In all this hungama about the return-land-to-tribals bill, the tigers that are rapidly becoming extinct have been forgotten. A token task force has been set up with no teeth at all and no funds to do anything either. The chair of the force wants to step out of the ?paradigm? and create new methods of ?protection.? But by the time this happens, if at all, there will be nothing left, because the oncoming monsoon is when poachers invade forests and kill. The world knows that it does not require any paradigm shifts! It is already dead meat.
We are in an amazing, bizarre and rather unbelievable situation. We are on the verge of virtually making extinct the last of the big cats in the wild, destroying the few remaining water catchment areas and up-rooting the protection of forest cover in this subcontinent. The latter, seen as an act of development for tribals, will create the most horrendous discrimination towards other poor and marginal communities on the fringes of the forests. Those who are vehemently attacking the caution that some of us are suggesting are clearly not interested in any debate or discourse. They need to benefit one community that they are working for, at the cost of many others and the nation. Their inability to deal with public debate is sad.
On the tiger front…The director-general of the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), a United Nations organisation, had asked to meet the Indian Prime Minister six weeks before. There has been silence, complete silence, on the request. Not even an acknowledgement of the receipt of the letter. This makes one wonder if there are officials who are deliberately keeping the PM in the dark on such critical issues, where inaction could embarrass him internationally as well. Sabo-tage? And, this is why it is imperative to respond.
CITES, with signatures of United Nations member-countries, binds them, India included, to rules that prevent trade in endangered species. The assault on the tiger in India, due to a breakdown of forest management and corruption, can compel CITES into taking action against India as per the rules of this UN arm. CITES has the authority to impose trade sanctions on a member-country that has not adhered to the norms that govern this body. That is how important tiger protection is. It is not a trivial ?elitist? cry. It is the cry of those who comprehend the possible devastation that goes much beyond the protection of ?wildlife.? Rem-ember, we want a seat in the Security Council… maybe it is more appropriate to think beyond the paradigm than change it!
? The assault on the tiger can prompt CITES to take action against India ? Bureaucrats and exposed politicians responsible will try to stop change |
Vasundhara Raje, the chief minister of Rajas-than, a state where reality was first exposed, has acted definitively. She has given her task force teeth. They report to her directly, she acts swiftly. However, the bureaucracy and exposed politicians responsible for the horror will try, as always, to slow things down, to sabotage change. That is, unfortunately, life in India from top to bottom. At the rate Raje is going, she may well be the first to establish a wildlife management policy that will nurture tigers, where they were once brutally slaughtered. Had she waited to shift the paradigm and experiment with a new notion of protection at this point in time, when the animal is fast heading toward extinction, this cancer would have overwhelmed the forests of Rajasthan.
In the rest of the country, tigers continue to be butch-ered…Panna, for one. Chief ministers, at the behest of manipulative babus, transfer fine officers and men because they know no better. Those in cahoots with the many ?mafias? get into positions of power. They mislead their masters. They know that tigers are not a priority for CMs. The return of land to the tribals is. There are votes there to be grabbed, one time votes, and there is more money there, to be shared by all!
The Prime Minister is off to Ranthambhore. He will, most probably, see the last of the tigers in the wild there…only because Raje moved 150 men, two batches of them, to protect the habitat there after what had happened in Sariska. Like the Gir, the only home of the lion that is now left, Ranthambhore may become the last home of the tiger in India, as task forces dream up new paradigms.
