Chingari Koi Bhadke

The United Nations, in the month of December last year, decided to declare March 3^rd – today – as the World Wildlife Day. Part of the objective of this declaration, as I understand from the material available on it, is to celebrate diversity and plant and animal life on our planet.  And yet, reflecting on the path traversed by our country, let alone the rest of the planet, and looking ahead with approximate extrapolation, it is impossible to feel anything other than pessimistic. 

The two keys to preserving India’s wildlife are habitat conservation and protection.  Yet, even as copious sums of money seem available to set off on a mission to Mars, celebrate the birthdays or anniversaries of forgettable men and allot Rs. 1000 crores to India’s sugar mills to export its excess production – a profligate waste of national wealth if there ever was one -  every National Park in India is understaffed by at least fifty percent and annual Forest Department budgets for operations and intelligence gathering are squeezed and cut, since our forests do not have ‘economic value’ and our tigers do not vote.  Eight rhinos have been poached from Kaziranga in 2014 alone for their horns (about thirty were taken in the previous year), while a number of leopards have been killed in man-animal encounters, the result of unchecked, flagrant destruction of their habitat.  Small animals such as pangolins and otters, and many species of birds have been decimated to the point of extinction for their meat and pelt.   The situation in the Wildlife Sanctuaries and Reserve Forests, lower in the protection category than National Parks and where tigers are generally not present, is much worse, with a collective war being declared on wildlife of any kind and the mass logging of forest cover.  Many of these areas have been opened up to quarrying and mining, reducing large areas to moonscapes as in the case of Bellary in North Karnataka. 

Indian wildlife is in unprecedented crisis.

Voltaire famously said, “With great power comes great responsibility” (the quote now being attributed to Spiderman’s creator).  Yet, the Governments at the Centre and State have been active, irresponsible participants in the carnage of wild India.  For every token expression of care and love for wildlife exhibited by the Ministers and their minions – a sponsoring of a tiger in a zoo here, or a billboard on wildlife protection there – a mass and unhindered ‘Movement for Mass Destruction’ is underway across India to destroy wildlife habitat and, in the process, fauna itself, by providing environmental clearances for projects irresponsibly, without due diligence or the application of science.  The intents of the perpetrators are no less criminal than that of a poacher, but are clad in the respectable cloak of ‘development’: the large hydro projects in the North East that are destroying thousands of hectares of forests are a flagship example. 

In 2013 alone, according to Sandrp, 21805 megawatts of hydro generation was sanctioned in the North East.  If and when this is all done, half of whatever is generated will be lost in the transmission losses to the destinations across the country, while a large part of the rest will be used to supply subsidised power to the superficial indices of urban lifestyle, with no accountability or economic incentive for energy conservation.  The ecological value of these forests in the North East is incalculable, not just from what is known of it, but, critically, from what we do not know.  As an analogy, would you, blindfolded,  pick a piece of jewellery from your locker and throw it away on the assumption that it is an imitation piece?  Yet, our Nation does this every day in the pursuit of a seemingly respectable growth rate in GDP, our benchmark being China which has destroyed its habitat and wildlife almost completely.  This is not just insanity, it is deliberate, sustained malevolence against Nature and its constituents to whom we have now dedicated certain days in the year in pathetic recompense. 

As criminal as the Government’s fondness for hydro projects in the North East is the deliberate mendacity of the Kerala’s political establishment in twisting Dr. Madhav Gadgil’s report on the Western Ghats to meet its own ends, thereby encouraging the steady, unswerving logging and land usurpation along the Western Ghats, South India’s jewel in the crown.  Entire classes of the animal kingdom, such as fish, have not even been considered as wildlife where protection is concerned, which is why the science of fish conservation has no takers and the nationwide mining of sand at an unprecedented rate for the construction industry continues, in flagrant violation of the orders of the National Green Tribunal.  When all the sand is gone, the result would be the partial or full drying up of our rivers in summer, a classic case of culling the golden goose.  Across India, lands have been opened up for mining, with Big Business building a case for ‘mining our way to prosperity’, a false, and hopelessly inadequate argument.

These are grim, worrisome stories that are the sad harbinger of a future where India’s spectacular wildlife will be reduced to the sepia-tinted photographs of a then-remorseful generation.The media has (with few notable exceptions) eschewed from reporting much of this with the seriousness it deserves, focusing much more on the ‘decision-paralysis’ in the Government. But even they have been surprised with the unseemly haste with which the current Minister occupying the chair in Paryavaran Bhavan, who has no knowledge of wildlife or forests whatsoever, has rubber stamped his approvals on large projects with high-impact possibilities that needed considered, independent evaluation.  He has been ably aided in this effort by a sham of a committee group called the Expert Appraisal Committee, which is staffed by a bunch of bureaucrats with little appreciation of the impact of their thumb impression; as an example, the River and Hydro group of the EAC is headed by a undistinguished former Secretary of Coal.  Under the Minister, they have shown little capability to dissent, for didn’t Upton Sinclair once say “Its difficult to get a man to understand something, if his salary depends on his not understanding it?” And backing the honcho at the Ministry is the Head Honcho who, despite his election to the Rajya Sabha from the North East, understands little of its wildlife or forests.  In the science of ecology, it is ignorance, not familiarity, that breeds contempt.  The Head Honcho has, in the evening of his political life, wearing the blinkers of long-discredited economic theory that does not recognise the value of ecosystem services,  initiated the assault on India’s wild heritage, for it is from his office that missives on relaxation of environment conservation norms have originated.

India’s political leadership of the Twenty First Century has, in essence, abandoned a truly rich culture of tolerance that was displayed over centuries of co-existence in chasing a chimera.  It has forsaken its responsibility, blinded by greed for ill-gotten wealth and the continuance of political power. 

It is Anand Bakshi whose words drive me to pessimism, for he said

Chingaari koi bhadke
To saawan us’e bujhaaye
Saawan jo agan lagaaye, us’e kaun bhujaaye?
Patajhad jo baagh mein ujaade
Woh baagh bahaar khilaaye
Jo baagh bahaar mein ujade, us’e kaun khilaaye?

(If someone lights a spark

Then the rains will put it out
But if the rains start a fire, who will put it out?

If a garden is destroyed in the Autumn
It will bloom again in the Spring
But who can revive the garden that is destroyed in Spring?)

Pessimism does not, however, mean losing hope.  If March 3^rd is to have any meaning for us, it should be reflected in our actions.  At the risk of sounding didactic,  I would ask you to look beyond your immediate world of home-and-work to get involved: since none of us can actually be there,  involvement means learning about wildlife conservation issues and taking action sitting just where we are, using the social media tools available to us.  Two websites that I recommend for regular, sustained engagement are

www.conservationindia.org

www.sanctuaryasia.org

The few men and women who are fighting to save our wildlife need your active, sustained and vocal support and there are notable recent examples where, for instance, the usage of social media to register your voice of protest has created real change.  Do let me know if I could help catalyse your involvement in any way.