STRIPES ON SALE

An American TV show backs commercial breeding of tigers. But farming the big cat, writes Jay Mazoomdaar, cannot save the species in the wild.

New Indian Express, 17 May, 2009

The cat is slowly coming out of the bag. For long, the world suspected tacit official patronage of illegal tiger farms in China even after Beijing was forced to ban trade in tiger parts in 1993. Then, before the last meeting of the Conve­ntion on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in 2008, Chinese officials unsuccessfully argued how the ban had cost their economy $4 billion and that captive-bred tigers could sustain the trade and also replenish the wild stock.

The farming lobby claims that providing a low-priced supply of tiger parts to customers will reduce the profit margins of poachers, making killing of wild tigers unviable. So their solution for saving tigers from extinction is to breed them commercially in farms as we currently breed chicken or cattle. This concept has many takers in the US, the only country with a pet tiger population larger than China’s. But this lobby also needs some support in India, the country with more than half of the world’s remaining wild tigers, and the campaign is gaining momentum.

First it was Barun Mitra, head of Liberty Institute who “visited China as a guest of the government to learn about tiger conservation”. Then it was Jaithirth Rao, India’s leading banker-turned-entrepreneur-turned-columnist. And now it is John Stossel, America’s star consumer reporter who anchors the highly popular 20/20 show. Between them, they have occupied prime news space on some top media organisations — New York Times, India Today, The Indian Express, Hindustan Times and, of course, ABC News.

But for all that, sample this. To name only two reporters, Danny Penman (Daily Mail) and Simon Parry (PostMagazine) documented last year how the Xiongsen Park in Guilin, China, was farming tigers in hundreds — each squeezed in like a battery hen — so that they could be eaten or turned into wine.

While Penman mentioned 140 tigers in the freezer to be served up on a menu as strips of stir-fried tiger with ginger and vegetables or tiger soup or spicy red curry made with tender tiger strips, Parry recalls the park’s sales manager Xhao Runghui ruing how he could not advertise tiger wine in Beijing because the Olympics were coming up.

However gruesome the idea of consuming tiger meat or wine may sound, it is not the reason why tiger farming is a remarkably dumb idea. Ethics or values aside, tiger farming simply does not make any economic or ecological sense.

First, farming only makes poaching more rewarding. Anyone who has an idea of a tiger’s daily consumption would know how much it costs to rear a tiger in captivity before it becomes “marketable”. If it must bring a reasonable margin in the market, it cannot be low-priced. Wild tigers virtually come for free and mean “total profit” to poachers. So in an open market, a poacher’s incentives would actually be greater as there would be no way to distinguish the bones of ‘farmed’ tigers from those of wild tigers.

Second, the argument that tigers — like chicken or sheep — will never go extinct if we farm them for consumption is misleading. Conservation is not just about saving tigers from going extinct but saving the tigers in the wild. Otherwise, we already have enough tigers in the zoos to secure live specimens for many generations to come.

The challenge before us is to save the tiger in the wild, so that with the tiger flourishing at the top of the food chain, everything down the pyramid flourishes. If the pyramid is alive, so will be the forests around it and the water systems that are sustained by such forests.

The farming lobby often cites the example of crocodiles having become successful commercial animals with an estimated two million harvested each year in Australia, South Africa and the US. But crocodiles are found in 91 countries and there are 23 surviving species. For each tiger in the wild, there were always hundreds of crocodiles. However, commercial success cannot save an endangered species in the wild. The Chinese themselves could do precious little about their highly endangered alligators. Despite repeated attempts at captive breeding and release since 1979, to quote Xinhua, there are just about 150 Chinese alligators left in the wild.

And, finally, what about China’s own tiger experience? Their tiger farms have been trading legally for years (with implicit official support since 1993). Today, China has thousands of tigers in cages but less than 50 survive poaching in the wild.

Unfortunately, reintroduction of captive-bred or farmed tigers in the wild has never succeeded. No wonder even the Chinese plan to reintroduce tigers bred in a South African zoo in its forests is yet to take off.

So then, how do we save the tiger? Well, to borrow a phrase from the farming lobby, by generating strong incentives. But for that we need not domesticate and kill tigers. We have to integrate efficient protection and practical management plans with popular participation.

As a rule, we have to involve the locals — not only for menial jobs — but also in protection work and responsible tourism. Protected well, our wilderness will not only ensure our food and water security but also sustain a multi-billion dollar tourism industry. If alive in the wild, the tiger will remain the ultimate mascot of that economy.

The writer is an independent journalist and filmmaker. mazoomdaar@gmail.com

Governments change, a few policies don't

Whichever coalition is to share power for the next five years, mindless plunder of natural resources will continue unabated

NEW INDIAN EXPRESS, 15 May, 2009

PSEPHOLOGISTS and punters may burn their fingers trying to predict the results of this Lok Sabha election and the nature of the subsequent political realignments, but I’m not giving away any prizes for guessing the next government’s stand on certain issues. Whichever formation comes to power, the defence budget will go up. No government can significantly alter India’s foreign policy. No finance minister dare slash self-defeating subsidies. Corruption will stay institutionalised. And mindless plunder of our natural resources will continue.

I understand that the demands of development will always make a few sacrifices necessary. In an informed, responsible society, such decisions are made in the absence of an alternative. In India, successive governments have cleared projects that allow destruction of forest, riverine or marine ecosystems in amazing hurry and without any economic or scientific justification.

What helps this tradition of official plunder is a general atmosphere of mistrust that dismisses even the most logical voices as anti-development ranting. Every time activists and experts object to development projects, we reduce the case to a petty growth-versus-green debate. Surely, neither a blanket approval nor ban on such projects makes sense. But why cannot the authorities decide every case on its merit, relying on an objective cost-benefit analysis?

Take a highway project cutting through a sanctuary. To calculate the cost involved, the authorities need to formulate a standard mechanism for computing, in monetary terms, the value of the ecological loss in question. The benefit is easier to calculate: how much will be saved on construction expense by avoiding a longer alignment outside the forest and how much time and fuel will be saved by vehicles avoiding such a detour. Unless government agencies derive such concrete cost-benefit comparatives project by project, their decisions will continue to be arbitrary and leave room for manipulation.

Why only highways, most government approvals for destroying forests through mining or construction fail to justify the need for such drastic measures. Consider the infamous example of Kudremukh Iron Ore Company Limited which was ripping apart one of India’s best forests for opencast mining even though the quality of iron sludge there was so inferior that the same could be obtained from hundreds of other places in the country.

Take our dams. Still considered a great symbol of development, most dams are not only harmful, they are unnecessary. For example, Gujarat boasts nearly 400 water bodies, other than the rivers, and a total water surface of over 2,000 sq km. Still the state’s overdrive for irrigation has led to construction of more than 200 dams with a total inundation area of about 1,400 sq km. Apart from submerging hundreds of hectares of forest land under reservoirs, so many dams and their massive irrigation network are destroying river ecologies and fast turning large areas saline.

Unfortunately, our governments do not desist from quick-fix measures even when they bring disastrous consequences. Consider the tragedy of the Kosi, notorious for devastating floods in north Bihar. Embankments stopped the river’s natural dispersion of sediments on the floodplains, making the riverbed rise by 12-15 feet with silt. Modern hydrology says that a meandering river with heavy silt load, like Kosi that has drifted 160 km in the past 250 years, cannot be stifled to equilibrium. Such rivers need to be tackled with spatial flood protection measures, allowing room for moderate flooding. But even after thousands of lives have been lost, the government is again trying to build embankments on Kosi and, in the process, setting the stage for another flooding disaster.

Let alone forests and rivers, something as basic as water supply can lead governments to seek outlandish solutions where simple correction of the system will do. Delhi Jal Board (DJB) has revived the 15-year-old Renuka dam project in the name of meeting the Capital’s water shortage.

Ironically, Delhi wastes more than 40 per cent of its supplied water due to distribution losses, largely due to old, corroded pipelines. While the Renuka project earmarks 275 million gallon water per day for Delhi, DJB can save up to 268 million gallon per day by fixing the distribution network. This should not be a tough task if DJB diverts the Rs 3,000 crore allocated for construction of the Renuka dam to modernise its distribution and regulatory network.

Instead, the authorities have decided to inundate 2,000 hectares of forest and agricultural land in an eco-sensitive lower Himalayan landscape. The plan includes denotification and submergence of the Renuka Wildlife Sanctuary and displacement of at least 700 families. Moreover, no assessment has been done of the impact of the proposed dam on the nearby Renuka Lake, a wetland that was declared a Ramsar site (under the International Ramsar Convention) in 2005. But of course, it is easier to dam a river than fix leaking pipelines or rein in rich Delhiites who still love to use garden hoses to wash their cars.

As long as this mindset determines policy making, I have little hope that the next government, whatever the unique arithmetic of the Lok Sabha, will do anything different to secure the country’s precarious ecological future. True, none of our politicians ever sought mandate on the environmental plank. But can we not expect a little common sense from our governments though it never figures on any list of poll promises?

(The writer is an independent journalist and filmmaker. E-mail: mazoomdaar@gmail.com)

THE THING ABOUT THE TIGER

Be it in Kanha, the Sunderbans or Corbett, too many tigers are still dying unnatural deaths. But why is saving the tiger so important? And how can you contribute?

MINT (Lounge), 25 April, 2009

Before you snigger at yet another tiger story, let me assure you that I understand your point. Yes, it is our national animal and yes, it is quite a sight even in the zoo. But in a country that is wracked by poverty, unemployment and terrorism, does the tiger deserve prime ministerial intervention?
No wonder you just don’t get this thing about the tiger.
The more compassionate among us might spare a thought for it were we not repelled by rabid environmentalists who seem to value all living beings except humans. But for most, the tiger does not make the cut. It does not even make a legal pet. Is there, then, a valid case for saving the tiger?
Years ago, I was with some children at the Dhikala Complex in Corbett National Park. When I asked why they were there, they told me they had come “to see a tiger”. Why tiger? “It’s so big and powerful…even elephants are scared of it…”
At this point, a proud father prompted his seven-year-old to say “We must save the tiger” and a few other children echoed the same thought. But when I asked them why they should do so, even the parents looked foxed.
Suddenly, a tiny girl threw up her hand and said in a sing-song voice: “…because it is the king of beasts”. With a few children protesting “nooo, that’s the lion”, the parents broke into indulgent laughter.
But I had my answer. This whole thing about the tiger is not about the tiger.
Though it is indeed the king of the Indian forests, having won the territorial battle with the Asiatic lion long ago, let us not meddle with traditional titles. What children understand as king of beasts is, in fact, the ecological equivalent of the apex predator or the animal at the top of a food pyramid. In that sense, both lions and tigers are kings.
Common sense tells us that to keep the top block in place, every block down the pyramid must be in place. So a healthy tiger population typically indicates that everything is fine with the rest of the forest. The same is true of the lion, but it can serve as an indicator only for Sasan Gir National Park, Gujarat. The tiger roams much of India’s best forests. So this thing about the tiger is really about the entire forest.
In talking to children, few can match Mumbai-based environmentalist Bittu Sahgal, who runs the Kids For Tigers campaign. Some of his ploys are dramatic. One of his routines is to call two children on stage (usually a boy with cropped hair and a girl with a thick mop). He asks them to bend over, then pours a glass of water on their heads. Then he takes out two white handkerchiefs to wipe their hair dry. He demonstrates how the handkerchief used by the boy gets less wet than the one used by the girl. It’s Sahgal’s way of telling children how forest cover is essential for our water security.
Our forests are the source of 300 rivers and perennial streams; without forests, these water bodies would dry up.
There are many other reasons to value our remaining 64 million hectares of forests. A few years ago, the Centre put a conservative annual estimate of Rs40,000 crore as the value of assets exploited from forests— from biggies such as timber, medicinal plants and salt, to lesser derivatives such as tendu leaves, or firewood. This figure does not include minerals (around 75% of our mines are inside forests), encroached plantations or illegal wildlife trade. A more realistic estimate, based on independent studies, of the annual value of our forest produce would be around Rs75,000 crore.
The thing about the tiger is about protecting this treasure trove, ensuring our water security, and enjoying an annual dividend of around Rs75,000 crore. Anyone who has fathomed this has a very selfish reason to bother about the big cat.
The thing about the tiger is about us.
When I uncovered the local extinction of tigers at the Sariska National Park, Rajasthan, in January 2005, the government’s initial response was that of denial. But later, the Prime Minister’s office, the Supreme Court and the Central Bureau of Investigation got involved. There was a new Central legislation (the Wildlife Protection Amendment Act, 2006) and two new Central agencies (the National Tiger Conservation Authority and the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau). The budget for tiger conservation was increased fourfold to Rs600 crore in the 11th Plan.
Why then are tigers still dying frequent unnatural deaths? Why the disturbing headlines from Tadoba, Kanha, Pilibhit, Sunderbans or Corbett in the past few months? We can blame the lacunae in the system. But on the ground, the biggest threats are habitat loss, conflict with people and poaching.
The tiger is a territorial animal. There are gender concessions as the larger territory of a male overlaps with several smaller territories of females. But no two adult males or females usually share space.
If they are lucky to survive their first two years, tiger cubs leave their mothers and go looking for their own territories. However, these sub-adults (known as floaters) don’t easily find space unclaimed by adult tigers.
At this stage, a floater may kill or chase away a resident tiger or get killed or chased away. If alive, the displaced weakling or the young floater moves towards the forest periphery and may circle the forest till it gets lucky and finds a slot. Otherwise, it may find a patch that connects its native forest to an adjoining forest where it may try to shift. If there is no peripheral forest (known as buffer) or connecting patches (known as corridors) to temporarily accommodate these displaced weaklings or young floaters, the animals run into people. Such encounters usually trigger conflict and the animals are eventually killed or sent to zoos.
In natural circumstances, dispersal and deaths maintain the balance in a tiger population. But external disturbance such as mining or highways or habitation inside a forest reduces the size of the prime habitat (known as core area) and pushes too many tigers towards the buffer. These dispersed tigers are doomed if we allow agriculture, hotel resorts and other human activities right at the edge of the forest, if we cram the animals for space and pushes them into conflict. Over time, this combination of a disturbed core, a non-existent buffer and no connectivity between forests makes a tiger population locally unsustainable. Then, the remaining few are taken out by poachers, as in Sariska.
Poaching tigers is a highly specialized job that only a handful of traditional hunting communities are capable of. Without them, no poaching mafia can run the trade. But while the syndicates make Rs20-50 lakh per tiger, these hunters do the high-risk job for merely a few thousand rupees.
I know several tiger poachers who struggle to support a family of 8-12. When not hunting, they earn less than Rs50 a day if they get work as daily wagers. Their amazing jungle sense is a rare gift but it has little use in our legal economy.
The emphasis of our anti-poaching strategies has been on guards and guns. But guarding thousands of hectares of forests is physically impossible and financially draining. Targeted empowerment of the hunting communities is more feasible and effective. For foolproof protection, we need a carrot-and-stick policy that combines incentives for reforms with strict enforcement.
Most communities living around tiger forests are hostile to the tiger because the protection regime restricts their livelihood options and they also end up as victims of conflict. Such hostility not only leads to frequent retaliatory killings but also allows poaching mafias to make easy inroads. Our conservation policies need to be inclusive and offer these people enough incentives to support the tiger.
We cannot altogether deny the need for forest land to meet the demands of economic growth. But we must learn to distinguish between forests, between what is still pristine and what is already degraded. India’s conservation efforts will remain ad hoc till the government formulates a national policy for land use, decides what percentage of land we can afford to leave aside as inviolate forest, identifies and prioritizes the best forests within that ceiling, and protects the designated areas uncompromisingly.
Forget the government for a while. What can you do to save the tiger? Of course, you do not buy products made from wildlife. Yes, some of you send your children to rally for the tiger. But you can do a lot more:
• As an individual or a small organization or business, you can directly support effective conservation projects. Not only money, your specialized skills could help and you could devote a few weeks a year on the field.
• You can visit a hostel near Ranthambore National Park, Rajasthan, and teach the children of a traditional hunting community, the Mogiyas. A project here (www.tigerwatch.net) also trains Mogiya women in handicrafts, markets the products and employs Mogiya men as forest guides or anti-poaching informers.
• Another project, run by the Corbett Foundation (www.corbettfoundation.org) in collaboration with World Wildlife Fund-India, provides on-the-spot compensation (in addition to the government compensation that usually takes months) for any loss due to man-animal conflict around the Corbett National Park.
• You can choose from other innovative models of change such as setting up biogas plants or subsidizing LPG to cut dependence on firewood. But check if the projects are sound before investing time or money. Typically, any project that does not start showing results by the mid-term is suspect. It always makes sense to visit the project site, even if as a tiger tourist, once a year.
• While holidaying in the wild, you could opt for hotels that follow the ethics of wildlife tourism and generate local employment. Travel Operators For Tigers (www.toftigers.org), for example, is one such international movement that promises a light carbon footprint.
• If you have the power to decide for a big business house, why not trigger a turnaround? Why not buy strategic tracts of private land between adjoining forests, settle the rights of landless people residing or depending on those tracts, and hand over the land to the government to serve as undisturbed forest buffers or corridors?
• You can also just keep it small and simple by saying no to plastic, switching off appliances that are not in use, opting for a carpool to school or work, planting trees in your backyard—every little act that helps your future helps the tiger too.
If nothing else, talk about the big cat once in a while. And tell those who do not get this thing about the tiger.
Jay Mazoomdaar is an independent journalist. He won the International Press Institute award for exposing the extinction of tigers at Sariska Tiger Reserve in The Indian Express.

A Climate For Green Terror

By cracking down on dissent, we are inviting a violent backlash

New Indian Express, April 10, 2009

The shattered windows of the Royal Bank of Scotland, the target of a section of protesters during the G-20 summit at London, did not tell even half the story. The Metropolitan Police managed to “kettle” (pin down to a location) thousands of protesters for hours and claimed that they successfully “minimised the damage”. But the claim did not take into account the cost of tackling the protest itself. The damage to the exchequer was £7.5 million – astounding, considering it took less than £19 million to host the grand summit.

Now, consider the psychological fallout. The kettling of thousands of protestors outside the Bank of England for so long turned the area into a stinking public lavatory. Each and every protester was photographed and identified, in effect, treated like a criminal. At least one British daily put it bluntly: “The thing about kettles is that they do have a tendency to come to the boil.”

In 2005, the famed wetland of Bharatpur’s Keoladeo National Park that gets flooded post-monsoon and hosts thousands of migratory birds in the winter, became stone dry and desolate. Under pressure from farmers who depended on a dam upstream, the state had refused to release water to the park for the second consecutive year. Petitions and protests made no difference and the wetland ecology was on the verge of irreversible damage.

Sitting in an empty hotel lobby in a ghost town which usually bristled with birds and bird-lovers, I could sense the mounting frustration among a few local activists who had joined me. Suddenly, one of them stood up, angry, his eyes glistening, and asked me if I could help him procure a few dynamite sticks. “How many do we need to blast a crack in that damn dam to flood the park?”

To my surprise, he immediately had others backing his idea. No, I did not encourage the plan but, honestly, at that moment, it did not sound too outrageous. Fortunately, a bumper monsoon saved Keoladeo that year. But the term “green terrorism” had come into existence, at least in FBI files, long before 2005.

A CBS 60Minutes show in 2005 brought the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) into the public domain but the “Elves” – as ELF activists are known – were classified as the top domestic terror threat by the FBI as early as in 2001 for causing ecotage (economic sabotage to stop the destruction of the environment). The Animal Liberation Front, ELF’s big brother, was active even in the 80s and together, they have caused damages worth billions of dollars so far.

The ELF first hit the headlines in 1998 when it burnt down a ski resort in Vail for refusing to shelve an expansion plan that would have destroyed the last lynx habitat in Colorado. Since then, the group has burnt down dozens of SUVs and luxury housings and targeted universities for their research in genetic engineering. A gasoline bomb caused the Michigan State University $1.1 million in damages. The University of Washington suffered $7 million in damages when the Elves destroyed its laboratories and archives.

A number of ELF activists have been sentenced, some under terror laws, to jail terms exceeding 10 years but that hasn’t stopped others. Last year, the Elves planted explosive devices to set fire to four multi-million dollar homes in Washington’s Echo Lake.

If a handful of radicals could inflict such damage, imagine the implication of pushing so many thousands towards a doctrine of violence. And this is not just about methods of protest management during mega summits. Our general response to dissent has become confrontational, if not outright brutal. A couple of weeks before this G-20 meet, Greenpeace activists were ruthlessly thrashed by security guards outside the headquarters of Indonesia's biggest logging and palm oil company, the Sinar Mas Group, in Jakarta.

At Chevron’s Parabe offshore facility in 1998, security officers flew in Nigerian military to open fire on villagers peacefully protesting Chevron's destruction of environment and traditional fishing and farming practices. Two protesters were killed, a few seriously wounded and many detained and tortured for refusing to sign false confessions.

In 2004, Indonesian environmental activist Bestari Raden was convicted and jailed on charges of separatism, rebellion and inciting acts of violence for opposing the construction of a highway through virgin rainforest. In April 2006, Filipino environmental activist Elpidio de la Victoria was shot, allegedly by a senior police officer, for spearheading a campaign to protect the Visayan Sea.

In India, one doesn’t need to travel to the hinterland to look for such stories. Sumaira Abduali, a member of Bombay Environmental Action Group, was beaten up by the dredging mafia for trying to stop illegal sand mining at the Kihim beach. More recently, Challa Krishnamurthy of Karnataka, a green activist and advocate of organic farming, was shot dead by hired gunmen for trying to expose how local companies dumped untreated waste on farmland near Bangalore.

But this is not just about law-and-order issues or denial of democratic rights. While atrocities committed by the state or business conglomerates may act as a trigger, the ground for violence is being prepared by a gradual loss of faith.

But when even the best documented cases, presented on foundations of science, fail to defeat ill-conceived projects and policies, can activism be blamed for losing faith in the power of reason? For example, if mining continues against all scientific, economic and ecological rationale in some of the world’s most pristine forests, do we expect green activists to give up the fight because they have exhausted all legal and civil options?

States and masters of global economy have done little to assure the green lobby that they are genuinely interested in dialogue. As a result, protests are already seeking unorthodox expression. If we miss these early signals, green terrorism might soon become much more than FBI jargon. If that happens, it will be a lose-all endgame between the earth and the economy.

The author is an independent journalist and filmmaker. mazoomdaar@gmail.com

Beyond An Hour Of Darkness

It is easy to switch off lights for the Earth Hour. But it won’t save the planet

New Indian Express, March 28, 2009

WILL you join what is being advertised as the largest global campaign of all time? Well, more than a billion people will when they switch off their home or office lights for an hour at 8-30 pm (local time) this Saturday, “sending a powerful global message that it is possible to take action on climate change”.

Of course, a few billion others have other plans that evening and please do not feel unsure if you are among them. It does not matter. It really does not matter unless you are prepared to mind your unnecessary appliances every hour and every day. Unless you are ready to cut down your overall, wasteful consumption – from fuel to food – and go for a lifestyle makeover. Switching off for an hour is too damn easy, and dangerous.

Tokenism is always fraught with dangers of falsity. But campaigns like the Earth Hour offer individuals a particularly dangerous bargain – great satisfaction at a nominal sacrifice. You switch off for an hour, have fun (maybe by consuming more power listening to musical blasts), and feel good that you have voted for the planet. The next day, and the year after, you may continue guzzling unmindfully since you have already done your green bit in style.

I am not a cynic. But I do not want to fool myself. The Earth Hour campaign is in its third year and claiming phenomenal growth in participation -- from 2.2 million in 2007 to about 50 million last year and more than a billion this week. But where is the proof of any tangible change in the consumer mindset?

Annual increase in the global consumption of electricity is hovering around the double-digit mark since 2005. Sydney, where the Earth Hour movement was famously kicked off in 2007, recorded a 16.56 per cent growth in power consumption between 2006-07 and 2007-08. Even if we discount the huge power demand to keep the city’s water pumps going, consumption at office and public buildings went up by 9.12 per cent in the same time period.

In comparison, Delhi, a “developing” city with a higher population and no history of Earth Hour campaign, records much less annual growth – between 4-5 per cent -- in power demand. What no climate change campaign could have done was achieved by a hike in power tariff and stricter anti-tampering initiatives.

The Earth Hour campaign does make a symbolic point and, more importantly, keeps the issue of climate change in news, coming a day before the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) starts its first 11-day inter-session meeting in Bonn, and a few months before the Copenhagen Climate meet due in December. But, by brandishing figures of participants -- 1000-plus cities and one billion-plus people -- the campaign also raises false hope.

Many of us accept the need to cut down unnecessary, unscientific and unsustainable consumption. Some of us do not. But most of us simply do not care – either because we are too rich or too poor or just inert. The rich-poor divide will be up for debate at Copenhagen. But we must accept that adapting to a low-carbon lifestyle and economy is not easy because of our inertia, if nothing else. This is true for individuals and so it is true for governments.

Honestly, how many of the billion-plus who will switch off this Saturday are expected to make “permanent lifestyle compromises” should their governments make a few necessary or mandatory? Forget feeling the heat of such tokenism, few governments will ever risk green reforms assuming their people are not prepared to accept corresponding lifestyle changes.

While campaigns like the Earth Hour rightly address the issue by targeting individuals, unfortunately, they also opt for the easy way out. I do not think there is any dearth of options for strategising a campaign that could make a real difference. With all the existing resources – clout, funds and volunteers – such campaigns could try enrolling people who would make commitments of cutting down, say, 20 per cent of their energy consumption. Members -- individuals and organisations -- would furnish their bills to show how they have done over a period of time. It is very much possible to log such individuals on a global web register and quantify the change.

Instead of a billion switching off for an hour because it is fashionable, I will any day take even a few million converts making lifestyle changes because they really care. Each of these converts would be an inspirational example to convince more people. Yes, such campaigns would have been hard work and the figures would not have made the glamorous jump from 2.2 million to 1 billion in two years. But over a longer period of time, they would have worked a true miracle that could decisively force governments’ hands. Besides, a community of a billion no-waste consumers would anyway have had an impact on the planet’s future.

Wishful thinking? Maybe, maybe not.

So will I switch off this Saturday evening? I might, I anyway like darkness. You, too, should switch off unless you have a good excuse. In either case, please remember to switch off appliances and engines every time you think possible. That may or may not save the earth, but you will save some money.

Author is an independent journalist and filmmaker

Big cat is fair game

Without science, money and mandate won't save the tiger

The Times Of India (edit, pg 22) March 21, 2009

In this age of notoriously short public memory, it is good news for conservation that the tiger issue is still alive in the media. But even after so much media outcry for so long, the tiger still makes only sad headlines. Why only the media, some of the country's mightiest institutions Parliament, Supreme Court, the Prime Minister's Office and CBI have devoted unusual attention to the tiger since the 2005 Sariska expose. But too many big cats officially 39 in the last three years are still getting killed.

So, why is our conservation story still a mess despite all the attention and resources? Maybe most of us who are supposed to fix it don't know how. Consider how we handle so-called maneaters. Be it Tadoba, Sunderbans or Corbett, the administrative response to conflict is usually ad hoc and much of the media coverage just provocative. In most cases after an attack, the media and the local officials hastily label the tiger a maneater, make people panic and together hound the top authorities who, in turn, save their skin by issuing orders to capture or kill the "beast".

The danger and excitement associated with maneaters can make many jump the gun (or pen). But how can we expect even the more sensible forest officers and reporters to act responsibly if they have no knowledge of tiger behaviour? Ironically, it does not take too much to be reasonably sure about the nature of an animal attack.

I was in Corbett in June 2005 when an attempt was made to dub a tigress a maneater after an attack on a mess worker in the Dhikala complex. It made for a fascinating story. The tigress with her four semi-adult cubs used to come looking for scavenging animals near a garbage dump where Dhikala mess workers disposed of kitchen leftovers. One night, a mess worker returned to his quarter late. As he bent over to unlock his hutment door, a tiger pounced on him. His screams made his colleagues rush to the spot and the tiger scampered, leaving the man badly injured.

This triggered a rumour of a maneater tigress roaming free around Dhikala. The tourist rush to the lodging complex reached an all-time high. A curfew would be imposed daily at seven in the evening and forest patrol parties guarded the complex through the night. During the investigation, it became clear that the tigress was not to blame. One of her cubs had mistaken the mess worker for prey. The tiger could not break the victim's neck, indicating that the animal was one of the inexperienced cubs. The Corbett authorities did not buckle under pressure and no attempt was made to capture or kill the tigress. No subsequent attack was reported.

In contrast, the tiger that recently attacked a woman in Corbett was promptly tracked down and packed off to a zoo. But for a central intervention that irked a number of Uttarakhand officials, it would have been shot dead. Similarly, in defiance of biological indicators, the Uttar Pradesh forest department's response to five so-called maneaters was determined by assumptions, media hype and public pressure. When the Centre forced the state to revoke arbitrary shoot-at-sight orders, it triggered a turf war. Not long ago in Tadoba, officials shot down a wrong tiger a robust male to placate angry villagers demanding elimination of a tigress accused of serial attacks. Bandhavgarh also lost a couple of so-called maneaters to zoos, no questions asked.

Mindless killing or trapping of big cats has become almost a seasonal routine in Sunderbans where simple steps like effective crowd management could avoid many human injuries and allow safe passage to most tigers caught in the middle of people. Many consider it a major triumph for conservation if they can avoid shooting down a so-called maneater and instead rescue it to a zoo.

A zoo tiger may sound better than a dead tiger, but in terms of ecological loss, both amount to one tiger less in the wild. The same misconception prompts opinion-makers to argue that the tiger will survive extinction only if people have economic incentive to farm the animal. Conservation is not about raising a million tigers in ranches but about letting a few thousands be in the wild, where at the top of the food chain they protect the ecology of forests that, in turn, ensure our water security.

But why blame amateurs when many of our forest bosses are not scientific managers but merely bureaucrats? The latest flashpoint between the Rajasthan forest department and the Centre involved the relocation of a third tiger from Ranthambhore to Sariska. The Centre had instructed the state to pick up one of the floaters, young tigers still looking to establish territories. Shifting a resident tiger upsets not only the uprooted animal but also the rest of the resident population. But the state bosses chafed since getting hold of a suitable floater required rigorous tracking. Soon, the media was quoting unnamed sources to blame the Centre for delaying the relocation process.

The fault, indeed, lies in the fundamentals. No amount of political will or funds can turn the tide in the absence of a professional, informed management. A little homework will harm no one, and certainly not the media.

The writer is a Delhi-based journalist and film-maker.

Misguided media and conservation

Watch your steps in conservation minefield

New Indian Express (Page 11), Feb 26, 2009

Numbers make sensational headlines but seldom tell the complete story. The fresh uproar over the tiger mortality figures released by the Centre was expected. But again media denied itself the opportunity to delve beyond the obvious.

Obviously, it is bad news that 39 wild tigers were killed in the last three years, especially after the Sariska lesson, an investigation by the CBI, a few prime ministerial interventions, a parliamentary legislation, a couple of new central agencies, and a four-fold hike in the budgetary allocation for protecting tigers.

The media outrage, however, is limited to slamming the usual suspects. We know political will is lacking, that resources available with the forest establishment are inadequate, and that there is constant pressure from the timber, the mining and the poaching mafias.

Despite these odds, certain pockets do show good results, thanks to a few dedicated people. But individual passion is not enough for turning the tide across India. For that to happen, we need a delivery system that works wonders when run by gifted individuals but does not trip even in the hands of mediocre staff.

Unfortunately, even four years after Sariska, we are far from institutionalising such a professional and transparent system. Most attempts at reform get sabotaged by internal bickering — both within the government and in the larger conservation fraternity. Often, even the media ends up playing in the hands of such negative forces.


Consider the recent drama over the ‘man-eater’ of Corbett. Forget science, even common sense was dumped by state officials in their hurry to declare the tiger a man-eater. But man-eaters make news. So when the Centre questioned the arbitrary labelling, a section of the media was no less miffed than the Uttarakhand forest bosses.

The tiger could have been left alone under strict monitoring or, if it was a young floating animal looking for territory, moved to a less disturbed forest area. But the field staff had no records, and given the sentiment of the people fuelled by media hype, it was too late for any scientific assessment. So the animal was trapped and dispatched to a zoo. Blame incompetent ground management or contradictory signals from the top, but India lost another wild tiger that was not counted among those 39.

The same story played out in Uttar Pradesh where the ground management failed to keep track of big cats spilling out to sugarcane fields. Once attacks on people were reported, forest authorities started issuing contradictory orders. Meanwhile, the media established the animals as man-eaters and agitated villagers left little room for scientific evaluation. Soon we ended up having gunmen chasing runaway tigers all over the state.

Similar contradictions fuelled the Panna fiasco. By the end of 2007, it was clear that no tigress was left in the reserve’s core area. Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) confirmed the crisis and by mid-2008, even before tigers were airlifted to Sariska, it was decided that Panna would get a couple of tigresses from Bandhavgarh.

However, the Madhya Pradesh forest department made a mockery of itself by claiming that the tiger density in Panna was fine but a few tigresses would anyway come handy in producing more cubs. These statements triggered unnecessary controversy and the media, fed by a few experts ever anxious to settle personal scores with the forest department, kept rediscovering the story.

Not so long ago, when NTCA published the findings of a “transparent” (states were kept out of the process) national census in 2007, Madhya Pradesh challenged the report which indicated a sharp 60 per cent decline in the state’s tiger numbers. Eventually, the state accepted the new figure of 276 tigers but not before it had questioned the motive and competence of the central agencies. No wonder many in the union ministry think the better part of their jobs is to battle the limitations of the federal system and the sensitivity of centre-state (read Congress- BJP) equations.

Take the Rajasthan example. When the idea of relocating tigers from Ranthambhore to Sariska was first floated in late 2005, everybody agreed that the reserve must first plug the holes that led to the tragic local extinction. But without fulfilling the preconditions, the state forest department repeatedly pushed NTCA for a go-ahead. Top NGOs and experts, who found favour with the Rajasthan forest department, also joined the chorus. After resisting for over a year, NTCA finally succumbed to the accumulating pressure.

Not a coincidence that Rajasthan, like Madhya Pradesh, was another BJPruled state.

When the state wanted to airlift a third tiger from Ranthambhore, a few conservationists pointed out that picking up animals with established territories would upset them and also the rest of the resident population. This time, NTCA put its foot down and asked the state to find a floating animal — a young one in search of territory — for relocation.

Just when good sense seemed to have prevailed, the state forest bosses, miffed at being tasked with tracking a targeted animal rather than making do with any they could lay their hands on, started a not-so-covert campaign against the NTCA order. Suddenly we found unsuspecting cub reporters from national and local dailies criticising a basic scientific precaution in various “news” reports.

Complex issues often deny screaming headlines and competitive sensationalism rarely presents the true picture. Similarly, paper reforms will achieve little unless rogue states are reined in and the system is made immune to personal agendas.

(The author is an independent journalist and filmmaker. mazoomdaar@gmail.com)

Dangerous mind games

Animal sensitivities cannot be ignored

New Indian Express (Pg 11), Jan 28, 2009

SO many times have I come across the expression “animal passion” in both respectable and not-so-respectable literature that, at some point, it seemed the only emotional virtue humans could relate to, and admire, in animals is their intensity while pairing. Yes, we know animals have sharper senses. We even seek inspiration from animal intelligence (think dolphins) or technology (bats). But when it comes to animal emotions, we set the limit at the faithfulness of our pet dogs.

I am not given to anthropomorphic tendencies, but this assumption that animals are emotionless has landed us in a situation of nationwide escalation in human-animal conflict. Tigers are killing people in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Sunderbans. Elephants are a menace across the country from Assam to Karnataka. Leopard encounters are making headlines in almost every state.

What have we done to address such conflicts? Officially, we capture, translocate and, at times, kill. Unofficially, we poach by poisoning, electrocution or plain beating. We surely take all these legal and illegal steps with the single motive of feeling safer. But do our actions achieve that purpose?

Take the elephant, for example. Theirs is a matriarchal society where the females jointly share the responsibility of raising the calves. At a certain age, the young bulls leave and join a big boy group but the females stay in their family. The young bulls, when they are big enough and adequately groomed by the dominant males of the boy group, return to the female herds to mate.

In a conflict situation, the government response is to identify those dominant male elephants that lead the raids on croplands and capture them. While rare rogue, habitual killers must always be removed, the government machinery, under public pressure, often goes for random capture of bulls.

Many nod to this approach. First, they argue, taking a few bulls away does not affect the matriarchal families. Secondly, elephants are polygynous and even fewer bulls will successfully mate with available females.

Removal of dominant bulls is in any case a short-term solution since subpopulations soon find replacement. But conflict usually worsens because in the absence of dominant bulls in a boy group, the young elephants feel directionless and turn aggressive. Since these same young bulls replace the missing big brothers in the frontline, they aggravate conflict when in charge of raids. Besides, not only do these immature bulls get to mate before their time but also the gene pool becomes smaller with fewer bulls available for breeding.

If administrative strategies are so myopic, the community response is worse. Consider the recent case of Karnataka in which more than two dozen elephants were electrocuted in Nagarhole, Bandipur and Bannerghatta during the second half of 2008. The casualties include not only bulls but also a number of females. Loss of the matriarch can permanently upset an elephant society. A group of delicate, inexperienced mothers, already saddled with a bunch of young orphans, is left leaderless. Now throw in a few aggressive, immature bulls and you have a recipe for chaos.

Experts like G A Bradshaw have argued how elephants as a species are suffering from chronic stress as victims of sustained conflict. Sounds improbable? The first MRI scan of an elephant brain conducted three years ago found a large hippocampus that stores mem ory, and a prominent structure in the limbic system that processes emotions.

If we continue to intervene mindlessly, we will only have more and more psyched out elephants cutting loose. An unnatural spurt in infighting apart, incidents of stress-induced abnormal behaviour such as young, “deranged” bulls “raping” and killing rhinos in dozens all over Africa have been well documented.

It is not just elephants that are being pushed around. Between 1999 and 2004, Maharashtra trapped 293 leopards and translocated 274. More than 200 people died in leopard attacks and at least 900 were injured. In seven years since 1995, tigers entered Sunderbans villages 25 times. After regular trapping and translocation, the frequency doubled as 20 cases were reported in the next three years. In Jammu and Kashmir, 14 human deaths over three years triggered a translocation drive that shifted 70 bears in the winter of 2006-2007. In the next year, 25 deaths were reported.

So what is wrong with translocation? First, it does not solve the problem. Removing an animal from its territory only allows the young to fill in. Sec ondly, it creates fresh conflict. Once captured, animals are kept in cages, traumatised and released in unfamiliar territory. If you have ever tried to get rid of domestic cats by dropping them far away from home, you will know they invariably come back. Now imagine displaced wild animals trying to home back, moving hundreds of kilometres through densely populated areas. There are records of a female leopard travelling 100 km (Yaval to Chalisgaon, 2003) and a male elephant walking 180 km (LahiriChoudhury, 1993) to return to their native territory. While the leopard killed six people and injured 12 on her way , the bull killed one and injured two.

The bottom line: animals have a mind and they can lose it too. But we drive them crazy at our own peril. Present ad hoc measures of shoving them around to get them out of our way only brings the dangers back in more unexpected, disastrous ways. If we are still not brazen enough to kill these animals en masse as a policy, we have to frame case-specific scientific strategies to give them their space and peace of mind.

Either way, it is time we come clean.

(The author is an independent journalist and filmmaker. mazoomdaar@gmail.com)

Work in progress: Part 2

Work in progress: Part 1

AS YOU CAN SEE, THIS BLOG HAS NOT BEEN UPDATED IN YEARS...BUT CHECK OUT THE MOVIE CLIPS I JUST ADDED, AND PLS MOVE ON TO MY OTHER TWO BLOGS FOR MORE

CARRY ON, JUMBO

What do you do when even success doesn't succeed? When even compliments for most remarkable feats sound patronising?

Ask Anil Kumble. And he might tell you how his greatest challenge — instead of thinking a nimble-footed batsman out on a bounceless, slow-turner — could have been fighting self-doubt: Do I deserve so many without spinning the ball?

So often Kumble sat out during one-dayers, chewing over the decree that he, after all, was never the undisputed first spinner in the team. In a recent welfare auction in Calcutta, his India shirt couldn’t inspire a single bidder. I am yet to meet a cricket fan who goes to the ground to see Kumble bowl.

Anil’s best times must have been those when people have been indifferent towards him. Otherwise, on a bad day, he is trashed as moron — a mythical matchwinner. Worse, even on his best days, he remains an oxymoron — a successful spinner who can’t turn the cherry.

The fact that Anil didn’t allow such odds to come between him and so many cricketing milestone speaks enough for his greatness. Every time he came in to bowl and test batsmen with pace, bounce and, well, spin, Kumble knew he was taking a test himself. He knew the day he couldn’t put the ball on the right spot, pundits and plebian alike would be relieved to put him in what they always claimed his place. Kumble just couldn’t afford any self-doubt.

But let’s admit it. Even today, most of us, still beholden to the magic of Bedi and Chandra, feel Kumble is indeed the sore thumb of the Indian spin. But in 2005, Kumble will again turn around at the top of his simple run-up with a muffled spring, his clenched jaws and narrowed eyes daring the batsmen, critics and spectators to twist that thumb.

What do you do when success doesn’t succeed?

Ivan Lendle rallied hard. Lother Matheus built games.

Kumble bowls.

CIRCUS MAXIMUS

The Hoot, 27 August, 2004

No, we are not trapped in the ancient times nestled between the Palatine and the Aventine hills. Besides, Christianity is more than two millenniums old. But blood still brews the headiest hangover. Honestly, how many of you have been feeling like some giant exhaust fan that was set on a noisy, nauseating motion inside your bonnet, has been abruptly switched off? Didn’t you feel somewhat similar after the Natwest Trophy final? Or after the Lok Sabha poll results and the subsequent Sonia sainthood episode? Only somewhat. Because the Dhananjoy Chatterjee cliffhanger left us without even any mock-cathartic consolation. For us, Dhananjoy’s execution was simply death of an event. The subsequent void was one of plain exhaustion _ the fatigue that comes after lustily cheering gladiators or wild beasts. And suddenly, the entertainment was over.

"He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red"

Dhananjoy’s was the closest we got to a televised execution in India. But then, even during the most part of history’s televised wars _ two in Iraq and one in Afghanistan _ we had to contend with peripheral images and sound far from the actual theatres of war. What was surprising though, was the lack of enterprise on part of our overzealous TV channels. None of them tried to obtain access for their camera crew to the gallows. Or did they?

Not so long ago, Oklahoma City bomber Timmothy McVeigh released a statement that his execution should be televised. Some US legislators like Senator Mark Hatfield agreed. Talk show host Phil Donohue pitched in claiming the broadcasting rights. Entertainment Network Inc (ENI) requested the Bureau of Prisons to install a webcam in the execution chamber and pass on the feed. All that the ENI wanted was to have the event on a website, with $1.95 access, payable by credit card (to discourage minors viewing it) and with the proceeds going to bombing victims. How could we miss such an idea to help out Dhananjoy’s impoverished family?

The Bureau of Prisons, however, put its foot down, saying there was an important interest in "not sensationalising the event…and respecting the privacy of the condemned”. The district court, too, denied permission, citing security concerns _ inmates would watch the execution, see it as sport, feel devalued and riot.

A recent poll conducted by liveDaily claimed two-thirds of Americans support televised executions. Little wonder that a US federal appeals court had to intervene and uphold the state's right to ban videotaping inside Missouri's execution chamber.

Back home, one wished some of our channels were allowed to cover the execution live. At least, motion pictures couldn’t have done more damage to the viewers’ sensitivity than what creative efforts to compensate for the absence of footage, did. Channels conjured up animation graphics _ something you struggle to keep your kids away from _ recreating the rape and murder and, later, depicting the hanging procedure for hungry eyeballs. News anchors repeatedly asked correspondents, dripping with early morning drizzle outside the prison wall, how Dhananjoy was feeling on his way to the gallows. Some unfazed correspondents even played psychic and legitimised such crudity by attempting dumb guesses. In true Sriharikota style, most channels gave viewers an excited countdown to the scheduled execution. One wonders why we were spared the customary fireworks at the zero hour.

"How does he act then? It must be easy
For him. Anything is easy for a hangman..."

Nata tied himself in knots. Never in his life was he given such a long rope. The media wanted its plot complete. The dignified silence of Hetal Parekh’s family cut short its options. For the revenge tragedy, Dhananjoy’s folks offered the tragic bit all right. But the news sop demanded its instrument of justice. Nata didn’t have a choice. Plunged into shoes too huge to fill in, he was first inflated to an anti-hero, and then invariably morphed into a sad jester.

At one go, Nata was expected to dish out three vital elements for the daily bulletin drama _ the macabre, the comic and the tragic. The last bit Nata had introduced himself. He badly needed a job in the family. But even the greatest of performers would find it more than challenging to juggle successfully with three emotions so distinct as these. Nata was just a hangman.

His ultimate challenge was to dodge the tag of a greedy, soulless villain. In a live phone-in Bengali TV show hosted by Suman Chatterjee (Bengal’s Bob Dylan, for the uninitiated), he literally sang his heart out: (Very loosely translated) What will be, will be... please don’t blame me...

I disagree with Carl Sandburg. It was not easy for Nata Mullik _ not as easy as pulling the lever _ to handle so much of media attention.

"I feel the chaos, nourishing and expelling me from myself..."

"I didn't rejoice in his death but for the first time I did feel safe..." No one can miss the point Debbie Morris _ rape victim on whose case Sean Penn (Robert Lee Willie) and Susan Sarandon movie Dead Man Walking was based _ made after Willie was convicted. Elizabeth Harvey, mother of Faith Colleen Hathaway _ the other rape victim in the movie _ passionately advocates death penalty: "If you don't want to be executed then don't commit the crime. It's that simple. You can decide whether you commit that crime or not but a victim can never decide whether they are a victim or not."

Ever since she met Robert Willie, Sister Prejean (Susan Sarandon in the movie) has been campaigning against capital punishment: "When people are given alternatives to the death penalty _ where they are assured that a person will stay in prison for life _ support for the death penalty radically drops. I know that the desire for safety and being protected from real dangerous people is something that drives really good decent people about the death penalty. It's not that people want to be vengeful or to kill people. They want to be safe from them."

Whatever stand you take, compelling feelings, all. But the impromptu debate at home involved brute jingoism and two fast-swelling crowds _ barring a handful of sane individuals whose voices got lost in the chaos _ taking up pro and anti-death penalty stances on sentimental grounds. On the one hand, you had elements from the radical Left and the confused intelligentsia _ defanged and frustrated in Buddha’s Bengal _ who easily identified capital punishment as a sexy symbol of establishment that can be opposed for ego satisfaction without risking the ire of the state machinery. Locking horns with them were the pseudo-moral official Left and the custodians of the middle class _ increasingly insecure and unified in the urban ghettos of Kolkata _ who did not mind baying for blood in the name of securing the honour and dignity of bhadramahila. The resulting chaos was deafening but it could still have been worse if Mahashweta Devi had decided to take on Bengal’s first first lady in a public debate. Fortunately, she was probably too disgusted and tired to care.

"...Forgot if we ourselves had done
A great or little thing,
And watched with gaze of dull amaze
The man who had to swing."

Given half a chance, I won’t read Oscar Wilde. Not anymore. But a young poet from Calcutta reminded me of The Ballad of Reading Goal. Granted, he asked me over phone, Dhananjoy had raped and killed, but how can we so casually judge him without ever bothering to look at ourselves? This was a day before the man had to swing.

Dhananjoy waited for 14 years. Mumia Abu-Jamal waited for 18 years for execution after killing a Philadelphia police officer. He wrote two books _ Live From Death Row (1995) and Death Blossoms (1997) _ from behind the bars to tell his side of the story. Dhananjoy only repeated three words _ I am innocent _ for 14 years. Was he really innocent? We will never know. But each of us passed our judgments on him long before the Supreme Court or the President of India did. Worst, we wrote his last days the way each of us liked.

A week back, I had called up my cousin only to discover how Victor Hugo was suddenly in demand and how erudite Bengalis were busy mugging up arguments from The Last Days Of A Condemned Man. A colleague in a Bengali news channel went hysterical describing how he was summoned by his neighbourhood kids to settle their debate over which Bhagat Singh movie had the most authentic execution scene. My old aunt, who misses me round the year, called up to ask why I was not flying down to Calcutta to cover such a momentous event.

Last weekend, walking out the newsroom, I wasn’t too keen to look through the noose. "Done," the cops said. "Filed," the correspondent mailed. "Splash," the editor decreed. The desk sized it up, cribbed a bit for its length, and slapped it on page. I glanced at the headline and fired the page to the press. I was getting impatient for a smoke.

The man wouldn’t make news anymore. I lit up. Let Hugo be damned. I smoke. They killed a dead man.

"Ah! nevertheless, it is horrible!"

FINE LEGS AND SILLY POINTS

The Indian Express, 7 Aug, 2004

Unlike most good things in life, cricket doesn’t need to conform to any prescribed dose in India. For a game that is the ecstasy (with apologies to Herr Marx, opium is too soporific to convey the frenzy of this religion) of the people, it is strange that cricketing merchants need to spice up the fare with dollops of distraction. We understand corporate interest and ‘Toss ka Boss’. But the ‘Shaz and Waz’ show only highlights the insecurity of the broadcasters.

We could act naive and try to explain Mandira Bedi as an ambitious attempt to discover our own Kass Naidoo (South African commentator, if memory fails you). But this time, the channelwallahs didn’t even feign justification. Their theory seemed simple: "Only cricket, when there is so much of cricket, may not be enough to keep eyeballs glued, unless PYTs (pretty young things, for the uninitiated) are introduced to sex up the show."

Nobody, mind you, is arguing the purist’s case. Nobody objected to BBC’s Christopher Martin-Jenkins and his inspired observation: "The bowler’s Holding, the batsman’s Willey." We loved vintage Richie Benaud _ "there was a slight interruption there for athletics" _ when he reflected on a female streaker running across the Lord’s pitch. We appreciated Henry Blofield’s gift of spotting earrings. Why, even Harsha ‘genteel’ Bhogle knocked out ABC’s Kerry ‘chatterbox’ O’Keefe, during the famous Boxing Day match, when the latter doubted Gillespie’s fitness _ "as stiff as three whiskies" _ and Harsha asked just how many stiffs his opposite enjoyed each night.

Cricket is a way of life and such splashes happily find their context in its grand canvas. Like Sydney seagulls, Kotla dogs or Sharjah starlets. Even Gautam Bhimani, so long as he limits himself to sponsored antics and has stunning land/seascapes for background. But not the ‘Shaz and Waz’ show. As Shastri the commentator, Ravi is measured gin and tonic _ equally in command reading Ganguly’s racing mind (or static feet) and complimenting the cameraman, as the lens zooms on a group of bubbly, young girls at Premadasa, for his ability to "spot talents". But as Shastri the Shaz, Ravi is a hopeless punch _ suddenly too distracted for cricketing analysis and too ripe for natural street-smartness. But maybe it’s not entirely his fault.

The very idea of importing femininity to cricket through Jills-in-the-box is as absurd as hiring toothpaste models to popularise Monalisa prints. For a game played among 22 men, cricket is as much feminine as it is masculine. Some of our poster boys and macho cricketers-turned-commentators may take offence. But they will unwittingly concede that, in their fetish for pursuing impressive statistics (vital stats, in case of Shaz and Waz), they have stripped the game of much of its beauty.

Close your eyes, and for every stream of shaggy, raw passion of a Thomo or a Shoaib, you have the alluring mystery of a Bishen or a Murali. For every Richards short arm pull from outside the off stump, no less rugged and nonchalant than a weather-unbeaten Clint Eastwood shooting from the hip, there is a Vishwanath late cut, so late and languid, almost an afterthought, an aside as elegantly subtle as Susan Sarandon wiping cigarette smoke in the air before suddenly looking up with that twinkle between her lashes.

Consider the stumpers. For all their flamboyance and acrobatics, the best keepers are matched in virtues of involvement and patience only by the best homemakers. The ones who are always there to weather it all and around whom great spells or families flourish.

Take speed _ from Formula One to boom-boom Becker, a male prerogative. But in the hand of Kapil or Hadlee, an outswinger, bowled at a lively pace, teases the batsman like a seductress endowed with a kiss of death. Without inhibition, she approaches you straight. As the proximity gets alarming and you are about to offer your straightest face forward, she sways away with a get-me-if-you-can tilt. Instantly, you are torn between the wisdom of letting her go and the desire to check her out. No opening batsman needs any script to play the hero _ or the villain, depending on the day _ in certain fifteenth century English plays. One moral slip and you don’t need to study any yellowed text to imagine why that umbrella of men next to the wicketkeeper was named the slip cordon.

Take an over. The bowler sends six propositions to you. Each comes with a promise of reward. You can’t keep dating without risking ever falling in love. As in life, you gain some to lose some. But if you decide that discretion is indeed the better part of amour, and stay unresponsive to all her six advances, she goes out of your life a maiden. Between you two, it’s over.

The butchery of swordsmanship has drastically reduced the frequency of maiden overs in one-day cricket. But that is hardly any excuse for the channelwalahs to compensate by picking up maidens _ even starlets _ from the stand. If they are feeling insecure about the cricketing overdose, they can always let the ICC go easy on the calendar. Otherwise, they must either correct the gender bias or, better still, junk the show altogether. Most viewers don’t miss those vanishing maiden overs. Trust me, they won’t miss those unsuspecting PYTs whose prime contribution to the break-time farce is to make their two awkward hosts make their silly points.

FEE-GOOD IS ALSO FEEL-GOOD

When Dr Joshi arm-twists the IIMs, the institutes that are behind India Shining, doesn’t he dent his party’s constituency? Why is the party letting him get away with what is clearly an attack on all those who are feeling good? I found the answer in Tarak.

I bump into him at the Kolkata Book Fair. Tarak is no intellectual in search of brain fodder. He is just an ordinary Bengali out there, on a ritualistic visit to the carnival to pick up something inexpensive for his students. If one must survive on private tuition, one must adopt some retention policy.

Tarak is pleased to see me, the Dilliwallah, and demands a treat. On a vacation, I have been foolish enough to look for old friends in the afternoon crowd. Happy to find an acquaintance, I decide to walk down to a Park Street pub with him. He flinches a bit as I order prawn with our drinks. ‘‘We could do with some roasted peanuts,’’ he suggests. ‘‘These joints just rob you.’’

Tarak hasn’t changed much. His family used to stay in a small, rented flat in my neighbourhood till they moved out to the suburbs. Now he and his younger, married brother, a small-time broker, look after the family of soon-to-be six. Tarak’s ailing parents finally have something to look forward to — his sister-in-law is expecting.

Tarak had joined a courier company after graduation. He was retrenched and won’t talk about it. Now he teaches secondary students in batches of four. After our first drinks, we realise our stock of nostalgia is running out. He just nibbles at the delicious Waldorf snacks — his bhadralok ego making him conscious that he won’t contribute much, if at all, towards footing the bill.

After a ‘‘now what’’ pause, Tarak asks me what every journalist is supposed to have an answer for: How’s the country doing? Feel-good and all? Before I can think of some rigmarole to keep the conversation going, Tarak butts in: ‘‘Maybe it’s shining in Delhi and Mumbai. Kolkata, and these Marxists, are doomed.’’ I follow his fingers twitching. I wait for him and he blurts out: ‘‘Anyway, this IIM fee cut was good. What do they think? They will take the best jobs just because they have money?’’

His anger is not without reason. Between the two brothers, without job security or a roof of their own, no one’s asked how they run a family of six in about Rs 8-9,000 a month. Surely, the BJP can’t ignore the whining multitude before the elections. In fact, it doesn’t. That’s what explains the IIM fee cut.

In a democracy, the majority _ shining or not _ always matters most. If the BJP must win, it must also give the whining India something to feel good about. And when the whining India of the likes of Tarak sees the Shining India compromised _ IITs threatened, IIMs cornered and sundry other technical and B-schools’ fate hanging fire _ it gets a kind of a pleasure. Vicarious? The BJP won’t mind. It is much easier to engineer than to positively impress the whining India by, say, setting the primary education system right.

Don’t insult the BJP leadership’s collective PQ. The party isn’t just pampering Joshi’s ego by letting him carry on with an agenda. It must have found the method in the HRD madness handy.

Tarak, for one, has no soft corner for any party and he doesn’t relate to the official feel-good. But fee-good appeals to him. Not because he had ever fancied joining an IIM or IIT. He was never that sharp; and his immediate concern will anyway be to ensure good basic education for his soon-to-be-born nephew.

Nevertheless, Tarak relishes fee-good as kind of poetic justice: Good it doesn’t shine so bright when millions like me are left out of the ‘‘shining’’ party. Of course, it’s negative. But so is the very existence of the whining India. Trust Joshi, and the BJP leadership, to know how two negatives make a positive. Now only if that holds good in the election lab, too.

BAGHDAD BOOMERANG

-- How Bush and Blair fulfilled Osama’s Iraq agenda --

Rewind to the 21st day of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Coming from Baghdad, the footages of Iraqis celebrating the fall of Saddam Hussein ultimately lent some life to the plastic grins of Bush and Blair. The western channels went as hysterical, seeking symbolism even in rampant looting. But what was it really that the free world of the Bushes and the Blairs was flaunting as the vindication of their cause?

Granted, looting is natural in wartime. But when cameras caught a large gathering of what the Western news channels described as Shiite men shouting the glory of God, even the earnest anchors of BBC and CNN didn’t realise that they were rejoicing at a mob of Islamist hardliners cheering the end of the secular Iraq. The BBC anchor even bothered to translate the mood and the chants for us: "They have reopened mosques shut down by the regime, they are shouting there is only one God, they are shouting God is great" etc etc.

That was just the beginning. Last Tuesday, Shiites took to Baghdad’s roads in hundreds to commemorate the death of Imam Hussein, prophet Mohammed’s cousin. This weekend, thousands of them started marching towards Kerbala _ one of their holiest shrines. No wonder that liberal Iraqis are apprehensive that underground Shiite groups like the Dawa Party can emerge quickly in any power vaccuum, tapping religious sentiments evident in the capital and elsewhere. Some reports in the Western media suggest that even Sunnis have organised religious movements with the help of economic and tribal interests groups and are expected to compete for authority in the post-war chaos.

Now didn’t Bush tell us this war was part of his fabled anti-terror drive to protect pax Americana _ the free, secular and democratic world? And didn’t he want us to hear between his teeth that terror usually emanates from Islamic fundamentalism? And still he is happy to have Shiite hardliners star in the most-cherished promos of the American brand of freedom. For once, Uncle Sam looks trapped.

Irony apart, the Iraq potboiler yields many losers. The biggest among them is secular liberalism. For months, Bush administration desperately wanted to convince us of Saddam’s Al Qaeda links. But if the allied war is for Iraqi freedom, it is as much for the American oil empire and, tragically, for Al Qaeda. Warned William O. Beeman, director of Middle East Studies at Brown University, before the war: "The Bush administration’s assessment of Al Qaeda’s relationship with Saddam Hussein remains seriously flawed. If it is not rethought, America may win the war in Iraq _ for Osama bin Laden."

In the ‘70s, when the Baath Party kept religion out of political life and sought a Arab nationalist identity, the veil was an uncommon sight in Baghdad, bars flourished in many neighbourhoods and the government was known to arrest people solely on the grounds of regular visits to mosques.

Sustained US threat gradually weakened the Baath Party’s secular stand since Gulf War I and the same government has shuttered bars along Abu Nawas Street, an avenue named after a medieval poet fond of wine and women. Saddam himself reconciled to praying five times a day to seek legitimacy through Islam. According to a pre-war Washington Post report, religious leaders estimate that over the past decade, more than 100 mosques have been constructed in Baghdad. God is great was emblazoned on the Iraqi flag. At Baghdad University, few, if any, women covered their hair till the ’80s. Today, a majority do so. At a meeting of the Federation of Iraqi Women a couple of months back, once a symbol of the rights the Baath Party bestowed on women, all the women in attendance were veiled.

As the fear of America grew in Iraq, so did the power of Muslim clerics who had little clout only a few years back. People turned to faith, desperate for relief from the woes of war and more than a decade of sanctions. Saddam poured religious rhetoric into his speeches, linking defence of Iraq to jehad. Despite a resource crunch, his government was building two of the world’s largest mosques in Baghdad and lavished patronage on Shiite Muslim shrines. But Saddam’s original secular image survived and made him an Al Qaeda target.

The liberal Iraqis fear the future more than the war. After the hardline celebrations in Baghdad suburbs, it seems whatever comes next will not be tolerant. Do they see Al Qaeda lurking in the shadow waiting for the regime to fall? Perhaps.

Notes Alex Standish, editor of Jane’s Intelligence Digest: "I can’t see any reason why Saddam, coming from a Arab nationalist, fairly secular background, would have any interest in supporting or promoting an extremist and militant religious ideology that would ultimately be opposed to everything he has ever stood for."

Similarly, Osama bin Laden is opposed to all secular leaders in the Arab world. A month before the war began, Osama released a tape on February 11 asserting that "socialists and communists are unbelievers" and labelling Saddam an apostate of Islam, an infidel. "A crusade concerns the Muslim nation, regardless of whether the socialist party and Saddam remain or go," the tape said.

Argues Peter Bergen, author of Holy War Inc: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden: "Osama bin Laden is an Islamist zealot who despises secular fascists such as Saddam. I heard from Bin Laden himself that he is no fan of Saddam. When I met with the Saudi exile in Afghanistan five years ago, he volunteered that he thought the Iraqi dictator was a 'bad Muslim'. For Bin Laden, that's as bad as it gets."

For Al Qaeda, Saddam is irrelevant. Far from opposing the war, Osama appreciates it as a chance to humiliate the Americans on the battlefield, and as an opportunity to establish an Islamic regime in West Asia’s only secular island. So, in the hills and caves of the Zagros mountain on Iraq’s eastern borders, Al Qaeda guerrillas are waiting for Saddam’s secular army to be eliminated by General Tommy Franks’ brigades. They are in no hurry. Once the allied forces prepare the ground for a fundamentalist resurgence, Osama’s gang will descend to strike in the name of revolutionary Islam.

Meanwhile, Bush can feel smug about Iraqi freedom.

ALL ON ONE THURSDAY

-- Ever wondered just how reckless the news media
can get? Sample what it put out on a single day.--


When you are in the business of news, it makes sense to compete. On Thursday morning (March 13), all four English dailies I buy were in agreement about the day's lead: Vajpayee breaking India's official silence on the Iraq crisis. Then, the 'national leader' stumped me. It was right there, above the fold, with the lead. An innocuous "comment" that went like this: "It's good to know that not only does Atalji read our editorials but also acts on them. As he's done this time to the suggestion yesterday that Parliamentary opposition should be voiced to unilateral action on Iraq." Completely foxed, I read again. And again.

The yesterday in question was March 12, when the 'national leader' carried a full-fledged comment (read editorial) titled "Vote for the UN". As the Times of India's edits come highlighted (to show solidarity with the Men in Blue, I suppose), it's difficult to miss the key point: "There is a good case for passing a parliamentary resolution that unambiguously clarifies India's stand on this war." I read their lead again. There was no mention about Parliament passing any resolution that even ambiguously clarified anything on the Iraq-US tangle.

Now on the same March 12, two other major English dailies that I follow had come out with editorials on the same issue. Titled "India in a new world", the Hindustan Times noted that "India's experience from its non-aligned days may help it to do some tightrope walking in this context, but it still has to make up its mind on crucial issues like the future of the UN." The Hindu, in its edit titled "Dangerous drift", observed that "the pusillanimity displayed by New Delhi in its refusal to stake out a position against a war on Iraq is inexcusable. Vajpayee ought to have acceded to the Opposition's demand and taken a position that reflected the strong sentiment against war shared by many people across the country."

The Indian Express had taken up the issue even earlier. On March 10, its editorial "Inching toward War" noted: "For us in India, the challenge is that the principles that we have traditionally upheld have come into some tension with our key interests. It is necessary to reassert these principles, like the importance of peaceful resolution of the Iraqi situation, and the critical need for UN legitimacy of any action."

Thinking it over, I felt confident as a professional. There is no reason to doubt the 'national leader', which was claiming on page one that our Prime Minister needs media prodding even to take an almost regulation stand. Then, I felt miserable. Though every publication that matters took up the issue in their editorials, I should have known that the nation's leader would naturally rely only on the 'national leader'. Finally, I felt stumped. Only business acumen of a most refined advertorial order can use the Prime Minister as a super model and educate the miserable millions like me on the special bonds between leaders. We must raise jugs of champagne to cheer that feat.

From now on, I'll be wary of the 13th even on Thursdays. My morning was already made but then I flipped to page three of the Hindustan Times. Under the 'Terrorists moving out of Delhi', I encountered this gem: "...police have definite information that these terrorists have found safe havens in the towns of Western UP. A large number of Kashmiri youths have been seen in these towns. These have either joined educational institutes or work in factories." These hapless men from the Valley, reduced to daily wager away from their trouble-torn home, already have hands full looking for jobs and even finding accommodation. If one of them is lynched tomorrow by a paranoid mob, I bet this reporter will be callous enough not to notice the blood on his/her keyboard.

Morning shows the day, and clichés reassert themselves on days like this. Back home from work at night and the NDTV blurted out that a bomb had just gone off in a crowded Mumbai local. After reporters from Mumbai had put in their early inputs, the celebrity news anchor ushered in an upcoming crime reporter from Delhi. All excitement, she went on to inform us that Delhi police is on high alert and they are particularly watching establishments like the railway station and ISBT because "all Muslim fundamentalist organizations will be targeting these to cause maximum damage." Minutes after the Mumbai Police Commissioner said that the motive and the nature of the terrorist strike was still being investigated, the reporter served us our pet conclusion on a platter: If it's terror, it got to involve Muslim fundamentalists. Period.

As the proliferation of ready-to-print/air media junk continues, cub reporters and seasoned editors alike are grappling, often at the cost of ethics and responsibility, to stay atop the clutter. We understand honest mistakes, but are we at all serious about getting the news right or we would rather be fine just making a splash?

Time, we came clear.

THANK MODI FOR THE MIRROR, HONESTLY

-- The Gujarat CM captures the space we all wished to believe was never there --

Most of what is real within us is not conscious, and most of what is conscious is not real. Otherwise, Narendra Modi’s Gujarat experiment would not have surprised us.

Let’s face it. We, the secularists, the pseudo-secularists and even the not-so-secularists, will find it difficult to rationalise the results if Modi wins. Didn’t we dismiss him as a criminal fanatic, his men as opportunists? Didn’t we believe that the good sense of the majority of Hindus in Gujarat would prevail? Didn’t we swear that the politics of hate never worked?

If Modi loses, we can all celebrate. But if he wins, it will expose each of us. A victory for the BJP under Modi will prove that we either don’t believe in what we profess or feel too self-important to see anything beyond our noses. But when riots bring rewards, each of us needs a mirror. We should thank Modi for telling us, and on our face, how unreal we have been.

Let's also thank the Prime Minister for not removing the BJP’s proudest harvester of hate from his constitutional office. If he had sacked Modi, we would never get to know the real 'we' and the space now Modi is all set to capture would remain hidden under the quicksand of our illusions.

What does Modi’s gift of his mirror show to us? Don’t get into the collective history of communities. It’s been far more simple, and direct: you kill hundreds _ not enemies in uniform but neighbours _ and feel vindicated. It’s silly to buy the logic that each and everyone in the rioting mob had a 'socio-political' motive to loot _ a personal dispute to settle or a free TV set to take home. If Modi wins, his mirror will also reflect lakhs of those who didn’t actually take part in the riots but will now endorse the carnage.

However hard we try, we can't deny that they are people like us. While we kept trivialising lynch mobs in our conscious, they sought sanction in our unconscious. Even after Gujarat, we read about the Dalit killings in Jhajjar, the sati ceremonies in MP and we labeled these as aberrations. If Modi sweeps Gujarat, we will have to admit that our exceptions are rules in Gujarat and potential rules anywhere else.

You cannot kill someone and celebrate unless you dehumanise both yourself and the victim. He or she becomes 'it' for you and 'you' cease to exist. Fanaticism is an expression for alienation. Modi's mirror has shown us that we all are fanatics. We are fanatics when we don't take our own decisions and don't question the merit of decisions imposed on us. When individuals are without identities, it's easy to bulldoze them with fabricated sentiments in the name of numbers. That’s when mob culture gets social sanction. Mobs snowball into bigger mobs till they get big enough to decide poll outcomes.

In the Modi mirror, none of us look clean. Not even the media. We already discriminated between deaths, now he’s taught us to do it better. For us, stabbing on a local train is a one-para item, shooting at a disco is page one. Hunger deaths versus a celebrity wedding _ we make our choice every day. And still we want to retain the right to be surprised when a politician kills conscience and charms tens of lakhs we claimed never existed.

Better thank Modi for the wake-up call. Maybe, it’s not too late yet.