Tehelka, 24 March, 2012
DEEP INSIDE the core of Buxa Tiger Reserve in north Bengal and at the heart of a vast forest landscape that includes Bhutan’s Phipsu wildlife sanctuary is the settlement of Jayanti. Set up during the Raj to facilitate mining, this was a busy railway station transporting dolomite and limestone till the mid-1980s before conservation became the priority.
Today, Jayanti is a sizeable village that appears larger with a paramilitary camp and the Forest Department campus adjacent to it. All that remains of the abandoned railway station is the canteen, since converted into a dhaba that serves jawans, forest staff and tourists. The iron tracks have long been dug out and sold as scrap.
In 2008, the Forest Department conducted a survey of the forest settlements inside Buxa under the voluntary village resettlement scheme. The villagers at Jayanti were keen to move out with the 10 lakh-per-family compensation package. What helped build this consensus was a rapid realignment of the Jayanti river, which threatened to wash the village away. While the threat persists, Jayanti has not been able to shift to safety because the village soon became a political battleground.
The guides’ association of Jayanti affiliated itself to the Trinamool Congress and locked horns with a proxy-Left Forest Department. These guides and a section of the villagers who offered homestay to visitors refused to relocate and demanded that sundry forest laws be bent to promote tourism. Relaying of the railway tracks to Jayanti from Rajabhatkhawa, cutting across the core forests of the tiger reserve, was one such demand.
Nobody took it seriously. The railway track till Rajabhatkhawa was broadened in 2001 and has claimed the lives of nearly three dozen elephants since. The railways has been under pressure to stop night traffic along that killer stretch. The idea of extending the same line to the interiors of a core tiger reserve seemed out of question, until Mamata Banerjee took over as the railways minister in 2009. Never to miss out on a chance to cultivate a support base, she ordered a feasibility study of the line.“Soon after Mamata became the minister, rail officials conducted a low-key survey. But we never heard anything after that and, frankly, did not bother because it was never an issue here,” says Lal Singh Bhujel, a local activist who has been mobilising villagers for the implementation of the Forest Rights Act in the area.
In 2011, Banerjee became chief minister. It was time to reward and cement her support bases. So Dinesh Trivedi, while hiking the fare against his party supremo’s wish, sanctioned the Rajabhatkhawa- Jayanti line in his budget. Many in Jayanti hailed the announcement.
“I have not been intimated about any such project yet. This was not in the agenda of the last meeting of the State Wildlife Board held on 6 February. A railway line through Buxa is certainly not good news for wildlife,” says RP Saini, field director, Buxa Tiger Reserve, adding that he would, of course, carry out any government decision within the sanctions of the law.
Siliguri-based Soumitra Ghosh, convener of National Forum of Forest People and Forest Workers, makes it clear that his organisation never raised such a demand. He is worried that railway connectivity to Jayanti may add to the tourism mess in the area.
In the political drama that followed the budget, nobody pointed out the absurdity of clearing a new line inside a tiger reserve, which requires a host of statutory clearances under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, and Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, to a village that may soon move out or be washed off.
Even the future of wildlife tourism now depends on the Supreme Court and if the court orders against tourism in core forests, the line will serve no one. Unless the very idea of a train to Jayanti is to expose, Mamata-style, the UPA government’s policy contradictions.
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