The National Tiger Consolation Authority

Five years later, the NTCA has changed little on the ground or in the mind

Tehelka, 11 January, 2013

ON 4 FEBRUARY 2005, two weeks after I reported the local extinction of tigers in Sariska, Project Tiger (PT) chief Rajesh Gopal told the Hindustan Times that a tiger was spotted and tracked by a team from the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in Sariska. On 7 February, he told The Times of India that reports on missing tigers were “baseless, false and intended to malign the government”. On 29 March, the CBI confirmed the Sariska wipeout.

Less than four years later, in an interview to TOI on 4 December 2008, Gopal took a different line: “Sariska was tragic but it gave us an opportunity to bring about changes. The PM’s office was directly involved, the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau was set up, a scientific tiger estimation method was evolved… While the media highlighted our deficiencies, it also brought about awareness in the common man, in the system.”

But all did not end well for the tiger. The 2006 amendment of the Wildlife (Protection) Act (WLPA), 1972, led to the formation of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) to give more teeth to the PT, which had merely been a fund-disbursing agency. Gopal, director of the PT since 2002, became the first member-secretary of the NTCA in 2006. He still is. Not much has changed since, not on the ground, not in the mind.

Under Section 38 of the amended WLPA, the NTCA can “issue directions in writing to any person, officer or authority for the protection of tiger or tiger reserves and such person, officer or authority shall be bound to comply with the directions”. Various states and agencies have repeatedly ignored the copious letters the NTCA routinely writes, but not a single official has ever been pulled up.

The federal structure of governance does make the NTCA’s job unenviable as forests and wildlife are on the Concurrent List. When the reality of Sariska sunk in, Gopal famously excused himself saying that he was not the “DFO of India”. While divisional forest officers (DFOs) remained responsible for management in their reserves, the formation of a statutory authority was meant to ensure checks and balances. It did not.

The NTCA defended Rajasthan when the state flouted its instruction to ensure genetic compatibility of tigers to be translocated to Sariska. It failed to free the Kosi corridor, defend the integrity of the Corbett tiger reserve and relocate willing Gujjars out of the park because a state forest official refused to stop “plantation work” on the land where the families were to be resettled. It let the railways ministry go scot-free when trains ran over jumbos inside tiger reserves.

Few states take the NTCA seriously. Some openly renounced its tiger census results in 2011. It could not rein in state forest bosses for flouting its instructions on declaring man-eaters. It failed to stall an ill-conceived move by the Karnataka government that declared BRT a tiger reserve (the same state threw away NTCA’s in-principle approval for Kudremukh as a tiger reserve). The list is long.

In 2009, the NTCA set up a committee to study a crisis-ridden Simlipal in Odisha and suggest ways forward. The report gathered dust till a spate of poachings forced it to form another panel in 2010, which reiterated the recommendations. The NTCA set up a committee with the state wildlife boss at its helm, and seasoned conservationists and senior cops who successfully tackled wildlife crime as members, to monitor the firefighting measures for six months.

“The state simply did not allow the monitoring committee to function while the NTCA watched helplessly. The result is continued poaching in Simlipal where elephants alone have suffered more than a dozen casualties since,” says Biswajit Mohanty, a member of the committee and the National Board for Wildlife. Much of Simlipal still remains outside the department’s effective control.

TO ENSURE “greater coordination between the forest and civil administrations”, the first Simlipal committee recommended in 2009 that “a serious knowledgebased effort, with professional support from technically competent agencies… should guide the identification of candidate villages for relocation” with “locally appropriate strategies”. Since the NTCA spends hundreds of crores on the scheme, this approach was appropriate for the entire country to make voluntary relocations fair and speedy.

Instead, the NTCA banked on state forest staff and constituted several review panels. “Our report on the village relocation process was not made public and then there was another review by a different panel. Frequent monitoring helps only if follow-up action is taken. Otherwise the money is wasted on numerous evaluations mostly by retired forest officials and conservationists who rarely speak out of line,” points out a biologist who served on many such committees.

But transparency has never been the NTCA’s strong point. “Overtly dependent on the convenient sarkari science of the WII, the NTCA even resisted scientific scrutiny of its methods of extrapolating field data,” said a former WII researcher associated with the 2011 census, adding that the estimation process may gain more credibility in its Phase IV as private institutes have been made partners.

Ironically, pumping huge funds for village resettlement and this new estimation method are the two major achievements the NTCA flaunted in its recent report. But there are other parameters of NTCA’s own to measure its success.

In 2005, the PT did its first Management Effectiveness Evaluation (MEE) in 28 tiger reserves. Five years on, the second evaluation showed that the number of ‘poor’ reserves remained constant at seven. Of the rest, the ‘very good’ and ‘good’ categories increased by 4 percent and 3 percent, respectively, and the ‘satisfactory’ decreased by 7 percent.

If that appears like some improvement, consider the absurdity of such evaluation. In 2005, Panna was rated ‘very good’ when tigers were at the brink of local extinction there. The severely compromised Simlipal was also in the top category. Buxa, another potentially zero-tiger reserve saved by floaters walking in from Bhutan, was labelled ‘good’. Remember, this was after Sariska.

In 2010, one expected the NTCA to be realistic. But even the second MEE rated Buxa as ‘good’. It found Simlipal in a ‘satisfactory’ condition when the NTCA’s own panels were struggling to save the reserve. Of the 30 parameters that the MEE uses, the strongest point of our reserves is apparently protection strategy and assessment of threats. Yet, poaching numbers scale new highs every year.

The MEE identified the weakest points as inadequacy of trained manpower and deployment, tiger conservation plan, habitat management and village relocation planning, lack of stakeholder participation and livelihood support to local communities. Yet, overall, 70 percent of our tiger reserves are apparently in ‘very good’ or ‘good’ conditions.

To be fair, the NTCA’s special status has withstood the pro-industry thrust of our governance in recent years. “It has also framed a few sound protocols — translocation or conflict-management manuals, for example — but few states are responsible enough to implement those. The NTCA rarely takes a stand. It’s been inconsistent even before the court of law,” rues a veteran conservationist. Others venture some explanation.

“The average age of the NTCA’s independent members is over 65 and their role is ceremonial. But the member-secretary is junior (in the IFS cadre) to most state forest chiefs who treat him like one. Also, a lot has happened during Gopal’s decade-long tenure. How can he fix accountability if he himself has never been accountable?” asks a former member of the PT standing committee.

In its report, the NTCA claimed notification of a number of new tiger reserves as its biggest achievement. But will the credit for bringing more area — about 8,000 sq km — under the NTCA’s watch compensate for the ignominy of losing tigers from at least 21,000 sq km of its former habitat in India since 2006-07 when the NTCA was formed?

The PM breaks silence: It’s GM food for thought

The PM wants enlightened debate to decide on the complex issue of GM crop to boost agricultural yield. But neither independent science nor simple economics supports his faith in a transgenic miracle.

FirstPost, 8 January, 2013

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is a man of silence and science. So the only time he granted an interview (read broke his silence) to a publication, he chose Science. Last February, he told the magazine that “NGOs, often funded from the United States and the Scandinavian countries, which are not fully appreciative of the development challenges that our country faces” were responsible for controversies that did not let him “makeuse of genetic engineering technologies to increase the productivity of ouragriculture”.

The PM was referring to the indefinite moratorium imposed on commercial planting of Bt brinjal in 2009 by then Environment minister Jairam Ramesh who found no over-riding urgency or adequate scientific consensus for the experiment. After that interview, Ramesh did not react if his boss was accusing him of sabotaging science or India’s food security but went on record saying that his “decision was not influenced by the campaign of any NGO, either from India or abroad”.

Six months on, in August 2012, the parliamentary standing committee on agriculture placed its report -- Cultivation of GeneticallyModified Food Crops: Prospects and Effects -- in the House. It revealed that a number of government agencies such as Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research, National Biodiversity Authority, Department of Consumer Affairs, Department of Commerce and the Food Safety Standards Authority of India objected to transgenic food.

Yet, speaking at the 100^th Indian Science Congress in Kolkata last week, the PM was back at his scientific best. “Complex issues, be they genetically modified food or nuclear energy or exploration of outer space, cannot be settled by faith, emotion and fear but by structured debate, analysis and enlightenment,” he said in his address.

Strangely, he resented it last time when there were public hearings on Bt brinjal. For years, his government has been dodging pleas for open discussion on nuclear power by several organisations, some of which he dismissed as foreign-fundedlast year. Now, in one bold stroke, he dubbed all opposition to GMO (genetically modified organism), including those from various departments and technocrats of the government, as unscientific.

The science of GM food may be complex but the issue of its acceptance is not. Generating transgenic food is not grafting the stems of two plants to get a darker shade of red. It is about firing a plasmid or small DNA with a particle gun into cells and an inserted DNA integrating into a chromosome. It involves a million mutations which are totally unpredictable. The result is alien gene structures that never existed in nature. The default response of human or animal immune system is to attack the unknown. The GM food triggers the same reaction inside us.

The result is inflammation of the bowel which causes a range of disorders, from allergy and autism to cancer. Worse, transgenic food such as Bt corn or brinjal is modified with a soil bacteria -- Bacillus thuringiensis -- so that it produces toxins to kill insects. We are assured that the inbuilt pesticide harms only insects and not us. Irrespective of the veracity of the assurance -- it was debunked last February around the same time the PM was talking to Science -- would anyone want to swallow that as food? One would, the argument goes, if famished.

The advocates of GM food claim that the technology increases yield and will help feed a billion mouths. There is no conclusive data yet that transgenic food increases yield or deters weed. More importantly, the World Food Programme says that “there is enough food in the world today for everyone”. Yet, there is and will be hunger as long as millions cannot afford their share of food due to artificial market conditions.

It perhaps makes sense that the same market wants to profit more by peddling unnatural food in the name of addressing the artificial hunger it has created. If only the term unnatural was enough to describe the madness and potential threat of transgenic food and non-food organism or those who are promoting it.

In 1992, US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decided without any safety studies that GM food would be treated like any other food. Six years on, it took a lawsuit to reveal thousands of internal communications among FDA scientists who demanded long-term trials but were muffled under the watch of Michael R Taylor, administrator of the Food Safety & Inspection Service and an old Monsanto hand who later returned to the company as vice-president (public policy). Today, Taylor serves as the FDA’s deputy commissioner.

Taylor is not alone. US secretaries for Agriculture Ann Veneman (2001) served on Monsanto’s board of directors. The present secretary, Thomas Vilsack, was felicitated as Governor of the Year 2001 by the Biotechnology Industry Organisation. Former deputy administrator of US Environmental Protection Agency Linda Fisher was a Monsanto vice-president and now serves DuPont, another chemical giant. That is how thin the thin line between the industry and the state has become.

 

While company-funded (or state-sponsored) scientific trials hastily clear GM products, every independent study faces roadblocks. “We don't have the complete picture. That's no accident,” explained Doug Gurian-Sherman of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, “Multibillion-dollar agricultural corporations, including Monsanto and Syngenta, have restricted independent research on their genetically engineered crops. They have often refused to provide independent scientists with seeds, or they've set restrictive conditions that severely limit research options.”

Nevertheless, researchers established last February that the Bt toxin kills kidney cells, leading to what is informally called leaky guts, now an alarmingly common condition in children in the USA and Canada. The result is premature release of food in the bloodstream which immediately activates antibodies and triggers food intolerance and severe allergy. Over time, this can lead to a range of diseases from Parkinson’s to Alzheimer’s.

Other studies linked transgenic food to infertility, defective childbirth, abnormal DNA function and even a pathogen new to science. These are not matters of faith, emotion or fear. But no authority – MNCs, USFDA or scientific agencies of the Indian government – has settled any of these issues in public or allowed independent science to take a call.

Corporate-cum-state funding is an article of faith for agricultural research the world over. The industry donated millions to top universities and researchers have paid dearly for criticising GMO. Renowned Hungarian-born biochemist Arpad Pusztai was sacked by Scotland’s Rowett Institute when his 1998 study found that GM potato had negative effects on the stomach lining and immunity system of rat labs. Last year, Monsanto even bullied Vermont’s legislature to drop a bill that had the backing of over 90% of Connecticut residents and sought to make labelling of all GMO mandatory.

Yet, our PM wants to keep fear out of the transgenic discourse. He wants no emotion to be stirred even after thousands of suicides, loss of cotton crop (and livestock foraging on those Bt fields), skin infection of farmhands, a ban enforced by Maharashtra, and his agriculture minister Sharad Pawar telling Parliament last month that the objection to Bt cotton was “speculative, confusing and unscientific”.

But can we really debate the aspiration of biotech giants who want to eventually replace all natural farming with their GM seeds? Does the implication of two or three MNCs controlling the entire world’s food resources require analyses? Is there any enlightenment in risking a million unpredictable and uncontrollable mutations triggered by an infant technology just because we cannot stop profiteering in and wasting the food produced nature’s way?

No woman will ever feel safe if another does not

If we really seek change, let us stop lying about ourselves. When it comes to gender, there cannot be any hierarchy of safety or sensitivity.

FirstPost, 31 December, 2012

I did not wish to write this. I did not wish to write anything at all. Since waking up to the morning bulletin on Saturday, all I wanted to say was sorry, all over again. It did not come out. Until Saturday, her life was our only fig leaf. Then, there was nowhere to hide. No apology or anger or analysis to make us feel less miserable.

Today, we are left again to our fickle resolve. The protests, by the outraged and the opportunist, will continue till we move on. And move on we will because there can be no logical conclusion or closure to this. The rapists will be punished. But even if all our demands — a special session, stricter laws, fast-track courts, more cops on the road for commoners — are met, our lot will not change.

If it is change that we really seek, if we are serious that women should feel safer, we cannot lie about ourselves anymore. I write this today because it is time to face the truth and I do not care if this hurts sentiments.

Until Saturday, I did not care what a Sushma or a Jaya thinks because she so unabashedly refused to die. Far from the living dead cowering beneath some indelible scar, she insisted on seeing for herself if her friend was alright and pointedly asked if her assaulters were nabbed. Her inevitable end seemed impossible because, after everything, she told her mother she wanted to live.

Today, I ask the enlightened millions, who are scandalised by a Bengal MP’s puerile comment, if they even blinked when an agitated Sushma or a teary Jaya promptly murdered her spirit on the floor of the House? The TV anchors, who smarted all day at the Bengal MP’s audacity and made him apologize on air, did not bother to even question the other two.

Unlike junior Mukherjee who sneered at the protesters, the two women MPs demeaned the victim herself. Are the protesters more sensitive about their liberal selves than the dignity of those who survive rape? Or do we actually share the values that pity a rape victim as a jeevit laash? Is that why we demand blanket death penalty for rapists, knowing that they won’t think twice before murdering their victims (read witnesses) because they would get death anyway. Does the survival of living dead even matter to us?

Between the extremes of our reaction to Sushma or Jaya and Mukherjee, we are suitably outraged by another Bengal MP who dismisses a rape charge as negotiation gone wrong, a state Congress leader who professes evening curfew for women and a BJP MLA who wants to ban skirts at school. While most of us are stuck to our respective layers of regression, even the most vocal liberals refuse to see that these values are not aberrations that can be screamed away. We are people like us.

There is no other explanation for the moral, cultural or religious codes of conduct prescribed by so many in the last two weeks. Can we respect women in a system that does not respect anything but money and power or make them feel safer in a predominantly violent society where men are no lesser victims? Can love police on Valentine’s Day protect girls? Do Surpnakha’s, Sita’s or Draupadi’s stories give women hope? Even one of our most popular deities is worshipped in the phallic form because, according to Bhavisya Purana, he was cursed to that effect by the sage woman he raped.

The other end of this regressive spectrum is the neo-feminism that wants to legitimise commodification of woman as a right with total impunity. Over four decades, feminism has done a complete U-turn from burning advertisement hoardings that flaunted bikini-clad women to seeking right to expression in item numbers. Yes, these industries are run by mostly men. True, a woman walking naked is no justification for rape. But if we stereotype flesh as a rule in popular media, we have to account for some stereotypical male reaction too.

We have to accept that the default male behaviour in all advanced species is violent. Boys are mean; they fight. Some rapists are driven by sex. But women would be much safer if lust was the only impetus for rape. It is more of a power statement. Men rape women who ‘belong to’ other men. Men rape women as punishment. Men rape women because they can.

That is why most rapes happen within families. Strangers also rape and the startling majority of them belong to forces and militias. It has been going on in Kashmir, the North-East and along the red corridor from Bihar to Andhra Pradesh. Not only the armed forces, police and insurgents but feudal armies are also at it across the length and breadth of rural India.

Yet, our protest waited till she was brutalised in a Delhi bus on busy evening roads. Granted, the fact that something so brazen could happen in the Capital reflects the extent of lawlessness in the less governed parts of the country (and the protest likewise has pan-Indian ramification). Also, a late tipping point is better than no tipping point. If only our outrage could collectively rise above our selfish concerns.

Even the sincere mainstream of this protest is mostly concerned about the safety of the urban middle class. Forget those lakhs of victims raped and assaulted all across the hinterland, did we ever bother for the underclass in our big, bad cities? The domestic helps who routinely turn up battered; the vegetable venders who are forced to pay hafta in ways only women can; or the homeless who are picked up in the night by cops and ruffians alike? No, it took a middle class victim in a middleclass situation at a middleclass hour to shake us up.

There is nothing wrong in feeling scared when there is every reason to be afraid. But rape, or any gender issue, cannot be fought selectively. Women will never be safe if the physical and psychological safety net is supposed to cover one particular class better than the other. When we vent our anger against the VIPs, when we raise slogans that the only women safe in Delhi are Sonia and Sheila, we forget that millions of rural or poor Indian women may feel the same about their well-to-do city sisters.

When it comes to gender, there cannot be any hierarchy of safety or sensitivity. A stupid Mukherjee cannot be more outrageous than an impassioned Sushma. Accepting a shorter skirt cannot be liberal as long as the length remains an issue. Our religious tradition of female deities cannot help if it fosters inhuman demands of virtue. Sentencing Delhi bus rapists cannot bring her justice if a thousand others continue to walk free.

The mind that rapes only rarely possesses a rapist. But at all times, it keeps alive the possibility and feeds on every assault that goes unpunished anywhere. That is why no woman can ever really feel safe if another does not.

Outrage is overdue but anger alone won’t discourage rape

We need to rethink our demands because lynch mobs cannot make a city rape-proof. Women will not be safe as long as they are judged for virtue and contained by a long list of don’ts.

FirstPost, 23 December, 2012

Nothing will stop rape. Not even harsher penalties.  Murderers get death but thousands still get killed. Rape, like all crimes, can only be discouraged (read here). But demanding castration or death for rapists will not achieve that.

Fear of punishment is the most effective deterrent for any crime. Rapists enjoy better than an even chance because of the low conviction rate. Unless prosecution improves, judges who rarely find grounds for awarding jail terms will be less inclined to hand out stricter punishment. While fast-track courts are a must to cut judicial delay, they will serve no purpose without prompt investigation and sound prosecution.

For that, the process needs to be overhauled from stage one. At present, cops usually do all they can to intimidate and dissuade victims. So, all FIRs against rape should be lodged in-camera and every rape-related FIR should be referred to a special gender cell set up in every police district. These dedicated cells should monitor all rape investigations to help build sound prosecution cases.

The laws must be strengthened but only the rarest of rare rape cases should be treated on a par with murder. Blanket death penalty will only encourage rapists to kill their victims. The definition of rape must include all kinds of penetration and not only penile. Laws should also drop terms such as teasing or modesty. Determining an act of rape cannot have anything to do with a victim’s morality which is anyway a subjective consideration.

Not only our cops ( see why they need to change their attitudes here), society itself seeks justification when a bar dancer or a sex worker is raped. We rightfully debate the character of a sexual assault victim to determine the veracity of her charges. As long as the majority, women included, discriminate among victims on the basis of perceived virtue, some rapes will appear less unacceptable than the rest. In an increasingly less “virtuous” society, that only amounts to condoning rape.

Rights activists are against having any misuse clause in rape laws, lest it further inconvenience genuine victims, but the perception that women frequently use rape charges for blackmailing hurts victims more. With checks in place, cops will not have the excuse to prejudge every rape charge. The onus will be on the judiciary which knows better than to penalise a complainant for the prosecution’s failure.

It may sound like a distraction at this emotive hour but while we talk of the big bad cities, sex crimes are more common in villages where under-reporting is near absolute. Rural women are often rape fodder for settling political scores or family feuds. They are also raped when they seek or find a voice. When such cases do rarely surface in the media, they do not shock the candle-happy urban middleclass.

The outraged crowd at Delhi’s India Gate is not obliged to fight for women it cannot identify with. But even within an urban environment, the focus of this anger is on sexual assaults committed by strangers, which are less than 10 per cent of all reported cases. Will the demand for death penalty cover marital rape? Can all the fathers, uncles, husbands, brothers, cousins, teachers, friends and colleagues be policed 24×7 inside four walls?

Also, do we ourselves make it easier for strangers to sexually assault women? We teach every girl since childhood those charters of safety: how they should dress and behave, where they should not go without male escorts, which places they should avoid altogether. These commandments have become the benchmark for propriety. The moment a woman breaks or is forced to break these rules, it sends signals to predatory men: she is either vulnerable or of loose morals.

Imagine Delhi or any Indian city without these safety codes. The so-called provocative clothes stop being so when too commonplace. No unescorted woman appears easy meat when too many of them are out in the late hours. But it is far more challenging to break these social stereotypes than to breach security cordons outside Parliament.

Of course, freedom always demands its price and both men and women pay for foolhardiness. But can we really demand a safe, gender-neutral society if the entries on a woman’s list of don’ts grossly outnumber those on a man’s? And is there any merit in continuing with this disparity since the woman is clearly not any safer for it?

What happened to the 23-year-old a week ago defies the vilest of imagination. Hundreds of sexual offences that occur daily, and mostly under the media radar, are rarely half as vicious. The anger at India Gate is justified but it should not miss the larger picture of almost routine sexual assaults that gnaw away at the very idea of womanhood.

Destruction of public property or lynch mobs cannot make any city rape-proof. Even if every cop on VIP duty is put on patrolling, there will never be enough boots protecting us on every road, lane and home. Making investigation and prosecution swift and effective requires not only training and capacity building but also a significant change in mindset. Our police cannot be very different from us.

Rape will really be discouraged only when no girl finds herself unprotected in a crowd, when no woman is asked why she was out in such company at such an hour. And while we are busy defining and deterring sexual assault, let us demand that stripping women in public be made a heinous crime. Thousands of disenfranchised tribal and dalit women who are routinely paraded naked will be grateful to their educated city-sisters.

A township inside Corbett

Tehelka, 22 December, 2012

FOR MILLIONS of tourists, Ramnagar is the gateway to Corbett tiger reserve. Most hotels and resorts are clustered around this town. It is the national park headquarters that issues permits. All major entries to Corbett — from Amdanda to Durgadevi — are on the Ranikhet road off Ramnagar.

Not much has changed in this stretch of Corbett in the past seven months since TEHELKA’s investigation (Corbett Now on Sale, 12 May). The animal corridors across the Kosi river are still blocked and construction of mega, walled properties continues. But conversion of agricultural land is difficult now. Angling has been stopped along the Ramganga river and private roads through the forest are closed.

But Corbett’s woes are bigger than the tourism mess in its eastern half. Merely 20 km west of Ramnagar is the Kalagarh town on the southern boundary of the reserve. Adjacent to it are the colonies of new Kalagarh, a mini township of 2,600-odd houses, a school, a college and an irrigation engineering academy. It has been thriving illegally for more than three decades on national park land.

These staff colonies, spread over roughly 150 hectares of Corbett, were set up during the 1970s and ’80s by the Uttar Pradesh Irrigation Department, which has not vacated the land despite a high court order in 1999. Curiously, the Uttarakhand government and the Corbett management seem to be in no hurry to break the status quo.



In August 1966, the Forest Department of undivided Uttar Pradesh handed over around 9,000 hectares of Corbett National Park to the Irrigation Department for the Ramganga hydel project on the condition that the “land to be transferred will remain reserved forest and revert to the Forest Department when no more required by the Irrigation Department, without any compensation”.

The Ramganga dam and reservoir drowned more than 81 sq km of the park. The Irrigation Department retained 358 hectares for operational purposes and returned 151 hectares to Corbett. But it also had another 346 hectares for housing its construction and other staff. After completion of the project, it claimed that 148 hectares would still be required for housing and started returning the remaining 198 hectares in phases.

But why does the Irrigation Department still require 1,560 houses spread over 1.5 sq km to house its staff? A site inspection commissioned by the Supreme Court in 2003 concluded that the project required only 187 staff in all. Factoring in the back-up staff, the number may add up to 300-400 or about 20-25 percent of the families residing in the colonies inside the national park. The rest are retired staff, encroachers or those who illegally bought the houses from irrigation staff when they left the site.

The Irrigation Department also built an engineering academy with hostels in 1982, much after the dam and the hydel project were completed, without obtaining any statutory clearances. Ironically, the department owns 36 hectares at Kalagarh outside the national park boundary and is losing much of it to encroachers. “There is no reason why they shouldn’t shift the few remaining staff and the academy to 60-odd acres lying vacant with them outside the forest and return the national park land,” argues Ashok Kumar of Wildlife Trust of India.

IN 1999, Ashok Kumar, who was then with the Wildlife Protection Society of India, moved the Allahabad High Court. Reacting quickly, the Lucknow Bench set a deadline of 15 December for removal of all encroachment, asking the Irrigation Department not to create third-party rights on forestland and retain only what was essential. Before the deadline expired, Uttar Pradesh was bifurcated and Corbett went to the new state of Uttarakhand.

The Uttar Pradesh Irrigation Department still controlled the Ramganga project but the case files were apparently lost in the chaos of setting up a new high court at Nainital. In 2003, the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) of the Supreme Court heard a petition filed by Pradip Gupta. By then, the subdivisional magistrate of Kotdwar passed orders in 177 cases of encroachment under the Uttar Pradesh Public Premises Act, but no eviction took place because the district magistrate and the superintendent of police failed to show up with the forces on the stipulated days.

The SC asked the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) to conduct a site inspection in 2003 and the CEC in April 2004 submitted its recommendations based on the BNHS report. It sought

• Removal of all encroachment within three months
• Shifting of all non-essential facilities such as the Engineers’ Academy, its hostel and buildings, workshops and other structures out of the reserve within six months
• Relocation of all non-essential operational staff to the irrigation colony outside the Corbett National Park within six months
• Demolition of all walls, fencing, garden furniture, etc, for unhindered animal movement

The case was stalled by the subsequent death of the petitioner till Ashok Kumar took his place. The Uttar Pradesh government has refused to state its stand before the court since. In late 2007, the then chief minister BC Khanduri held a meeting of top Uttarakhand forest officials and asked them to facilitate implementing the CEC recommendations. In 2008, the state filed an affidavit before the court, but no real progress was made on the ground.

While it is bizarre why a department of the government will refuse to vacate national park land, it is not only about reinstating 1.5 sq km of forest. The presence of this mini township inside Corbett and the unhindered movement of vehicles create law and order problems such as illicit entry, removal of biomass and even crimes against wildlife. The presence of domestic livestock spreads disease and has resulted in inter-breeding with wild species, particularly boars, while loudspeakers and firecrackers scare away the animals.

But the biggest worry for conservationists has been the blockage of elephant corridors. The Ramganga dam and reservoir, the 2003 BNHS report pointed out, have virtually divided the tiger reserve into two halves. As a result, the east-west movement of the elephants has been greatly affected and the herds have to either go north of the reservoir and climb the hills or move south below the Ramganga dam and the powerhouse to cross the river. The new Kalagarh colonies block this southern passageway.

While officials of Corbett National Park and the Uttar Pradesh Irrigation Department refused to comment on a “sub-judice issue”, Paramjit Singh, chief conservator of Kumaon, agreed that the “area is absolutely vital for wildlife and should be reclaimed for the national park as soon as possible”. But the 4,000-odd residents of Kalagarh are not worried.

“My parents moved in with many others in these empty quarters because they did not have the money to buy those big bungalows on the main road,” says a man in his 20s, who was born and brought up in a backlane of new Kalagarh. “Officials demolished some dilapidated houses nearby, but our homes are secure. It’s a lot of land. So many big people have stakes here.”

3 December 2013, TEHELKA

Vacate Illegal Kalagarh township inside Corbett reserve, orders SC

End of a decade-long impasse over encroachment to make Corbett’s wildlife safer

The Supreme Court has upheld the 2004 report of its Central Empowered Committee (CEC) to return the encroached New Kalagarh irrigation colony to the Corbett Tiger Reserve. TEHELKA investigated the brazen encroachment of national park land by a state agency in its report A Township Thrives Inside A Tiger Reserve (22 December 2012) by Jay Mazoomdaar. In a landmark judgment on 2 December, the SC has set a six-month deadline for the state government to ensure compliance and report to the court. Read more...

Will development planks ever sink in rotting, dying waters?

Be it Sheila, Modi, Jaya or Hooda, the growth stories our efficient, visionary CMs flaunt have a common blind spot: The death of rivers, and dearth of groundwater, in their rich states.

FirstPost, 18 December, 2012

Delhi will be the first Indian state to allow FDI in retail. Sheila Dikshit has already launched the Aadhar-based direct cash transfer scheme in her model state, declaring, rather unwittingly, that R 600 should be enough to feed a family of five.

For all his protestation in sync with the party line, Vikas Purush Narendra Modi has never refused any FDI (or any investment, for that matter) and is likely to open up retail once he bags the third consecutive mandate from the Gujaratis ostensibly on the development plank.

Delhi and Gujarat are not the only states run by “pragmatic, popular and efficient” chief ministers who don the image of CEOs who get things done in their states. J Jayalalithaa is another suave politician who rules one of India’s most prosperous states. The no-nonsense BS Hooda is the face of his government and Haryana’s so-called economic boom.

These powerful leaders belong to different political parties and their governance models, a generous degree of autocracy apart, are not exactly the same. But all of them are admired for their ability to deliver and credited with rapid development in their states. They also have in their custody India’s most polluted rivers.

The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has identified 35 most polluted river stretches of the country. The quality of water depends on its dissolved oxygen (DO) level that determines how much aquatic life it can support. When water is polluted, the organic waste in it is decomposed (oxidized) by bacteria and microbes. The level of pollution determines the biological oxygen demand (BOD) for the decomposition process. High pollution means high BOD which reduces the DO level, resulting in dead waters that cannot support life.

For human use such as drinking, bathing, washing and irrigation, the fitness level of water is measured by BOD levels which indicate the amount of sewage in it. According to the CPCB, “water bodies having BOD more than 6 mg/litre are considered as polluted and identified for remedial action”.

Discussing pollution in the Yamuna on TV a few years ago, a conservationist infamously crooned a parody of “Ram tera Ganga maili”, substituting the god-warrior with an “impeccably cultured” CM. His prime time etiquette may have been questionable but not the facts. The Yamuna records a BOD level of 32-70mg/litre in Delhi. While the river is dead for nearly 100 km from Panipat to Wazirabad, Delhi contributes 600 million gallons of untreated sewage to the river through its 18 drains every year.

Sabarmati records a BOD level of around 30mg/litre at Ahmedabad’s VN Bridge or Railway Bridge. A few miles away, the pollution level shoots up to 103mg/litre at Miroli village. Two other poison rivers -- Amlakhadi records BOD of 714 milligram/litre at Ankleshwar and Khari 320 mg/litre at Lali village – make Gujarat probably the worst Indian state in terms of river water quality.

The vibrant Gujarat image resonates with hundreds of textile, paper and sugar mills, distilleries, tanneries, dye manufacturers and other chemical factories that churn out pesticides, pharmaceuticals and petrochemicals. Together, these units have also caused the state’s many rivers to stagnate with pollutants and subsequently choke.

Along Chennai, Coovum records a BOD level in excess of 100 mg/litre due to dumping of industrial and municipal wastewater. The other Chennai river, Adyar, records a BOD level of above 40mg/litre near the boat club. Between them, the two rivers receive the bulk of the city’s 55 million tonnes of untreated sewage. Not too far away, a noxious Noyyal river laden with discharge from dyeing and bleaching units has turned the town of Tirupur infertile with scores of patients crowding IVF treatment centres.

The story repeats in Haryana where industrial and domestic waste is responsible for the 600mg/litre BOD level in Markanda river. The Western Yamuna canal in the state is also choked with effluents and show a BOD count of above 200mg/litre. Ghaggar is also packed with effluents in the industrial belt of Sirsa but it already carries loads of waste from Derabassi and Patiala in Punjab. Even rainwater canals of Chandigarh – Attawa and Sukhna Choe – record a BOD level of 50mg/litre due to discharge of sewage.

Haryana and Delhi are also the states that have been registering the fastest loss of groundwater in the country. While experts blame the dominance of water-intensive crops such as paddy in Haryana, the construction boom in an ever-thirsty Delhi has destroyed its water bodies and poured concrete on every patch of soil, stopping rainwater from percolating down.

In 2004, aquifers in 50 per cent of Gujarat were in semi-critical to over-exploited condition. Things have improved since in 60 tehsils, thanks to the government’s initiative to encourage check dams. But large areas in northern Gujarat, such as Banaskantha, Patan and Mehsana, are still parched. Worse, fluoride and nitrate levels in groundwater are above the permissible limit in most parts of the state.

Tamil Nadu also faces severe groundwater shortage as only five out of its 32 districts have reasonably healthy aquifers. With so little to dig into underground, one expected the progressive chief ministers of these prosperous states to zealously look after their surface water stock. Each of them engages in bitter inter-state battles over river water sharing. But that water itself has become poison under their watch.

Of course, rivers are dying across the country and Delhi, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Chandigarh are not the exceptions. Be it Gomti along Lucknow, Mithi in Mumbai or Bharalu in Guwahati, big cities are choking rivers with waste. Poverty is often cited as the biggest excuse for pollution. This makes the so-called prosperous states who claim to have done away with much of poverty more culpable.

Do the visionary images of chief ministers who brag about development in their states take a hit when they fail to notice how the lifelines of their people and economy rot, stink and choke to death? Or is it now per for the course to allow any industry anywhere without bothering about land use or waste disposal implications?

In the short term, such growth puts money in some people’s hands and makes politicians popular. Sheila, Modi, Jaya and Hooda have all been re-elected as chief ministers in the past. Tomorrow when they win again, they will want the world to believe that they are rewarded for their good work, bringing development to their states. There is no trial yet at the people’s court for murdering their most vibrant rivers.

Gateway to Hell

CoP 18 at Doha claimed progress by paving the way for future talks, but really showed how we may have already conceded the fight

Tehelka, December 13, 2012

EXPECTATIONS WERE low at Doha. But the 18th conference of parties (Cop 18) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change surprised even the cynics by legitimising a couldn’t-care-less doctrine. The bright side, if any, is that the masks have finally come off and much of the developed world stands exposed.

If a confirmation of the long-standing commitment of the rich countries to contribute $100 billion annually by 2020 to help the poorer nations cut emissions was overdue, Doha put it on hold for another year. it also slashed by half the promised $60 billion of fast-start finance for three years from 2013 to ’15. it is another matter that the developed nations have not made even the annual contribution of $10 billion assured since 2010.

America’s continued refusal to own up responsibility or open its purse is perhaps justified after Barack Obama gained rich electoral dividend from hurricane Sandy, which many experts believe was a manifestation of rogue climate. But only if we ignore the fact that the storm cost the US economy $50-60 billion and that such natural disasters will get more frequent.

The busiest participants at the Doha summit were the ones with market solutions to climate change. Many observers attributed the extension of the Kyoto pact (more on that later) largely to the lobbying by the multi-billion dollar carbon trading industry, which depends on this protocol as its legal backbone. While the price of one unit of Certified Emission Reduction (CER), equivalent to a tonne of carbon dioxide, fell from $10 to $3 this year, big corporations have a lot at stake in the revival of the industry.

But the carbon trade has remained mired in controversies over frauds, false claims and rights violations. it reaps huge profits for companies, legitimises burning of more fossil fuel and damages the economic system and environment of the developing world. initiatives such as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) can be equally damaging if ownership of land by local communities is not secured.

Meanwhile, the Kyoto protocol has been extended till 2020. But, with Japan, Russia and Canada withdrawing, the current signatories account for just 15 percent of the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The Cop has set 2015 as the deadline for thrashing out a new agreement that will make countries such as the US, China and India meet binding emission reduction targets for the first time. This treaty, if successful, will replace the now-defunct Kyoto pact in 2020.

Given the progress of climate talks where heads of states have stopped participating since the 2009 Copenhagen summit, these deadlines sound rather facetious. Kyoto itself took more than three years of parleys in the 1990s and waited for seven years after its adoption to come into force in 2005. Negotiations have only become inflexible since.

As per the IPCC projections, the global emission levels must peak by 2020 and slide thereafter to 50 percent of the 1990 level by 2050 if we are to contain the temperature rise within 2 degrees Celsius. it requires immediate international efforts to cut down on the volume of incremental emission annually if we are to actually reduce gross emission after eight years.

As things stand after Doha, 85 percent of the GHG emitters will now have no commitment to cut volumes and even the rest — parties to the extended-Kyoto — will be free to set their own targets. By 2020, new pact or not, the climate battle may as good as be over.

The signs of this fait accompli are evident as the focus of the climate negotiations itself is shifting. particularly since Copenhagen, poor and vulnerable countries are looking for doles to survive the effects of climate change rather than forcing a global consensus to reduce emission. Doha, of course, promised a generous Loss and Damage fund. But if we miss our outside chance of prevention today, money will be no cure for global devastation of an unnatural scale.

Why the secular can stop being shocked by the ‘Modi miracle’

Conscience vote is a myth. Just like the superman projection of Modi, or secularism itself. But the political opposition is to blame for missing its opportunities in Gujarat.

FirstPost, 10 December, 2012

Narendra Modi is likely to win again. And again the secularists will grapple in the dark for reasons. It is becoming a predictable routine.

In 2002, they called Modi a criminal fanatic and held his government responsible for scores of deaths. They were confident that the good sense of the majority of Hindus in Gujarat would prevail. They believed that the politics of hate never worked. But Modi could have lost only if a vast section of Hindus voted against him for the complicity of his government in the riots. They did not.

Demonised by the secularists, Modi gratefully recast that gift of a larger-than-life stature into a demi-god mould in 2002. It appealed to Gujarati pride. Many Hindus were sold on his Musharraf-versus-Modi dramatics. Others feared Muslim retribution for the riots in the absence of a pro-Hindu administration. Accounting for around 10 percent of the population, Muslims did not matter. They were anyway browbeaten.

Anti-incumbency, not secularism, worked in the poor regions of southern Gujarat such as Dangs, riot-unaffected Saurashtra, and the quake-hit, relief-starved Kutch where the Congress did well. But the riot-affected areas were swept by the BJP. The secularists were shocked as Modi romped home with 126 seats out of 182. But the mandate only proved that many in Gujarat felt vindicated by the anti-Muslim riots. Others were too busy surviving or plain scared to cast that conscience vote the righteous was confident would topple Modi.

The sulking secularists did not learn their lesson and went on claiming that the frenzy of Hindutva would not last long. But Modi never claimed it would, not on its own. So by 2007, he would project himself as the dedicated CEO of the state. On one hand, the ‘maryada purushottam’ image was bolstered as the iron man repeatedly told Gujaratis how he was ready to die for them and linked it to his anti-terrorism plank. On the other, Modi reinvented himself as the Vikas Purush.

The marriage of Hindutva and development appeared seamless with the easing of communal tension due to the shrinking space for Muslim resistance and fewer curfew hours helping businesses. At the same time, electricity and water reached many villages. Agriculture and real estate sectors flourished. It rained well throughout the term. But Modi’s development model was largely about incentivising the rich at the cost of the poor. But the opposition did not target this skewed growth model.

Instead, the Congress tried to correct its 2002 strategy when it had gone soft on the riots. It tried to take Modi on, attacking his secular credentials, but five years too late. Sonia’s Maut ki Saudagar barb helped Modi stoke the Hindutva fire. While the opposition harped on old communal records, Modi brandished his consistent success in curbing terrorism in the state. Worse, the Congress gave tickets to BJP rebels who had led riotous mobs.

While the secularists barked up the wrong tree, anti-incumbency still brought the BJP’s seats down to 117. Yet, for the second time, Modi rubbed it in. In 2002, the secular intelligentsia helped build his super-human cult and the secular opposition shied away from affronting Hindu sentiments. In 2007, they let Modi define the rules of engagement, helped him revive the Hindutva plank and failed to challenge his ‘vikas purush’ credentials.

If Modi wins this week as predicted, it should not shock the secularists yet again. He has shaped this election as a referendum on his cult that now has national aspirations. Yet, Modi has not fielded a single Muslim candidate lest the state’s disgruntled Hindu hardlinersmake an electoral issue of it. For once, he does not have major pegs to rev up Hindu sentiments and is desperate enough to harp on the apparent Congress plan to plant an “Ahmad-mian Patel” as CM in Gujarat.

His government’s performance has improved in the social sector, particularly in health and education as school dropout rates have fallen. The Vikas Purush brand, though, took a hit when lakhs of poor women lined up to collect forms distributed by the Congress across the state with the promise of a 100-yard plot and Rs 1 lakh loan for house construction if voted to power. A stumped Modi promptly promised in his poll manifesto to build 5 million houses at a cost of Rs 330 billion under Mukhya Mantri Gruh Samrddhi Yojana. For once, he looked shaky.

The Modi government has also failed to arrest the alarmingly high rate of female foeticide among the rich, take water to places such as Sabarkantha or set up quality higher education institutes in the state. The huge land stock with the government is being doled out to boost industries irrespective of its social and environmental consequences even in fragile landscapes such as Kutch.

These are not issues the secular opposition has highlighted during the election campaign. Little has been debated about Modi’s refusal to appoint a Lokayukta in a state where the political clout of industries, big farmers and real estate groups rivals that of the politicians. Among the contestants this year, across parties, there are 147 crorepatis and 104 with declared criminal records. No wonder the opposition’s demand for a watchdog has remained feeble.

Ironically, none of the factors that may actually hurt Modi this election is a secular issue. He faces resistance from hardliners in the Sangh as Leuva Patel leaders led by Keshubhai and friends-turned-detractors such as Pravin Togadia have come together in the Saurashtra-Kutch region. The support of the largest Gujarati community of Kolis is no more secure as their leader and Modi aide Purshottam Solanki has been accused in a multi-crore fisheries scam. Also, delimitation of constituencies has made Muslims votes the key in at least a dozen constituencies.

Chances are Modi will overcome these hiccups. None of these factors are likely to decidedly erode his vote bank, particularly among the youth, who want a ‘good’and ‘safe’ life irrespective of its immediate and long term human, social, economic or environmental cost. There is one myth bigger than Modi-the-superman, or secularism itself. It is about humanity and its inherent goodness and wisdom. The sooner we come to terms with that the better.

Two Faces of Public Good

Welfare of the wild should not compromise people’s safety. But our insensitivity is matched only by our administrative laxity.

Tehelka, 7 December, 2012

THE FLARE-UP over cattle-lifting by tigers around Kerala’s Wayanad wildlife sanctuary (Just How Many Is Too Many 08 December) led to the killing of a big cat this Sunday. The forest officials were trying to tranquilise the animal. But the presence of a raucous mob with sticks and cameras added to the tiger’s stress levels and it did not go down even after two darts were fired. So the officials shot it.
Legally, a chief wildlife warden can order the killing of a “maneater” if the animal attacks three humans in quick succession. The tiger in question did not ever attack people. Cattle-lifting is compensated for and not a justification for shooting a predator. It is inexplicable why the forest staff allowed an angry crowd to interfere with its operation and did not seek or get police cover.
The state has ordered an inquiry into the killing. But forest officials have already justified the shooting, invoking Section 11(1)A of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, as a self-defence measure to ensure public safety. In such cases, inquiries have a way of blaming mobs without holding the administration accountable for ceding control.

In neighbouring Karnataka, the high court constituted a task force to find solutions to the human-elephant conflict raging in Hassan and Kodagu districts. 
With less than 5 sq km of forest available in this 200 sq km patch, the elephants here depend entirely on the cropland. They number less than 30, but their presence in a crowded landscape means that, on an average, one person is killed every four months. The fragmented herd also causes extensive crop damage in 79 affected villages while frequently injuring people.
As a result, the growing hostility of residents towards elephants and a frustrated administration has created a permanent state of emergency. People seldom go out after sundown and in the early hours. The local forest staff has been attacked on occasion and a number of elephants have been killed.
The task force found that “the current population of elephants in the Alur region did not exist there 30-40 years ago, but is a dispersing population from some larger population (most probably from the south), and it has moved in relatively recently”. These 26-odd elephants are completely cut off from other herds of the state and by themselves do not constitute a viable population.
It also ruled out building natural corridors as the animals, used to roaming the cropland, were not likely to take such paths back to the forests from where they wandered out. If anything, such corridors would only bring more elephants to these agricultural fields.
To create a suitable habitat, it argued, the government would have to acquire around 200 sq km of private land at a minimum cost of Rs 2,500 crore and resettle tens of thousands of people. Even such expenditure would not ensure a long-term future of this small, isolated herd. So in its recent report, the task force recommended that all these elephants be captured and trained to be used by the forest department.
The task force, however, failed to identify and address the factors that made these elephants disperse from the source populations in the forest towards the south. Without fixing those issues, future dispersal and subsequent conflict cannot be ruled out just by creating physical barriers such as trenches and electric fences.
Nevertheless, the recommendation of removal is a sound, practical solution to a crisis caused by elephants encroaching on cropland and not by people taking over forests. This bold step will help conservation in the long run by sending the right message to the people.
In Wayanad, on the other hand, incidents of cattle-lifting have, in fact, come down this year. But insensitive hype over tiger numbers created a counter-constituency of affected people, which is now being milked by politicians. Then, as if to compensate for its over-enthusiasm, the administration let the mob take it out on a tiger.