If Sariska Wasn't Enough

SANCTUARY ASIA, 2005

After Sariska, most of us believed that we were through with the worst in our history of conservation and things could only look up from that depth of disgrace. We were wrong. How else can we acknowledge the absurdity of the latest obfuscation of the real issue in the guise of tribal-versus-tiger politics. The controversy over the Tribal Bill draft is an assault on the collective common sense of the nation. Imagine a society divided over the perceived dichotomy between the interest of our tribals and that of our forests and wildlife. As we debate the obvious, the clock ticks louder by the minute for our tigers.
Nobody comes clean in this game of one-upmanship. If it is between the future of our forest resources and the immediate appeasement of the tribals, no Indian needs to guess which way the political clock swings. Tribals vote. And when a handful of Parliamentarians dare point out that the forests may not have any electoral value but their well being is integral to our future water and food security, they are ridiculed as upper caste elites who are anyway supposed to be ‘anti-tribal’.
Our bureaucracy only bothers about control. The Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 and the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 have been the eyesore of the bureaucrats of babudom. They regret that these laws have largely insulated our forest reserves from bureaucratic tinkering. Earlier, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) officials themselves tried to float the Biodiversity Act, 2002 as an umbrella legislation, but failed when finally it was made subservient to the The Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. It is poetic justice that they are now fighting another ministry to ‘save’ the same forests they seemed so willing to undermine only yesterday.
We must accept that there is no black-and-white situation at hand. Tribal or non-tribal, forest-dwellers are now surviving at the mercy of the sarkari ground staff. Almost everywhere, they need to routinely bribe them to ensure their livelihood. Nobody can justify forcing the tribals to pay the entire cost of conservation. If our forest resources are saved, the benefits reach every Indian. So it is our national responsibility to look after those who lose their traditional livelihood in the process.
But then ‘rights’ to forests will be a retrograde move. Just because we have not been able to find a dignified space for the tribals in the larger paradigm of conservation, we can’t suddenly leave crores of them to subsist on vanishing jungles, which if nurtured and utilised scientifically, will yield enough economic benefits to sustain them for generations to come.
We must examine a number of models working well in different pockets of India. There is no dearth of ground expertise and experience either. What we need are better policies and management that not only protect our mega-diversity but also tap its economic potential and then in turn, adequately addresses the livelihood concerns of tribals.
Discouraging direct subsistence on forest resources is not denying the tribals their rights. The forests belong to them. But their future will be secure only if they have an option to live on the interest and leave the capital untouched.
Considering how ad-hocism rules our system, it is natural that very few in the government bother to work on any long-term solution. But the Tiger Task Force recently appointed by the Prime Minister, must bite the bullet. Apart from addressing the fundamentals of habitat protection, it must ensure a degree of transparency and accountability in forest management. The ‘number game’ must end and we have to take a realistic call on the true status of the tiger on the ground.
The so-called protected forests are usually out of bounds for non-government professionals. Even otherwise, it is difficult to prove how the tiger figures are fudged unless we reach a point when no tiger is spotted in a particular habitat. Till then, sarkari managers will keep counting more tiger per tiger. The Task Force must put in place a professional system that boldly sounds early alarms when it senses a crisis. There is little hope unless we can do away with this criminally indulgent set-up that claimed 24 tigers in Sariska only months before the big cats were wiped out from the Reserve.

Blowing the Sariska whistle

I didn’t want to believe it but I could sense the truth. Even before I met Ramji Lal. It was my third trip to Sariska in two months. I have been a regular at the Reserve for many years and learnt to understand this jungle in bits and pieces. I knew water dries up in these hills by October and animals must descend. I knew leopards don’t roam the tiger territory so fearlessly. I knew the Gypsy-taxi drivers and the forest guards were lying. Then on my last night, Ramji Lal ambled out of the darkness and joined us – a small group of friends – for dinner outside a dhaba on the Alwar highway. Next day, as we drove back to Delhi, we kept chewing on Ramji Lal’s parting shot: "Forget sighting tigers, I have friends among forest guards and they don’t even find pugmarks these days."
Back in Delhi, I tried to piece together the data. Officials in Jaipur laughed off my query. The Project Tiger Directorate accepted Sariska was not the best tiger reserve but nothing more. Dr. Ullas Karanth had not "heard anything". Valmik Thapar was "out of touch" with Sariska but he had "heard such rumours". P.K. Sen almost challenged me: "The situation is very bad but how will you prove there are no tigers?" Frankly, I didn’t know. Not at that point of time.
Some legwork and within a fortnight, I was back in Sariska. It was difficult to miss the fear in the air. The Gypsy drivers sat huddled in worry. They might be out of business soon. Hoteliers tried to look brave. The guards on ground panicked even at routine questions. The forest officials groped for some explanation. The department bigwigs would start descending any day and no theory stood as yet.
I knew the visitor’s log book at the forest gate – where it is mandatory to enter all tiger sightings – was my best chance for proof. And perhaps a sincere soul or two would come on record. My first day was spent with Assistant Field Director, B.M. Sharma. Together, we combed the jungle for hours. Finally, Sharma confessed. He had not seen any tiger since June 2004!
My first attempt at checking the log book backfired as the guard on duty got suspicious. Late that evening, I invited a few members of the ground staff to the deserted Rajasthan Tourism Development Corporation bar. A few drinks later, I told them a story they had to refute. I knew they would need the log book to prove their point. Once the log book was summoned, I thoroughly checked it while marking relevant pages as the guards argued to establish their point against my imaginary story. Half an hour on, I knew they wouldn’t mind if my photo-journalist colleague Cherian Thomas clicked a few pages.
The log book didn’t lie. The peak winter season (December-January) reported nine sightings in 2002-03, and 17 in 2003-04. Then till May, six or seven sightings were reported each month. The number dropped to three in July.
Then came the monsoon. And with it, perhaps, a few bad men. Traditionally, animals including tigers disperse to the hills due to abundance of water during July-August before returning in October to the plains for scarce water and prey.
Last year, the wait continued. Tourists Poonam and Nishit claimed one sighting in September 2004. The last report was on November 11, 2004 by Nick and Dork Simpson from London who thought they glimpsed a tiger "through the trees" – a claim even the forest guards discounted.
Next day, I spent two hours with Deputy Field Director, Priyo Ranjan, who had taken charge in September 2004. I had to keep going at him before he admitted that neither he nor any other forest official had seen any tigers in Sariska since he had joined. Nor had a few 1,000 villagers in the 11 villages still located inside the Park.
I travelled extensively across the jungle. Everybody avoided the P-word. At Umri, a village of 100 families inside the core area, villagers dodged hard before giving in gingerly: "They come regularly, carrying arms. We have tried informing the forest guards. But we have no security. The outsiders hold us at gunpoint and warn us against opening our mouths." Where did these poachers come from? "From outside. Villages like Baroli, Baleta, Kharada." And what did they kill? "Sambars." Tigers? Suddenly, villagers clammed up, went almost deaf. The story was repeated in other villages, Rathakala, Kankwari and at Kraska. Villagers just couldn’t remember when they had seen or heard a tiger last.
I wanted to assess the standard of protection, too. During a night patrol to Siliberi chowki (guard hut), N.K. Gupta, Ranger, Flying Squad, and his men spent 15 minutes creating a ruckus to wake up the staff inside. "This is the most troubled area and look at them. A couple of them are even missing on duty," a livid Gupta said. A couple of other chowkies seemed a little more alert. But it was not easy motivating the ground staff, most of whom were old and demoralised. By the time I left for Delhi, many at Sariska realised I knew their secret. Forest Guard Uday Bhan Nadar presented us with old plaster casts of tiger pugmarks. "What will you write? That there are no tigers here?" he whispered. Nadar didn’t look me in the eye.
On the highway, I met Gypsy driver Om Prakash who was waiting for me to ask if tigers could be released there from other jungles. He mumbled after a pause: "Kya pata, shayad ek-do abhi bhi hain kahin chhupa hua (Who knows one or two might still be hidden somewhere)." I lit up, told our driver to speed off. Not often do you wish that the story you have been chasing round-the-clock would prove to be wrong.
On January 22, 2005, we were ready with the Sariska story – the first in a series – that set me on the tiger trail. The Indian Express campaign forced other media houses to pick up the issue, generated strong public opinion and moved the Prime Minister to set up a new Tiger Task Force. The Supreme Court also stepped in, asking the Centre to hand over all poaching cases to the CBI.

Fast Forward

That, however, remains only a small, immediate victory for the cause of conservation. The big battle has to be fought every single day. From my limited field experience, I am convinced that even in the best-managed parks, tigers will continue to be killed as humans try to resolve human-animal conflicts, and make a packet in the process. This raises a fundamental question: in today’s circumstances is human-animal coexistence even feasible?
Young tigers leave their mother around the age of two, to be on their own; and the young adult’s search for home range usually takes him/her to the extreme peripheries of the jungle, where the challenges of life could mean death. A relatively-inexperienced tiger could die in combat with a more powerful resident tiger, or be pushed out of the protected jungle to become an easy target for irate villagers, who often take the first opportunity to eliminate the animal for their own perceived safety. This is the context in which the proposed Tribal Bill must be weighed. At the time of going to press, the Tiger Task Force is travelling across the country and talking to all manner of experts. But its composition seems designed to create more confusion than clarity. The Chairman has already gone on record on a private news channel to say that arming forest guards is a mistake as such arms will be used to subdue villagers whose support must be canvassed for the tiger (she didn’t elaborate how).
Eventually perhaps all of us must adjust to our fate and that of the tiger. We face a situation where tiger populations across the country are going to fall. Populations are going to be isolated, prior to being pushed to local extinction. Perhaps we will have to consider ourselves lucky if we can save tigers only in pockets of old growth forests reasonably insulated from human interference. On paper, the majority of our tigers still survive outside reserves today, but in my view, given the current political attitudes, their days are numbered.
Hopefully, I will be proved wrong. Hopefully, the Tiger Task Force will rise above petty politics and fiercely protect the sanctity of our national parks and sanctuaries and their connecting corridors and buffers, thus ensuring some space between wild and human habitats. And hopefully, if this miracle occurs, the report of this Tiger Task Force will not meet the same fate as most others – the dustbin. Till then the countdown to the complete extinction of Panthera tigris continues.