their fault was.” Then, he asked me to take down what he had memorised from Jivan Jhanki, a handbook on Asaram’s biography.

Asaram was born Asumal on 17 April 1941 in Sindh (now in Pakistan) to Thaumal Sirumalani and his “consort” Mehgiba. Like the three wise men who showed up at Bethlehem, a stranger apparently visited Asumal’s family the day he was born to gift ajhoola (swing) because “the day before, all of a sudden, he had a strong feeling that a great saintly child shall be born in Thaumalji’s family”.

The family moved to Gujarat after Partition. Asaram studied until Class III but was considered a brilliant student with a remarkable memory. After his father’s death, he “unknowingly” attained “all Siddhis” and fled to a Bharuch ashram. Brought back, he married Lakshmi Devi. They have a son Narayan Sai, Asaram’s heir apparent, and a daughter Bharati, whose “husband left her and the country after discovering the family’s secrets”.

Soon after his marriage, Asaram left home, with his wife’s permission, to attain god. He met a number of gurus, including a prophetic one who blessed him to be a millionaire. Asaram’s quest was rewarded when he impressed Lilashahji Maharaj in Vrindavan. Eventually, Lilashahji would advise him to stay a householder. After attaining self-realisation, he spent seven years in seclusion and started his Ahmedabad ashram in 1971.

What his official biography does not mention is that Asaram found shelter for two years in Motera’s Sadashiv Ashram before setting up a hutment of his own in the adjoining land. Even today, the sprawling Asaram ashram shares its boundary with the humble Sadashiv Ashram that Asaram’s men tried to grab after Sadashiv’s death. They did not succeed due to strong resistance from local villagers who were later implicated in false cases.

What the official biography does not mention, points out a veteran businessman who claims to know “Gujarat’s Sindhi samaj”, is that Asaram used to run a tea stall by the main bus stand at Visnagar near Mehsana and used it as a front to peddle illicit liquor. A couple of old-timers confirmed that a young Asaram was considered a “miscreant of sorts” in Maninagar, Ahmedabad. But even afterwards, the guru does not seem to have mended his ways.

In August 2002, the Income Tax Department raided 20 premises of a prominent jewellery chain in New Delhi and found a huge cache of unexplained stock. Sources claim that Asaram invested several crores in the jewellery chain, which indulged in “out of book sales” and bogus exports. They apparently imported gold under a duty-free scheme for designing jewellery meant solely for export but sold it without billing in the local market. The profits were invested in real estate.

“Probably, it was the aspiration of a landless refugee that made him value land so. Then it became big business,” says a Mumbai real estate agent of Asaram. In this quest, too, Asaram targeted the most vulnerable: the old and infirm who were duped in the name of devotion to sign deeds gifting their land to the ashram. Even temporary possession was enough to claim the land for good.

In 2002, for example, some Asaram followers approached Bhagwani Devi, a devotee in Delhi’s Rajokri, to donate some of her property to the trust. She agreed but Asaram’s men forged the power of attorney and transferred all her land to the trust. The matter eventually reached the court but the guru was not summoned.

In 2001, Asaram’s Yog Vedanta Samiti took permission to use the premises of the Mangalya temple in Ratlam, Madhya Pradesh, for just 11 days to hold a satsang. They are still in possession of the 100 acres worth over Rs 700 crore. This January, the Serious Fraud Investigation Office initiated action against the Samiti.

Panipat resident Mahendra Chawla was indoctrinated by Asaram in 1995, became his son Narayan’s personal secretary by 2001 and left the ashram in 2005. Three years later, when the murder charges came up against the ashram, Chawla alleged that Narayan had forged his signatures in 2005 to register a new trust, Bal Yogi Narayan Sai Sansthan. When he confronted Narayan, Chawla claimed, he was “locked up, beaten mercilessly and made to sign five blank papers”. Even after leaving the ashram, Chawla was apparently threatened by Narayan.

According to Chawla’s statements, Asaram’s ashram was also involved in hawala and manufacturing spurious ayurvedic medicines. Besides, whatever food, clothes and other items were donated to his ashrams were subsequently sold by the sevaks and the money was never accounted for. Several lakhs were collected in donation for each satsang — in 2011, for example, more than 200 satsangs were held — and the money transported in Asaram’s personal helicopter. However, the Virar Police, Maharashtra, found nothing actionable in the allegations.

Detractors maintain that the guru’s clout across political lines made him tide over strong public sentiment against his ashrams in Gujarat and MP, particularly in 2008-10. Agrees a political observer who has “nothing personal” against Asaram. “Though he is aligned with the Sangh for obvious reasons, his real growth happened in Gujarat and MP during the Congress rule. Modi is probably the only CM who does not care much about him. That said, the ashram activities got a boost after 2001 when Asaram indoctrinated 20,000 students in Ahmedabad alone.”

To be fair, Asaram’s biggest political assets during his rapid rise included former PM AB Vajpayee and LK Advani, a fellow Sindhi-born. Given his influence on the Sindhi-Marwari communities, the chief ministers of all the Hindi heartland states have handled him with care. The guru enjoys enough backing in the forces and the bureaucracy across the states.

Yet, with Modi issuing a whip on 28 August to restrain party leaders from defending Asaram, the political consensus against him is finally building up. With little political stake in the states that are Asaram’s stronghold, parties such as JD(U), BSP and the Left are aggressively questioning if Asaram is above the law.

In fact, he is not. While most charges of usurping private properties against Asaram and his ashrams are tangled in legal knots, the guru has quite a humble record at defending his encroachments on State land. The metro rail project is coming up on Sabarmati bank where the state revenue department authorities in January 2010 cleared the encroachment of 67,099 sq m land by his Motera ashram.

In November that year, the administration demolished ashram constructions on six acres of encroached land in Bhairavi village of Navsari district. This year, the Sabarkantha district administration served notice to Asaram’s son to vacate nearly 70 hectares of agricultural land in the villages of Pedhmala, Gambhoi and Rajpur that he had acquired by falsely claiming that he was a farmer.

In 1977, the state government acquired agricultural lands along the Tapi river for building embankments and a drinking water project. After a satsang in 1984, Asaram’s ashram occupied a stretch of this land and “regularised” the encroachment in just three weeks through its influence over the then revenue minister Atmaram Patel. The farmers raised objection in 2004 and the Gujarat High Court returned the land to the state in 2006.

Outside Gujarat, Asaram’s illegal claim over 13.5 katthas of land was rejected by a Bihar court in 2009 after a protracted battle with the Bihar State Board of Religious Trusts, which eventually got possession of the plot. In Odisha this May, the Cuttack Municipal Corporation razed an Asaram ashram built illegally in the city.

In none of these cases, Asaram tried to resist the state once he lost the legal battle. “Land cases won’t make much of a dent in his empire,” says a retired police officer in Indore. “He anyway controls too much land and losing a few acres doesn’t worry him. Also, the cases of those children’s deaths never implicated him directly. His only potential vulnerability has always been his weakness for women.”

When people line up for darshan, Asaram apparently throws a fruit or whatever is handy at a girl who catches his fancy. Women from the ashram then convince the girl and her family to send her to Asaram’s mahila ashram so that the guru can perform ananushthan with her. “If he gets his way, you can imagine what anushthan he performs,” alleges a source who directs me to Asaram’s former physician.

Prajapati says he had revived the guru from his deathbed in the mid-1990s and was given access to his bedroom every full moon to check his health. During one visit, he says he got the shock of his life. “I never questioned why a godman took insulin for thyroid. But then I got to know that his days in solitude were meant for these dirty activities. He must have violated at least a thousand women,” he alleges.

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That is an astounding claim and it is difficult to imagine that the guru and his cult have the power to silence so many women. But a trader recalls Asaram attending “parties with arrangements for scented baths” at the kothis of the rich and powerful of Alwar, Rajasthan, since the mid-1990s, and vouches for his “give no margin” strategy.

“Once one becomes an ashram inmate, there is virtually no escape,” seconds a teacher who claims to have been associated with Asaram’s Chhindwara ashram. “There are still 200-odd women in various ashrams run by Asaram’s wife. Those from outside are made to toe the line by his goons. If thelakshman rekha is breached, Asaram becomes inaccessible. Didn’t he refuse darshanto the family of the Jodhpur victim when they came to meet him in Delhi after the incident?”

This time, though, the ploy did not silence the victim or her family. The tension is palpable in his camp and has already led to a few public faux pas. The owner of the Jodhpur land contradicted the ashram’s hasty claim that Asaram was not even there on Independence Day. The ashram’s Delhi PRO Dubey’s comparison of Asaram with Guru Nanak has drawn angry rebuttals from the Sikh community led by Shiromani Akali Dal’s Harsimrat Kaur. Her father-in-law and Punjab CM Parkash Singh Badal did not have any qualms about getting photographed with Asaram earlier.

I can’t say I did not see such self-goals coming. After giving me an escorted tour of the ashram, Wankhade enquired about the circulation figure of this magazine. As we waited for the busy legal cell to produce prints of some case documents, he handed me a copy of a Gujarati magazine that recently did a cover story on Asaram.

“If you do a positive story for us — like this — Bapuji will tell devotees, on live TV, to buy your magazine. The circulation will double. Talk to your management,” he says, pausing to gauge my reaction. “Nobody can stop Bapuji from saying what he wants to on live TV.”

I concurred. But the law may yet catch up with him in real life.