Project Spotty

Cleared in a hurry amid much fanfare, Project Cheetah now waits for funds to fly in the first consignment from Africa. But the once-lost cat stands even less of a chance in a crowded 21st century India, and its reintroduction will pose fresh challenges for other species on the brink of extinction. There may still be just enough time to scrap this dangerous experiment

OPEN, 4-11 Feb, 2012

The cheetah was officially declared extinct in India in 1952. Six decades on, the country has come a long way. The GDP has increased by 66,400 per cent. The human population has grown from 350 million to 1.2 billion. The forest cover remains the same on paper, but more than 40 per cent of it is degraded beyond recognition. Poachers have replaced hunters. Man-animal conflict has become news staple. Even tiger numbers have slipped below the 1972 level when Project Tiger was launched.

And yet, certain experts feel the cheetah could get second time lucky.

Six decades after Independence, 0.40 per cent of India’s budget is spent on environment and forests (including wildlife). So there is just Rs 800 crore to conserve 15 key species and around 650 Protected Areas. The endangered rhinos of West Bengal, their only significant population outside Assam, are not considered worthy of more than Rs 44 lakh. And the remaining 275-odd great Indian bustards await, well, a Project Bustard.

Instead, we get Project Cheetah, with a bill of more than Rs 300 crore, almost overnight.

Floated by a group of former bureaucrats and practising biologists, it was a fascinating idea. To have the charismatic cat back, watch its slender frame coiling at the precipice of motion, its spots blurring into a chase to run down an antelope in a matter of seconds, and panting ever so delicately before biting into the kill.

People loved the thought and Jairam Ramesh loved the thought of people loving it. So in 2009, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) cleared a proposal from Dr MK Ranjitsinh, India’s first director of wildlife during the 1970s and chairman of Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), and Dr YV Jhala, wildlife biologist with Wildlife Institute of India (WII), to bring cheetahs back.

To allay fears that the project would eat into the limited government funds available for conservation, Dr Ranjitsinh gave an assurance right at the outset, in July 2009, that the proposed reintroduction of cheetahs “does not entail diverting any funds allocated by the Government for conservation of existing endangered species and habitats. No fund support is sought from the Government”.

The MoEF, however, sanctioned Rs 25 lakh for a feasibility study conducted by the proponents themselves. Three sites—Nauradehi and Kuno-Palpur in Madhya Pradesh and Jaisalmer’s Shahgarh landscape in Rajasthan—were selected as the proposed new home for the cheetahs. The Project Cheetah document was ready in September 2010.

In August 2011, the Union Cabinet approved Rs 50 crore for the cheetah programme under Project Tiger. In November, Dr HS Pabla, principal chief conservator of forests, Madhya Pradesh, sought Rs 42 crore to relocate two villages from Kuno and fly in a few cheetahs. But since Project Tiger is facing a current shortfall of Rs 281 crore for existing schemes, no funds have been released yet for the cheetah programme.

For once, few conservationists are complaining. “The viability of this project is suspect. More importantly, it is plain unnecessary. We should focus on saving what we still have and not what we have already lost,” says conservationist Valmik Thapar. Wildlife biologists Dr Faiyaz Khudsar and Dr Ullas Karanth are equally unenthused.

Cheetahs prefer grasslands and need small prey. But what the project calls grasslands in Kuno are in fact areas cleared during the past decade through the resettlement of 24 villages to create a second home for Gujarat’s Asiatic lions.

Explains Dr Khudsar: “Over time, these open patches are naturally being converted into woodland. Kuno’s chinkara (the cheetah’s primary prey) population once thrived in the pasture and agricultural land around forest villages, but is diminishing every year with the growth of woodlands. This natural ecological succession jeopardises a long- term future for cheetahs in terms of habitat and prey.”

Also, does introducing cheetahs in Kuno mean curtains for the Government’s longstanding plan to create a second home for the lions of Gir? Dr Ranjitsinh says lions can still be introduced once the cheetahs have settled down, “but not the other way round because a bigger cat will not allow a smaller one in its territory”. By the same logic, cheetahs may not be welcome at all in Kuno, which, being a part of the vibrant Ranthambhore tiger landscape, already has two resident tigers.

PCCF Dr Pabla, however, does not see any reason why all four big cats—cheetah, tiger, lion and leopard—cannot share space since “conflict is natural in the wild”. On concerns over suitable cheetah habitats, he argues that “cheetahs do live in areas other than grasslands” in Africa.

Experts also point out the absence of adequate wild prey base and presence of small livestock in all three areas marked for cheetah reintroduction. “We are looking at a high probability of conflict due to livestock depredation. Cheetahs will stand little chance against angry villagers,” warns Dr Karanth. Even packs of aggressive village dogs will be a major threat to this docile cat.

The most vocal argument in favour of Project Cheetah is that the reintroduction will help save India’s neglected arid ecology, grasslands in particular. It is inexplicable, though, why the Government needs to plant a new species when it is already mandated (and has done precious little) to protect the most fascinating occupant of the same grassland: the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard.

While examining potential sites for cheetahs, the WII-WTI team had rejected Desert National Park (DNP) because it holds “the last surviving great Indian bustard population of Jaisalmer” and “putting the cheetah in with the bustard cannot be contemplated at all, because of the threat to this most gravely endangered bird”.

By the same logic, bustards will have no chance of recovery in any of the potential cheetah reintroduction sites—all are potential bustard habitats, which were once part of the bird’s range.

But Dr Ranjitsinh is not worried: “We are not putting cheetahs in DNP where bustards now survive. If the bustard population recovers and birds disperse to other areas, well, they will have to deal with cheetahs.”

A member of India’s National Board for Wildlife warns against this “couldn’t- care-less” approach: “We have an ex- bureaucrat of former Gujarat royalty, who is seen on YouTube talking about his childhood dreams to bring back cheetahs. Another former Gujarat royal, a top biologist, is desperate for the project, perhaps because he was left out of the Sariska [tiger] reintroduction due to WII politics. But personal ambitions can’t justify random introduction of a species.”

Counters a senior Madhya Pradesh forest official: “The resistance is mainly from India’s many tiger experts, who hog all the limelight in our tiger-centric conservation milieu. Once cheetahs are in, the media focus will shift, even if partially and temporarily. The project is already making big news.”

Media hype apart, Project Cheetah is losing support outside Madhya Pradesh, with an increasing number of experts and organisations recognising the dangers of the programme. The Rajasthan forest establishment was sceptical from the beginning and is yet to submit any plan for the Jaisalmer leg of the project. Even Dr Ranjitsinh’s WTI has developed cold feet. Confirms the NGO’s senior director Dr Rahul Kaul: “Dr Ranjitsinh is in the project in his personal capacity; the WTI has nothing to do with it anymore.”

The message is clear. With funds yet to be released, the MoEF still has an opportunity to rethink and scrap the cheetah project. It is one thing to reintroduce a lost species and lose it all over again, quite another to risk other barely surviving species in that experiment.

BOX:CAT RECALL

The word cheetah is apparently derived from Sanskrit chitrakaya(speckled). Emperor Akbar, it is said, maintained a pack of 1,000 hunting cheetahs at all times and trained 9,000 during his tenure. The last three Indian cheetahs in the wild were gunned down by Maharaja of Surguja (Bastar) in 1948. Officially, the species was declared extinct in 1952.
The last of India’s captive cheetahs died soon after. Since then, seven Indian zoos have sourced 45 animals of the African sub-species from Canada, Germany and other countries. Only 11, including three cubs born in Mysore zoo last year, survive. A project to clone the Indian cheetah at Hyderabad’s Laboratory for the Conservation of Endangered Species (LaCONES) has been hanging fire for more than a decade due to unavailability of the Asiatic breed to source necessary genetic material.
The idea of reintroducing the charismatic animal in the wild gained ground in the new millennium and got the official nod in July 2009. But Iran refused to part with any of its remaining 80-odd wild cheetahs, the only surviving population of the Asiatic sub-species, and the focus shifted to importing African cheetahs.
At a meeting attended by international experts in September 2009, wildlife geneticist Stephen O’Brien said the Asian and African cheetahs were genetically very similar since the two subspecies were separated by just 5,000 years (unlike the lion subspecies that split 100,000 years ago); and Dr Laurie Marker, head of Namibia-based Cheetah Conservation Fund, offered to help reintroduce the cheetah “in stages over the next decade, possibly starting in early 2012”.
Don’t hold your breath.

Don't ban wildlife tourism, customise it

The case against wildlife tourism in core forests is up for hearing soon. But the interests of industry and conservation are not irreconcilable

Tehelka, 11 Feb, 2012

MORE THAN 50 lakh tourists visit India’s forests every year. They and lakhs of others who make a living out of those visits started worrying when a 2006 amendment of the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 necessitated that India’s core critical tiger habitats be left ‘inviolate’.

The government strengthened its scheme for voluntary relocation of villages and issued directives to phase out tourism from core forests. While the relocation drive is achieving mixed results, nothing really has changed on the tourism front. Therefore, conservation activists moved court.

The debate outside the courtroom is raging. Protribal groups blasted the hypocrisy of shunting poor villagers out and entertaining rich tourists in the same place. The tourism lobby hit back at the absurdity of comparing the impact of safari tourists, who do not even set foot in the forest, to that of villagers who survive on forest water, land, firewood and even bush meat, and are potential allies of poachers.

Moreover, a whole set of restrictions in and around reserves allows few livelihood options and tourism is the mainstay of such pocket economies. But while mushrooming resorts block wildlife corridors, pump out groundwater and dump garbage indiscriminately, few locals benefit from such enterprises owned by outsiders.

Like any industry, tourism survives on growth. Every tourism enterprise shows off its client base and many destinations are touted for the number of tourists they attract. The equation that determines the carrying capacity of a reserve is a joke among many who know basic ecology and a little maths. But surely, no patch of wilderness can host an unlimited number of tourists without damaging itself.

Anyway, if an operator promotes a pristine forest for what it is and offers the concessions that mass tourism demands, the destination will quickly lose its USP. So the growth imperative of mass tourism demands that thousands of safari tourists be packed, with the popular promise of a tiger, in hundreds of walled resorts choking our forests.


One solution offered is to make wildlife tourism exorbitant. But it is undemocratic and anyway not acceptable to many low-end operators who survive on volumes. The other demand, now before the court, is for pushing tourism away from core forests. But mass tourism is overwhelmingly tiger-centric and confinement to lesser forest areas will further add to the uncertainty of ‘sighting’. It does not make any business sense to the tourism lobby.

What we need to accept is that there are two sets of wildlife tourists. They are not distinguished by spending power but by their expectations. The majority wants to see tigers outside zoos while having a good time. A small minority considers tiger sighting a bonus — often a big bonus — but demand, above all, a true jungle experience. They will sacrifice most creature comforts for that experience. These tourists deserve access to even the best of forests where they will be just fine with a hard bed, a basic toilet, plain meals and lights out after early dinner.

The rest should only be allowed on limited safaris to try their tiger luck. They can, of course, enjoy their swimming pools and DJs at regular resorts a certain distance, say 5 km, away from core forests. As for existing resorts, the properties should be made to create space for animal movement, follow strict garbage disposal norms and limit usage of resources. It should be mandatory for all tourism businesses to hire a certain percentage of locals at equitable salaries.

But mere court directives or new laws will not help. Corrupt forest (and local) officials and greedy players in the industry are equally to blame for the present mess. If the government is serious about conservation and if wildlife tourism really seeks a long-term future, both must come clean.

Little girl behind big sister

Mamata Banerjee’s memoir is a slice of herself: feisty, self-indulgent, with a hint of the absurd

The Economic Times, 4 Feb, 2012

For one busy single-handedly bringing down Bengal’s Left citadel all her political life, Mamata Banerjee has managed to write quite a bit. “Writing,” she writes, “is my way of recording my conscience,” and at times, an attempt “to come face to face with another me, to rediscover my other self”.

By now, her political opponents must have found one Didi quite a handful to really appreciate another. For the rest of us, however, the idea that there may be more to the shrill, headstrong and unpredictable political phenomenon that is Mamata Bannerjee is somewhat comforting. But a few pages into her memoir – My Unforgettable Memories – the first account of ‘duality’ dashes such hope.

Mamata reveals that she has two birthdays. She was underage (not even 15) when she wrote her school final exams and her father “gave a fictitious age and birthday” so that she was not disqualified. As a result, she writes, five years were added to her age. For average readers, this raises two questions.

Why did Mamata’s father add five years to her age when a year, at the most two, would have made her eligible for the exam? Perhaps Banerjee senior was gifted with unusual foresight. But for the five years added to her ‘real age’ of 24, Mamata would not have been even eligible to contest Lok Sabha polls when she was elected from Jadavpur in 1984. In retrospect, could that still be a cognizable offence?

It is, of course, possible that Mamata, who was mature enough to take charge as the state general secretary of Mahila Congress at 16 (or 21), had no inkling that her age was being doctored at school when she was 15 (or 20). So she hopes she will not attract criticism for “disclosing the truth”, though, she writes in another context, “there are some who dismiss anything I do as drama”. Momentarily disarmed, perhaps guilty, most readers will move on. Anyway, India does not need another birthday bashing, not just yet.

The search for the “other Mamata” soon leads to her deep belief in the occult and the supernatural – the rain that preceded her birth and has since kept company “almost like a dear friend” on all significant occasions; the repeated apparition of her father’s spirit before her mother and herself; goddess Kali communicating through her younger brother who suffered a violent seizure, or by appearing in her dreams, even making photo frames fly across her room.

In between pop out curious nuggets about the child who got lost wandering outside her house and was brought back by the local police, a very promising beginning of a complex relationship that would slide steadily downhill during the Left rule before getting turned on its head by the historic regime change; about the debutant MP who felt “both lost and defeated” by “the conspiracy” that made her “seem like an illiterate person who could not even sign her name”; about the reluctant leader “not used to speaking English”, for who travelling abroad is “an ordeal”.

In a country where women politicians must come as amma, behenji or in unquestionable saffron, Didi boldly pens the word ‘boyfriend’ in her memoir. Once she was with her classmates who decided to meet ‘their friends’ on way back from school. They reached a park and met a couple of boys. When Mamata’s friends owned them up as their boyfriends, she was so scared that she ran back home. ”I did not even know what the word ‘boyfriend’ meant and could not ask anyone. What of people misunderstood? What would they think of me?” No, she did not specify how old she was then or if her response to the idea of ‘boyfriend’ did evolve with time.


That is not the only omission in Mamata’s memoir. She joined politics in 1970 when the Naxal movement took root in Bengal. The political turmoil that cost hundreds of lives does not merit any mention in her account. Mamata writes endearingly about her feat of planting a black flag on then Prime Minister Morarji Desai’s car but deftly skirts the issue of the Emergency and its excesses. She was, of course, upset that Indira Gandhi had lost but “back then I was still a novice and I did not understand the larger political world well enough to grasp the reasons for the poll debacle”. The memoir is also conveniently silent about her years in the NDA government (though in another context she slips in that AB Vajpayee “has always been very fond of me”).

But the bold, even brash, Mamata returns in her many scathing references to Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi, the “big brother” who “lost the 1991 Lok Sabha elections from Howrah”. Sonia Gandhi (the reluctant “Queen Mother”) and Manmohan Singh (who did “only the CPM’s bidding”) are not spared. Even Indira Gandhi comes in for criticism when, referring to a change of attitude in 1983, she slams the prevalent Congress culture that made the top leadership “immediately censor” any regional faction that got “too active”.

The memoir reserves the most emotional bits for Rajiv Gandhi. The assassination of her biggest mentor shattered Mamata. “I was orphaned all over again, for the second time in my life since my father’s death. I did not speak to anybody for a week. I simply could not eat a morsel. I used to shut myself up in my room and cry. It has been so many years, but even today, I feel his presence in every step I take; he touched a chord that still plays the symphony of my life.”

Left to fend for herself politically, Mamata, who carried a “feeling of not fitting in” since her school days, gradually hardened into a loner. The memoir details each attack on her by Left goons and the police, and the prolonged tale of serial betrayals within the Congress. In the mid-90s, Mamata would frequently lose sleep at night, spend hours looking at her father’s photo and ask him: “Why? Why did I have to get into this dirty game of politics?” Of course, she would return, each time, to “fight injustice”, all by herself.

Today, if a control-freak Mamata barely trusts anyone with responsibility or power, the early signs were obvious. While registering her party secretly in 1998, her idea was that “the right hand should not know what the Left hand does”. During her 26-day fast against Singur land acquisition in Kolkata, she was “terrified that instead of medical help”, the doctors “handpicked by the administration…would actually do something to disable me temporarily or permanently”.

While much of the memoir is penned by Mamata, the rebel, a brief epilogue is written by Mamata, the chief minister. The Left is vanquished but the perennial victim in her still feels easily wronged. So she snubs those ‘friends’ who are critical of her new government and reminds them that they were last-minute entrants in the anti-Left movement that she single-handedly built, “from Canning to Kanchenjunga”, over three decades. Credit appropriated, perhaps duly, she goes on to warn the slanderous “CPM touts, the enemies of the people”: “It is not possible to swim against the flow when a river is in spate.”

At one point of this rant of an epilogue, she suddenly goes on a baffling tangent: “Even small disjointed movements have yielded the Nobel Prize for some people simply because they know how to lobby hard. Yet, Bengal and her grassroots movement for Ma, Mati, Manush remain totally neglected.” The prize committee at Stockholm may not take note, but this salvo is likely to confuse Didi’s supporters who were given to believe so far that the Centre’s reluctance to offer an economic bailout was the biggest snub for Bengal.

But will this memoir help or damage Didi’s political image? Neither, since Mamata is a natural mass leader like no other in Bengal and very few elsewhere. On that August noon in 1997, when she dwarfed the Congress plenary session held at an indoor stadium by filling up Kolkata’s biggest ground with lakhs of supporters, I was among those who managed a foothold on the back of her stage to get a measure of the crowd.

A rookie reporter from Delhi, I remember the awe and bewilderment in the eyes of the national press that was matched only by the reaction of the Congress leadership nervously confabulating just a mile away. That was Mamata’s first step towards Trinamool Congress. Irrespective of her quirks and qualities, she found her way with the masses long before she became the chief minister.

Yes, most Mamata baiters will find this memoir a delicious read. But so will the devout. “For those who believe, no proof is needed,” writes Mamata of the supernatural, “for those who do not, no proof is enough.”

Laxman's future, Dhoni's past

The old guard has the record but not the time to stage a comeback; the skipper’s case is different

Open, 20 Jan, 2012

The clamour for an overhaul of the Indian middle order is rising. But like life, cricket offers many chances. No other sport boasts of so many ‘comeback’ legends. Perhaps it is natural for a game even the shortest version of which plays out longer than any other team sport does. So the greatness of a cricketer is determined as much by talent as by one’s ability to reinvent oneself, time and again, as a top performer.

Honestly, there is nothing unusual about the present predicament of the Indian batsmen except that they have slumped together and it looks embarrassing. But each of them has suffered similar ebbs in his career and come back a better player.

Against England and South Africa (2005-06), Virender Sehwag averaged 19 and 14.8, respectively. He bounced back in Australia (2007-08) with an average of 71.50. In three consecutive series against South Africa, Sri Lanka and Australia (2009-10), Gautam Gambhir averaged 12.66, 1 and 12.50, respectively. He regained form at home against New Zealand (average 41.75) and silenced his critics in South Africa with a 60-plus average last year.

In his third tour to Australia (1999-2000), Rahul Dravid averaged 15.50. Next time he was Down Under (2003-04), he averaged an impossible-to-argue-with 123.80. VVS Laxman averaged above 80 against Australia at home (2000-01) and away (2003-04). In the next home series (2004-05) against the same opponent, his average dwindled to 17.57. When the Aussies landed again in 2008-09, VVS was at the top of his game with an average of 95.25.

Let’s not dig into a certain Sachin Tendulkar’s records. Not his game, but his mind looks crammed. Also, nobody else knows how it feels approaching a hundredth hundred.

But Sachin’s illustrious colleagues have shown in the past that they have it in them to pick themselves up and return stronger. Unfortunately, the process takes not only a rare degree of ability but also time. Gambhir and Sehwag have enough years of cricket ahead and can be trusted to make strong comebacks. But Laxman and Dravid do not have the luxury. When they have returned winners from similar situations in the past, it took them a season or two. Given opportunities, they may regain form by 2013, but their bodies will not hold.


If Dravid and Laxman have all the records but not the time to convince the selectors, Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s case is quite the opposite. Playing abroad, particularly outside Asia, Dhoni’s Test batting record has always been ordinary.

Playing away against Bangladesh, New Zealand and Pakistan, Dhoni averages 96.50, 77.50 and 59.66, respectively. Against opponents such as Sri Lanka, South Africa and England, his away averages are 32, 31.44 and 39, respectively. In 26 away innings against these three teams, Dhoni scored six half-centuries, three ducks and did not cross 20 on nine occasions.

Against West Indies and Australia, Dhoni’s away averages are 22.08 and 18.69. In 26 away innings against these two opponents, he scored three half-centuries, two ducks and did not cross 20 on 17 occasions. Overall, playing away in West Indies, Australia, England, South Africa and Sri Lanka, Dhoni failed to cross 20 in 31 (60 per cent) out of 52 innings.

More recently, Dhoni averaged 31 in England, thanks to two valiant 50s in Birmingham. Together, the other six innings yielded just 69. In the previous away series against West Indies, just one 50-plus score propelled his average to 19. In the remaining four innings, he managed a total of 23. In the current tour, he has so far averaged 20 in six innings. But for the lone half-century at Sydney, he has scored 45 runs in five innings.

Dhoni’s wicket keeping, usually flawless and unnoticed, has also started slipping under pressure. Comparisons with Adam Gilchrist, Alec Stewart or the still-in-action Mark Boucher may not be fair but even Kamran Akmal or Brad Haddin has a better dismissals-per-inning record in Tests than the Indian captain (not to mention former butter fingers Matt Prior who shares Dhoni’s strike rate behind the stumps).

Surely, if Dhoni was not such a phenomenally successful ODI captain and India were not averse to the multiple-captain theory, his place in the Test squad would long have been suspect. Forget the younger lot in domestic cricket, even Parthiv Patel has returned a better keeper and has batting averages playing away of 32 and 65.50, respectively, against Australia and Pakistan. Only last year, playing ODIs away against West Indies and England, Patel averaged 29.40 and 34.40, respectively.

Most followers of the game do not enjoy commentator Sourav Ganguly’s psychic gifts and it is hard to guess if Dhoni really does not enjoy playing Test cricket. It is equally impossible to determine if the Indian captain was thinking aloud about retiring from Test cricket only to deflect the media’s unrelenting glare on his team’s dismal performance or if there was some genuine soul-searching.

But if Laxman and Dravid have run out of time to rediscover their lost touch that made them such formidable performers abroad, Dhoni has never demonstrated the skill that makes a Test batsman dependable on hostile foreign pitches. India does not need to look hard to figure out what is amiss. Playing on familiar tracks against weaker teams, Dhoni himself has shown what an effective number seven can lend to a team’s batting stability.

Perhaps it’s time to try someone for the Test squad who is less of a gamble at the crease, whose consistency is less challenged by quality bowling in tough conditions. That should be by far the most obvious task before the selectors, and much easier than finding necessary replacements for Laxman and Dravid.

Are We Upset Because They Are Naked?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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