The Crisis In India’s Tiger Reserves
Also this week, how changing climate affects trafficking, and how extreme heat is affecting foxnut production
LAST mile thinking is a trope in business circles, but apparently not so much when it comes to governance. Far too many of the stories we at IndiaSpend do underline this lacuna, and this week is no exception.
Grand schemes are conceived at the top of the administrative pyramid; significant sums of money are allocated to them—and yet, it all falls apart, more often than not, in that critical last mile. A former member of the bureaucracy told me that the problem is that those at the top “don’t walk that last mile”, they don’t spend time studying how their schemes and policies are playing out on the ground; those at the lower administrative levels, who do know what is going on, believe—often with good reason—that being the bearer of unwelcome tidings comes with a cost, and therefore they prefer to keep bad news away from the bosses.
Who will guard the tigers?
India is justifiably proud of the tiger.
In policy terms, what that translates into is that we have large swathes of the country dedicated to the country’s national animal. To put it in figures, India has 55 official tiger reserves collectively spanning an area of 78,735.6 square kilometres, or 2.4% of our total land area.
Project Tiger, launched in 1973 to preserve, protect and grow the number of tigers in India, has borne quantifiable fruit. As of July 2023, India was home to 3,925 tigers as per the official census, an increase from the 2,967 tigers reported in 2019.
So what is wrong with this picture? Just this: animal habitats need to be guarded—from poachers, and equally from casual tourists unused to the ways of the wild. And India’s tiger reserves have a serious shortfall of qualified and trained guards.
Bikash Kumar Bhattacharya and Jyotirmoy Saharia report that as per the latest available figures, as much as 50% of frontline staff in some tiger reserves are untrained and ill-equipped home guards and even casual workers. The problem manifests in multiple ways: (1) Being untrained and ill-equipped, such workers really don’t have the wherewithal to carry out their duties; (2) Because of their “temporary” status, such guards cannot in any event discharge the duties of official forest workers, they cannot book offences, nor prosecute offenders in courts of law and, (3) Their lack of training exposes them to the hazards of the jungle, resulting often in injuries and even death.
Unstated in all of this is the corollary: If the temporary guards have no legal authority, how are they supposed to tackle poaching, or other problems posed by tourists?
Double whammy for the women of Sunderbans
An example of the law of unforeseen consequences comes from the Sunderbans, where climate change is triggering a series of devastating cyclones every year in an escalating pattern.
The immediate consequences are obvious: large scale devastation, loss of lives and property, the deterioration of the local farming ecosystem and the consequent growth of unemployment triggering migration, particularly among the men.
This week, Divyanshu Kumar looks at a less-noticed aspect of the serial natural disasters: the quantifiable increase in trafficking of women and kids, particularly of girl children.
The numbers are startling: The National Crime Records Bureau reports 78 victims of trafficking and, more alarmingly, also reports that 58,871 people are missing of which 12,455 are children—and this is in just one year, 2022.
Read Divyanshu’s story, which digs into the causes and consequences of this alarming phenomenon.
The foxnut wilts in the heat
In an age of increasing health consciousness, the Makhana or foxnut has come into its own as what the influencers call “superfood”, mainly because of its protein content.
Farmers in Bihar saw the potential, and cultivation has shifted from organic growth in lakes and reservoirs, to planned growth in farms. Therein lies an unexpected problem: extreme heat, which is causing problems for the local farmers as they attempt to cash in on this growth crop. Rahul Singh reports, for IndiaSpend Hindi.
Happy Vijaya Dashami, everyone.