Spiti is fascinating in so many ways that it is difficult not to get bewitched by one of its myriad spells. Beauty comes in several avatars here. It can be in the form of the last silken rays of the soft sun illuminating a lofty mountain peak, a nimble footed Ibex feeding comfortably in a treacherous terrain or a Buddhist prayer flag fluttering in the wind.
Fading rays of sun illuminate a mountain peak: one of the several spells of Spiti.
Its a landscape where the elusive snow leopards and pervasive humans share the same terrain, their fate intertwined in a tangled complexity. My curiosity to know more about snow leopards brought me here, but it was the bewitching landscape that left me breathless; literally!!! At times when fieldwork starts taking a toll on your body and mind, its one of the spells of the magical Spiti that alleviates the spirits.
A maze of agricultural fields. The austere landscape is shared by wildlife and people.
It had been a busy month and our team had been moving about in the mountains, rushing from one point to another to place camera traps at various locations. It had become a routine work and monotony had quietly crept in. During one of these routine rush through’s, I was visiting the Badang nullah; an excellent snow leopard area. A few years back, Charu and Sushil had watched a snow leopard at this very nullah for more than an hour, resting quietly underneath one of the cliffs. The approach however was quite difficult and it took us more than an hour to first climb down all the way to the nullah bed and then to climb up to the cliff site where we were supposed to place the camera. I was still thinking if it would be worth the effort, but my doubts were more than allayed when I reached the place. Full of scrape marks and scats, this looked like an ideal place for fixing a camera. However this place harbored things that diverted my attention from camera traps and snow leopards.
A blue sheep group on the move.
The cliffs here in the upper half of the tall mountain overlooked the nullah flowing below with its crisp and clear water. The footing was not all that good and looking down I wondered, what a missed step or wrongly placed foot would mean. There was a small cave, with neat mud plaster slowly coming off the walls and inside the rocks were all black with what appeared like result of years of wood fire. There was a disfigured, but a beautiful painting of a Gompa (Monastery) that had been created by carving on the mud wall. I was very curious about it. Was it that this place was still being used by hunters, did people killed Ibex blue sheep and cooked them up in this desolate cave? I asked Tsering Dorje, my field assistant about this and soon the story unfolded.
An Ibex male in its typical rugged habitat.
There used to be a brave hunter who used to inhabit this cave, killing blue sheep and Ibex in the day and returning to his cave with the quarry in the night. Not very far from the place, there was a Buddhist monk, meditating in this serene and calm Himalayan environment. The hunter was very impressed with the austere life that the monk used to live. He made it a point to leave the best piece of the meat from his kills quietly at the doorsteps of the small cave that monk used to inhabit, making sure that he did not disturb the monk in his meditation.
Spiti panorama. Buddhist monks still meditate in these remote mountains.
It is said that years passed by like this when one day the hunter became a bit curious and decided to find out a bit more about the monk whom he had been selflessly serving for such a long time in his own small way. Once inside the cave, he was surprised to notice that none of his offerings to the monk had been accepted and that the monk turned out to be a staunch vegetarian. The hunter felt very bad about it. He thought he had sinned by placing chunks of meat and bone at the very door of a monk who in fact was a vegetarian. Thus filled with utmost remorse, he jumped off from the very cave where he had spent years placing meat at the door of the monk.
It is believed that he did not fall in the nullah. Halfway through his decent, he was suddenly lifted up by some divine powers and he attained buddhatava (or nirvana in today’s more fancy terms). The monk had been watching all this. Thinking that if a sinner like the hunter who killed animal’s everyday and ate their flesh was lifted up by the divine powers, he was sure to be lifted too. Thus he jumped, full of confidence, just that no divine powers lifted him up.
As per the latest rumours, a ghost has laid claim on this unclaimed property (caves). There indeed was an element of truth in these rumours as is evident from the photographs from our spy camera.
Snow leopard, the mountain ghost photographed by our hidden camera.
The story had thus ended and all of us having had 2-3 cups of lukewarm tea from the big Chinese thermos were feeling refreshed and energized. It was time to move on to the next location of the day and may be search for another story.
Gya, the highest peak in Himachal Pradesh, a towering 6794 m tall giant, but as elusive as the snow leopard. The peak is hidden so deep in a maze of other smaller mountain peaks that it remained unknown till the late 1980′s. Gya is located at the tri-junction of Himachal (Spiti), Ladakh and Tibet. Approaching it from Spiti is an extremely difficult task. Gya sits at head of fortress carved out by the Lingti river. Lingti “an instrument that cuts rocks” as it literally translates from Spitian, has carved a maze of deep gorges, high plateaus and over 20 sentinel peaks rising over an altitude of 6000 m.
Shijibang, one of the sentinels of Gya bears a strong resemblance with the Matterhorn of the Alps. Just that Shijibang is a good 1500m taller!
I have been into this maze before. Mainly in search of the snow leopard (Panthera uncia) and the blue sheep (Pseudois nayaur). This time was my forth expedition. The primary aim was to estimate the population of blue sheep in this region using a new technique called the ‘Double observer survey’. Unlike our previous attempts this time we decided to do the task with a small team of just 5 members. We had to cover an enormous area of about 300 sq km. Most of this has to be approached through high passes and torrent rivers coming from glacier snouts.
The expedition began in the village of Lalung. Takpa and I moved to the next camp called Kibri on day one; Chunnit Kesang, Lama and Pandan were to join us the next day with two donkeys loaded with expedition equipment. Day 3 was our first major hurdle of the Shijibang pass (5100 m) a vertical climb of 1300 m from the Kibri camp.
Lalung village and Chokula in the background
Among the many defences of Gya, the first is a row of fairly high but relatively easy peaks such as Kanamo (6974 m), Cho-cho kang nilda (6380 m), Tserip (5890 m), Kawu (5910 m) and Shijibang (c. 5900 m). Across the Shijbang pass (5100 m) we were across the first hurdle. But it also meant that if the weather took a turn we could be caged inside. We camped in Shijibang ‘Grassy medow’. The next day across the pastures of Sheru; we camped here for a few days of field work in this region. This region has a very good density of blue sheep. This is also where we saw our first blue sheep kid born in this year.
Our next hurdle was the Lingti river itself. This river is bone freezing cold and has an extremely strong current. But we had a unique solution to this problem. The Yaks! The ship of the cold desert. We were literally going to use them as ships.
Yak! The 'ship' of the cold desert!
We camp by this river for the next few days at a place called Phiphuk. Our next hurdle was the Kuli pass (4800 m). The climb up to Kuli la is gentle and scenic. We decided to ride the yaks up to the pass and across to Saktichen.
Caragana meadow of Saktichen
We camped at Saktichen for the next few days. The next defence of Gya is the 5300 m high pass called the Chaksachen la. Chaksachen la lies along the ridge formed by Lakhang (6250 m), Shilla (6132 m) and Labrang (5900 m). By now we were low on supplies and we decided that only Pandan and I will go up to chaksachen la and see if there are any more pastures across where there could be more blue sheep. The climb was gentle and we made it to the top without much difficulty.
Shree looking for blue sheep; Labrang (5900 m) in the back ground.
Across the valley on the other side was the last line of Gya’s defences. The trio of Geling (6100 m), Runse (6175 m) and Gyaghar (6400 m). The lowest point of this ridge is at 5900 m. Nobody has actually crossed this ridge to reach Gya. Across the Chaksachen pass the gorge was too narrow for any pastures or meadows. We traversed the entire ridge and could not see any more pasture. We decided to wrap up our expedition from here.
Gyaghar (6400 m); meaning Indian!
On the way back I was a little disappointed. I was going back from my fourth expedition without even being able to see Gya. My last opportunity was the crossing of the Shijibang pass. If the weather remained clear then I had a chance. After seven hours of climbing to the top of Shijibang pass I turned around and there was Gya!
Gya (6794 m); The highest peak of Himachal Pradesh
From the Himachal side Gya looks like a single monolith rock wall of 1200 m. Getting to the base of this wall is a challenge of itself.
A herd of blue sheep in Lingti valley
Snow leopard
Only after this fourth expedition do I feel truly successful. The expedition was scientifically successful as we had achieved the objective of estimating blue sheep abundance in this entire maze. We had been able to see all the animal species present here. And we had managed to penetrate deep enough inside the fortress of Gya to get a sight of the King!
An important highway cuts through the Bandipur Tiger Reserve in southern India. It is a busy road, mainly carrying holiday makers and vegetable-laden trucks from Mysore and Bangalore to destinations in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Yet, despite the activity, travellers report an astonishing variety of wildlife crossing the highway or by the roadside.
But if you take a morning drive along this road between the months of April and November, one particular species of domestic animal may dominate your sightings. Cattle. Thousands of withered but hardy native cattle are driven into the Reserve illegally each day during the monsoon season. At this time, outside the Reserve, nearly all land is under cultivation, and there is almost nowhere else the region’s 100,000 cattle can graze.
Thousands of cattle graze inside Bandipur Tiger Reserve, degrading forests and severely affecting wildlife.
Cattle grazing inside wildlife reserves is a well-known conservation problem. Over eighty percent of India’s wildlife sanctuaries and national parks are grazed by livestock, posing a range of problems for wildlife. Livestock reduce the availability of forage for wild grazers and severely affect forest regeneration. They may also harbour diseases that can be transmitted to their wild relatives. In Bandipur itself, research has shown that cattle graze over one-third of the Reserve’s 880 square kilometres, rendering it virtually unavailable to wildlife. Without adequate forage to sustain them, species like the gaur, chital and elephants are forced to move out of areas used by cattle and look elsewhere for food.
But Bandipur Tiger Reserve is definitely among the better-protected reserves of the country. The Reserve management takes threats like livestock grazing seriously and has invested in crores of rupees into digging cattle-proof trenches along the Reserve’s 200-kilometre northern boundary. The ground staff regularly patrol the border as well and do what they can to enforce the law against livestock grazing. Clearly then, cattle owners here are taking a big risk by driving their animals into the forest to graze. If caught, their livestock could be impounded and they could be fined. These impoverished farmers simply cannot afford such fines. Yet, what makes them take such risks for livestock that neither yield much milk nor haul the plough?
The answer lies in heaps along the same road. Five kilometres before reaching the Reserve boundary, the highway squeezes through a jumble of shops in the dusty village of Hangala. Piled high between the shops and houses, lie large mounds of cattle dung. Each morning, Hangala’s industrious cattle march off into Bandipur and return in the evening, bearing a bellyful of the forest. Overnight, in their stalls, they deposit it as the dung they are kept for.
Ah, you say. To a predominantly agricultural community, cow dung must be a very valuable input for farming. But wait at the village a while longer, and you will see trucks lumbering into the village, filling their holds with dung and driving away. Surely, people are not simply giving away such valuable manure?
Of course, they aren’t. They are selling the dung at premium prices to coffee and ginger growers in the neighbouring regions of Kodagu, Wayanad and Nilgiris. The dung in Hangala is not a mere by-product of the livestock. It is in fact the very reason Hangala risks living on the fringes of the law. In a cash-strapped economy where the average farming family struggles against many odds to make a cash income of Rs. 16,000 to 18,000 annually, the few thousand rupees they make additionally from selling dung has come as a godsend. And villagers have to invest little to produce it, besides keep the cattle and turn them loose to graze in the forest.
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Agricultural areas fringing the forest, seen from the hills of Bandipur
This is not the story of Hangala alone. It is also the story of dozens of other villages in the dryland agricultural tract that flanks Bandipur Tiger Reserve. Agricultural activity here begins at the end of the dry season in March-April. Farmers till and fertilise their land with the arrival of the pre-monsoon showers, and sow their crop as the monsoon breaks. This means, right at the start of the cropping season, a farmer needs to have invested considerable amounts of cash into agriculture to cover labour, fertiliser and seeds. But seldom do farmers have the necessary capital. Almost invariably then, they finance their agriculture by borrowing from local moneylenders at interest rates ranging from 40 percent to a staggering 340 percent annually!
But before a farmer gets from sowing to harvest, he is forced to play a grim game of dice with a series of hazards. The first is the ever-unpredictable monsoon. While some wealthier farmers sink their own bore-wells, most farmers can do little besides praying to the rain gods.
The second and often more serious hazard is from crop-raiding wildlife. From the time the seeds germinate until the harvest is finally made, farmers spend night after night on rickety tree-top lookouts, struggling to stay awake, waiting, watching and chasing away wild pigs and elephants that come for the crops. They invest time erecting thorn fences, and spend hard-sourced cash on flashlights, batteries, and firecrackers. Those unable to guard their own fields must pay someone else to do so. And yet, despite these efforts, farmers lose an average of 15-20 percent of their crop to wildlife; the unlucky ones farming along the forest’s edge lose even more. Driven to desperation, farmers retaliate by killing elephants that come into farmland.
So serious are their losses, particularly when compounded by the volatile prices for farm produce, that it is not at all uncommon for a farmer, at the end of an arduous farming season, to have no food on his plate, but also to have slid deeper into debt.
Surely then, for a farmer wilting under the multiple risks that vex his agriculture, the opportunity to despatch his herd of cattle into the forests nearby and live by the dung they produce for him, means a great deal.
Bullocks watch as an elephant tusker walks into crop fields. Photo: Sanjay Gubbi
Herein lies the reason why a well-protected reserve like Bandipur, even with sincere staff, is unable keep out the thousands of cattle that graze inside its boundary. Forest guards and watchers, drawn from the same local communities, and often facing the same predicament themselves, know all too well that farmers here are too poor to afford alternate fodder, and too needy to ignore what the forest can provide.
Yet, conservation continues to view livestock grazing within wildlife reserves simply as a failure of law enforcement. A narrow preoccupation with strict policing, regardless of the human context, has resulted in great hardships for local people, making angry neighbours. While the forest may indeed be protected from livestock grazing in this way, it is often only until the next summer when embittered villagers vent their frustrations by setting fires that destroy many more hectares of forest and affect wildlife more seriously than their cattle may perhaps have.
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A farmer stands in his jowar field, destroyed by elephants. Photo: K Murthy
Farmers and wildlife here are thus locked in disastrous embrace as they plunge down a vortex of losses. Losses from crop-raiding wildlife make farmers helplessly dependent on forest resources, rendering habitats poorer for wildlife. This, in turn, drives wildlife to seek food on farmlands where they occasionally meet their end at the hands of a desperate farmer.
Strict policing of the Reserve to keep out cattle has failed repeatedly because local farmers, utterly desperate for the fodder inside, are willing to risk life and limb for it. Such a conservation approach has only deepened the vortex of losses. Instead, would an approach that addresses the desperation of farmers and makes them less needy of the forest help break this destructive cycle?
A small experiment we started in 2007 attempted exactly this. In two neighbouring villages on the fringe of Bandipur—Maguvinahalli and Melkamanahalli—seventeen farmers who together owned 60 acres of land formed a cooperative which received conservation funding to erect and manage solar-powered electric fences around individual fields.
Fenced farmlands in Maguvinahalli outside Bandipur.
In the year after the fence came up, not a single farmer lost any crops to wildlife. But the real test for conservation lay ahead. Risks from crop-raiding wildlife were now eliminated, but would that actually alter farmers’ dependence on the forest, as the theory suggested?
As monitoring of farm activities continued, some changes in cropping were observed. All seventeen farmers had invested in borewells, thereby reducing their dependence on a fickle monsoon. Year-round availability of water allowed them to grow three crops where earlier they could barely grow one. The fenced lands were abuzz with agricultural activity throughout the year.
Strangely enough, one of the crops on the fenced land was a grass normally used as fodder. Why would farmers sacrifice valuable crop land to grow fodder when grazing was available for free in the forest?
A handful of milch cows have replaced dozens of scrub cattle.
It turned out that farmers had sold their dung cattle and replaced them with a few milch cows. With the farms under cultivation throughout the year, no longer had they or their family members the time to herd dozens of cattle into the forest. What they did have instead was the ability to set a small patch of land aside to support a handful of milch cows which yielded milk they could sell, supplementing their cash income as they had earlier done by selling dung. Soon, all farmers within the fence had stopped sending cattle into the forest.
With no external push towards breaking their dependence on the forest, farmers had taken the step themselves. Of course, their motivations had little to do with concern for wildlife, but did that matter? If the pursuit of the all-too-human goal of an improved quality of life has added benefits for wildlife, is it not time to rethink current approaches to conservation?
Undoubtedly, the challenge of scaling up such an effort to match the enormity of the problem remains. But if conservation must come as a side-effect, should we shy away from the human development activities that precipitate it? Should conservation efforts continue to see wildlife conservation and rural poverty as completely distinct and separate problems, particularly when we encounter them together? Or is rural poverty tripping us up as we march determinedly, in blinkers, towards conservation?
What India’s conservation movement has shown in the past is a strong resolve to protect our wildlife and forests against the poacher’s gun, the miner’s shovel and the logger’s saw. What we are yet to see though, is how justly and creatively this conservation movement can protect wildlife and forests against the neediness of our own people.
- Pavithra Sankaran and M D Madhusudan
An edited version of this article appeared in the Hindu Survey of the Environment 2010.
The elephants stood at the stream’s edge. As the adults drank in measured trunkfuls, calves gambolled in the water. Just above them, on the slope, a large sambar stag emerged silently from the undergrowth. From a cluster of trees above came the scolding call of a giant squirrel, as a troop of Nilgiri langur foraged in the canopy. Just as we were slipping into a reverie, imagining ourselves in pristine wilderness, a woman called loudly to her children playing nearby as she washed clothes outside a neat row of houses, a mere hundred metres upslope of the elephants.
Species like elephants seldom obey the administrative boundaries of wildlife reserves (Photo Credit: M. Ananda Kumar)
This vignette, from the Anamalai Hills of southern India, is not all that unusual. Across large parts of our country, a wide range of species still occur outside the confines of wildlife reserves, and even in the middle of busy, human-dominated landscapes. This is possible because a variety of natural and human-modified habitats—forest fragments, coffee plantations, orchards, paddy fields, marshes and lakes—still exist outside our reserves. These habitats may offer permanent residence for smaller creatures, whereas larger species may use them as passageways to move between wildlife reserves.
But the size, location and status of these habitats that lie outside reserves often belie their importance to the survival of endangered animals. This is so for many reasons.
Firstly, our wildlife reserves, crafted more by circumstance than by design, look like islands when seen on a map. But not long ago, wild animals occupied vast unbroken stretches of habitat—the Western Ghats that run across five states is a good example—and have evolved to move and migrate across such large landscapes. Today, some of the bigger species such as elephants, marooned in small, insular reserves, still seek ways of moving between them. Smaller species like jackals and mongooses, once forest dwellers, now live rather successfully near agriculture and on the edges of villages and towns.
Without this scraggly patchwork of habitats outside reserves, the movement of large animals, as well as the persistence of smaller species would be seriously hampered. Our wildlife would be restricted to the isolated reserves that occupy less than 4% of our country. Unable to move between these islands, they would be greatly affected by seasonal scarcities of food and water. Worse still, if a disease were to wipe out a species from one of these wildlife reserves, we might lose it forever.
How have these slivers of habitat and the animals in them managed to persist? One of the key factors that allows our wildlife to roam fearlessly outside reserves is that Indian law protects the species, rather than just the places they live in. Thus, unlike elsewhere in the world, they cannot be hunted or killed even when they leave wildlife reserves. Beyond the law is the cultural willingness among many communities to coexist with wildlife. The survival of wildlife outside reserves often has more to do with the tolerance of local people than the exertions of our conservation agencies. Thirdly, our agriculture, often even for commercial crops, is practised without the creation of vast, sterile monocultures. A diverse matrix of crop species interspersed with forest remnants and fallow lands have ensured that many of our cultivated landscapes still remain wildlife-friendly.
Conservation today continues to focus its efforts on wildlife reserves, but clearly, it is high time we embraced the ecological landscapes that animals recognise rather than imposing our administrative landscapes on them. And to secure a little more space for wildlife outside our reserves is but a beginning.
- Pavithra Sankaran and M D Madhusudan
An edited version of this article appeared in the Times of India dated 30 July 2010
After applying some strong smelling balm around my entire foot he proceeded to heat a surgical blade. I closed my eyes and lay on the ground. And I screamed. A shout of panic-fear escaped my open mouth, and then another. I bit down on my tongue. The old man had made two slits below the snake bite. Every time I whimpered or screamed he held my eyes with his, willing me to endure and succeed. I was sweating profusely. He nursed me with tenderness and constancy. At one moment, I screamed as loudly as I could and then allowed the feeling of true hysteria to settle in. I could hear laughter, but a strange numbness had started to take control of me. I didn’t care. Blood oozed out of my foot like an erupting volcano. The old man dipped his finger into the blood and showed me the dark colour of the venomous blood. One of them held my foot tighter and literally bit my toe to suck and spit out the blood from the freshly cut wound. I yelled in agony ordering Yoayela to tell this Burmese cannibal to go easy on my toe. But the man continued till the dark colour transformed into a deep red. And when he finally stopped, the old man took over, re-lit the cigar and burned the area around the snake bite muttering some chants that I could not understand. All the others stayed still and serious as a mark of respect. I lay completely still, and did not react at all. I listened intently to him; my questioning eyes were fixed on his face, as he went on. After the chant was over, the old man told me to repeat a few words of the chants, I said those words and once again everybody laughed, I guessed because of my pronunciation.
Steep cliffs of the eastern coast of Tillanchong
We were camping on an uninhabited island called Tillangchong. The island has always remained a mystery even to researchers as getting access is very difficult. That’s why we chose to come here.
The island has about 5 bays, and in each of these bays extends a reef, and these reefs surface in low tide as they start from the low tide line at a depth of less than one meter and extend all the way into deep waters as deep as 25 meters. The island is about 100 km away from Camorta, in Central Nicobar. The narrow stretch of island has a mountainous terrain, and dense forest estimated at about 80-85 percent forest cover. My aim, in the visit to this island, was to evaluate the biological efficacy of the traditional management systems that exists in and around this island.
For several years, the coastal land of this island has yielded coconut plantations which are traditionally harvested by the villagers of Kakana district in Camorta and Trinket Island in the month of March. During the rest of the year the only other inhabitants are Thai or Burmese poachers, reputed to roam with sophisticated weapons and steal from people or kill on sight. Rumours float around that they are powerfully built and in their own country they are often thieves, murderers, major mafia figures and even former warlords. We have always been warned to be extra cautious while working on this island.
We had arrived four days ago on an expedition to survey corals and sea grass. We reached the island during the early hours of the morning, cleared the camp site, set the fire and put up the tent. That morning we walked along the beach and collected plenty of flotsam. In the afternoon we stretched out under the shade of large Pandanus trees along the shore when at a distance we sighted a dinghy headed straight for us. “These are Burmese poachers,” Emanuel said based on the years of experience to this island, “And as far as I know they are here to poach sea cucumbers. They won’t harm us and will try to befriend us.” The dinghy stopped 100 m from our camping site and we all ran into the woods. We watched them through the leaves and they watched us through their binoculars. We did not move, they waited and waved at us and after 15 minutes continued their boat ride.
The next day we set off to survey the east coast of the island. We had just moved around the first head rock when we sighted the same dinghy of the previous day. Elrika insisted that we turn back but after contemplating we decided to move on. As we neared, we saw five men busy fishing under the hot sun. Elrika being the only girl on the boat decided it best to go unnoticed. She hid inside the hatch. The poachers looked at us and waved, and we waved back. They were calling us towards their boat; we signalled that we would come later. That afternoon we surveyed the entire eastern coast and got back to our camp late in the evening. That night I did not sleep well and had strange dreams of being attacked. A couple of times I heard the sound of their dingy and hoped that that would not turn to reality.
A rocky outcrop at the southern tip of the island
On the third day we cast off to survey the west coast of the island, a vital part of the island with mountainous volcanic-like terrain and beautiful corals. We raced down the vast blue-green water and headed north of the island. The tropical sun was hot and I felt it burn my skin even through my shirt. Sea birds were dancing along the shore. The water was crystal clear and the sun’s reflection through the water made it even brighter. We were diving and following standard procedures of data collection. Our boat was anchored close to the shore and Emanuel, Euriel and Cain were waiting on the boat.
We finished our dive and as we surfaced, Emanuel screamed “look there are men on the shore”. We got onto the boat and looked carefully. Three men were walking on the nearby shore. Yoayela started the boat engine and we approached the shore. We anchored the dinghy 100m away. Elrika hid.
Near the den of the poacher’s camp; their dinghies almost camouflaged
As we neared, the men ran taking shelter in the coastal forest. We spotted many heads. “They are Burmese and this is their camp site” said Emanuel. We waited for 10 minutes and signalled them to come out. We scanned the shore and at one end we saw 2 camouflaged dinghies. We were curious and we decided to go closer. As we neared, six men appeared from the forest. We stopped the engine and anchored the boat. They waved at us and called us onto the shore. Yoayela, our Karen (a Burmese tribe) field assistant was confident of making conversation as he knew a few words of Burmese. So Emanuel and he jumped into the water and swam toward them while we watched from a distance. Emanuel and Yoayela reached, and the men encircled them. In a while, they were shaking hands and communicating. The Burmese took them to one side of the shore and they sat down in a circle on the sand.
By now curiosity was killing me. I wanted to get to the shore but Elrika stopped me. I had to take a decision. Where would I ever get such an opportunity to meet them again…but a bit of fear held me immobile – What if they kill me? It’s a reasonable risk, I knew. But I couldn’t resist the temptation. “Okay I’m going”, I told myself sternly. I took a packet of biscuits and swam to the shore – for a brief instant I felt heroic.
As I neared the beach, two men approached me with a broad smile; I shook hands with them and gave them the packet of biscuits. The shorter man kept one hand at all times around his machete slung behind him across his shoulder. He looked at me through the top of his cold, killer eyes and hit his hand on his chest pronouncing loudly: “I am Burma.” In response I hit my hand on my chest and said “I am India”. A tattered T-shirt hung from his muscular shoulders, and a dirty round cap was perched on his angular face. “Tenha yistin yealak” said he and started walking (I got here only yesterday and it took us five days to reach this island). I nodded my face and walked with them. The people at a distance seemed suspicious of my presence. They thought I was from the Navy or Police. But as they saw me closely, they were convinced. So far, so good, I thought. We all shook hands and sat down.
Some of them were comprehensively, celestially and magnificently stoned. They looked at me closely, inquisitive and uninhibited. They tried my snorkelling gear and touched my T-shirt, my curly hair and the tuft of long hair hanging at the nape of my neck. There was nothing invasive about these moments, since they arose from pure and untainted inquisitiveness. One of them climbed a nearby coconut tree, plucked tender coconuts and cut open a few and offered them to us. We soon got involved in a conversation. I realised Yoayela was interacting fluently with one man. His name was Saw Athoo and he too knew the Karen language. So Yoayela and Athoo played the role of respective translators. He then sought to explain about me to the others by recounting how good I was and that I had met other Karens and he also made up a story about me being adopted and brought up in the Nicobars.
Yoayela, asked them why they chose travelling such a great distance illegally into foreign waters over finding means to earn money back in their hometown. Saw Athoo explained, “Our paddy fields have been submerged due to cyclones and other calamities. Half of the produce from the remaining land has to be given to our government. We are therefore left with no option but to travel foreign waters as it fetches more money to support our families”. I could not help thinking of the differences in our existence. When his family needs he must depart on a tiring dangerous journey. At home, I pop down to the local supermarket and in minutes I can find almost anything I want, although I rarely contemplate the convenience of this luxury.
We spoke of religion, politics, climate, economics, culture, marine life and life in general between the two countries, Yoayela and Athoo translating. We spent almost 1 hour together. As we were ready to leave, the short man gave me a 25-liter jerry can with diesel and said “this is Burma gift.” I refused to accept the gift but he insisted that I take it. In return, I had nothing to offer except my sincerest thanks, once again we shook hands and we swam back to the boat. Back on the boat, Elrika and the others were waiting anxiously. I was bombarded with questions and I answered them all. This was a happy day for me. I had interacted and shared a bond of friendship with strangers who are notorious for their acts.
Friends or foes?
The next day we surveyed the eastern part of the island and the bay where we were camping. At around 4 in the evening I walked through the forest to the small pond to take a much needed cleaning, with Elrika following. I was walking fast in the forest to avoid the mosquitoes waiting to feast on me. All of a sudden, I felt something strike my toe. I continued to walk but just managed to take a few steps and felt a bit uneasy. I sat down to examine the prick on my toe. I thought the thorn of a Pandanus leaf had lodged into my skin. There was a sudden excruciating pain and I could see a drop of blood trickle down. I held my foot tight in agony. Elrika ran toward me with a stick and moved the beast that was all ready to strike again. A sudden fear gripped me; I realized that I was just bitten by a Pit Viper. Elrika calmed me down and suggested that we get back to the camp as quickly as possible. I limped my way back and though the distance was not more than 200m, the path seemed never ending. I reached my tent and slumped on the ground, exhausted.
My new fear
Elrika called out to everyone and told them about the incident. Within minutes Yeaoyela, Euriel, Cain and Emanuel arrived – and the pace of action accelerated. Emanuel looked worried but at the same time he was calm and composed. He ran into the forest and got some jungle medicines, while Yeayola ran to the boat and got the machete. Meanwhile I kept myself busy recounting the details of the incident. In five minutes Emanuel was back with a bunch of leaves. Slowly he squeezed the juice out of those leaves on my entire foot. By now the toe was turning blue and we realized the importance of a lesion in order to let out the venom. Emanuel ordered me to hold my foot and he set off to make a tiny cut with the machete. I was scared. Common sense screamed, “Allow them to make the slit,” but the pain triggered my instinct to react otherwise. I held my fist tighter and pushed everybody away. Repeated attempts were made to convince me but I was reluctant. Finally I took the needle and pierced myself. Few drop of blood oozed out. I wiped out the blood but the foot continued to turn blue.
I could see the fear in Elrika’s eyes that manifested into anger because of my stubbornness. “VARDHAN! DO YOU WANT TO LOSE YOUR LEG?” she had the shaft of her hand stretched across my shoulder blade, pushing her weight against mine to pin me down, “Gangrene, Vardhan, that’s what it’ll lead to if you don’t treat it now!” Yoayela turned to her about to say something. He turned back to me, then turned to her and popped the question: “Should we take him to the poacher’s camp? It’s only a half hour away by dinghi.” He reasoned that there would be experienced elders who would be in a position to help me out. I saw the reservation in my heart reflected in Elrika’s eyes. They were Burmese…and poachers. We knew there were 22 of them, of which we had earlier only met six – what if the leader decided to kill us; that they didn’t want us around. But the nearest island with medical facilities was six hours away by boat. It was unanimously decided that I should be taken to the Burmese camp. Emanuel carried me to the boat. Yoayela and Cain started the boat engine and once again we were set off to meet the poachers. It had already turned dark and the only sound I could hear was the thumping of the boat engine and my heart beats, loud and clear, anxious to reach the destination of hope. I was watching the stars and holding my foot tighter. The pain was getting unbearable. I was counting every minute. Though I knew, I quietly asked Emanuel “How long will we travel?”
Forty minutes later, we were at their camp site. We anchored close to the shore and waited for some time. A group of poachers came to greet us on the shore. On seeing Emanuel carry me across the sand they realised something was wrong. Yoayela, explained to them about the snake bite. They examined my toe and tied a tourniquet below my calf muscle. They offered their shoulders for support while I limped along a winding path through the coastal forest that seemed to have no end. All the way they calmed me down and assured me that I would be fine. Mosquitoes and sand flies were having a feast on my poisoned blood.
Through the twists and turns I saw the light of their camp growing stronger and brighter till I was sure we’d reached their den. It was an open space, a clearing of almost 250 square meters – quite a surprise after the narrow winding path. On the left stood a wooden platform on stilts, 2 men stood at the edge of the platform boiling sea cucumbers in metal drums below. Their faces were blazing with the burning fire that made them sweat profusely. One of them smiled at me and came closer while the other continued working. On the right were three large wooden structures on stilts. The walls of these structures were made of bamboo mats. I was soon encircled by men and everybody seemed concerned. They were all talking a language that was difficult to understand but soothing to the ears. I was so amazed at the site that for a moment I forgot about the pain. Not for long.
I was offered to sit on a nearby platform next to a leathery old man. He was smiling, a distinct vast smile that covered almost half his face, as if he had been frozen in the middle of a belly laugh. When he learned of my misfortune, his expression changed to a strange mix of pride and worry. The wrinkles seemed to steady his hands with experience…or was it really mine they were steadying?
He put his hand on my chest and told me to calm down. He offered me water, lit a cigar, and immediately set to work. He instructed the others to hold my foot on the ground while he burned the area around the snake bite with the lit cigar. Emanuel, who had experienced my strength of resistance an hour earlier pinned my back into immobility between his knees and his arms, while three Burmese poachers held my leg down. Watching it made every jab of his burning cigar against my sensitised skin even more painful.
And then he applied some strong smelling balm which set my nerves ablaze. The old man wasted not a minute to heat the surgical blade which would slit a portion of my toe open; at one point I allowed hysteria to take refuge within me. Another man bit me, to remove the venom, but why was he hurting me? I wanted them to stop; just make it stop. And it did. The man stopped. I could hear, I could see, I could smell beyond pain. The pain stopped.
The old man believed in touch as the ultimate means of communion between man and man. He put his hand on my chest and assured me that I would be alright within a week. There was a confidence on his face and his touch. That touch from a stranger had a healing power. Suddenly I felt better. Later I was offered green tea and an energy drink. I gulped it down quickly. I offered my sincerest thanks to everybody around for getting the venom out of my body. One of them knew a few words of English. He asked me inquisitively, “What is your name,” and I answered. I asked him the same and he said “Pochala.” Later he asked me, “When Navy come?” I answered “I don’t know,” and told them, “You should not stay here and move away from here as fast as you’ll can”.
In a while, a pile of rice topped up with gravy was placed on my hand. We had to have dinner before we left the place. I looked at the pile of rice and looked at my watch. We had already spent 2 hours at their base camp and my thoughts were of Elrika. She was alone at the camp and it had turned dark. What must she be thinking? Will she be worried for our safety? Will she find the torch? What will she do sitting alone for so long? What if a wild boar or the crocodile whose tracks were found close to our camp attacked her in the darkness? I had to go back fast. Without hesitation I ate the entire chunk of rice. The food was spicy and tasty. I particularly liked the gravy and the meat pieces. Later I was told that the delicious meat was of a reptile – a Water-Monitor Lizard.
A water-Monitor lizard at the poacher’s camp
Having done that, I stood and said a final good bye to everybody. The old man decided to stay on at the camp. I looked into the old man’s eye and offered my thanks. I don’t know if he understood my feelings, but I guess my body language said everything that I had to say. He patted me on the back and I shook hands with him. Emanuel and Athoo gave me their shoulders and I limped to the shore as the others focused the torch on the small jungle path. The night was bright. I looked towards the water. Moonlight shattered on the water, shedding streaks in the crystal clear water. I was carried to the boat. I said a last good bye to my new friends that I may never meet in my lifetime. I thanked them a million times and I thanked my stars. In the minutes before the dingy started and spluttered away from the shore the short man I met first – the one who kept one hand on his machete while he shook mine with his free hand – held my hand once more and lightly squeezed them as a bond of friendship. I waved goodbye and continued till I could see them no longer.
Back at the camp Elrika was sitting alone on the shore, waiting for me and the others. I told her about all that had happened and she listened intently as if I was telling her a fairy tale. She was happy that they had got the venom out. I was tired and fell asleep in no time. That night I tossed and turned in my tent deliriously wandering through a dream world, alternately sodden with sweat and then racked with the intense foot pain. The morning brought no relief. We packed our tent and our bags. I was once again carried to the boat. In minutes the dinghy started and we moved further away from the island. The sea appeared wide and sluggish; I lay asleep on the boat on a pile of bags, with the hot breeze hitting my face. The sun seared my eyes; flares of cerise and magenta were steaming out of the island. I looked across rile and ruffle of the bay, I tried to fit my feelings within a frame of thoughts and facts. I thought of something my mother had once told me, “There is a kind of luck that is not more than being in the right place at the right time, a kind of inspiration that is not more than doing the right thing in right way, and both only happen when you empty your heart of ambition, purpose, and plan; when you give yourself completely, to the golden, fate filled moment. I was never sure what she meant by “giving yourself to golden fate filled moment” but with this incident I understood what she meant. The entire experience shunned me and probably helped me to understand the dimension of humanity.
Of Pigs on the Wing & A Damsel at Sea
*For die-hard fans of Pink Floyd, a disclaimer that I have taken the liberty to caption pictures with some of their song titles—and have tweaked some of the song titles for my own happiness!
In the 1970s, Pink Floyd released the song ‘Pigs on the wing’ in the album ’Animals’. A youthful fascination for the song made me wonder then if pigs could ever fly. The answer is strangely enough ‘Yes’, only if you consider cockroaches to be piggier than regular pigs. Let me explain.
These thoughts came back to me recently as I stood listening to a bunch of nurses and hospital staff fervently singing ‘Hark the herald angels sing’. It was December of 2009 and we were all passengers on a cockroach-ridden ship returning to Port Blair from the Nicobar Islands. My mind wandered back to Floyd’s psychedelic fancies; cockroaches I imagined could be angels hovering above the bunch of men and women heralding in Christmas.
Sheep (after the sing song)
The tub we were on, the M.V. Sentinel, is an old ship still cutting water after more than 30 years at sea. She had been patched with ‘m-seal’ and coal tar over her rusty edges and then painted up to guarantee a certificate of sea worthiness. Her passengers were ostensibly human, but her main cargo seemed to be cockroaches, bed bugs, rats, and other scurrying creatures. The ships blowers and air conditioner gave up on that journey, and, as the crew’s bunks were located closest to the engine room, it must have been hell for them. I suspect it was to avoid a mutiny, that the Captain decided to let the passenger cabins be used by the crew, with only bunk and deck space available for passengers!
The MV Sentinel in all her resplendent glory docked at Kamorta jetty
I was returning from another bout of field work at three sites in the Nicobar Islands. The Islands are where I attempt to fathom the intricacies of natural resource use and management among islander communities in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami. The Nicobaris lived along the coast, fishing, tending pigs and chicken, and harvesting their coconut plantations – the mainstay of their former economy. The coast harbored a host of natural resources and species within easy reach, some which were protected through local regulations and others through seemingly benign consumption practices. The Islands harbor biological diversity despite centuries of use by indigenous Islanders. Their unique management system has largely consisted of access to resources through permissions and sharing among and between themselves. Cheating was rare and strictly reprimanded. The tsunami not only reduced the available coastal resources, but also created unusual social upheavals amidst the rehabilitative process.
'Echoes' of squeals grunts and clucks from the past
My work in the Islands was stressful as I was constantly reminded of how the lives of the Nicobaris had changed after the tsunami unleashed its destruction four years ago. Uncertainty is the cloud that many Islanders travel on today. Soon after the event some were not sure what to make of their circumstances, with the damage caused by the tsunami and the deluge of rehabilitative aid thereafter. For others, this was the moment to amass some wealth by cadging any government largesse through compensation. For many others, the old life that they had been comfortable with made more sense and they patiently struggled to weave back those strands. Through all of these attitudinal shifts I try to understand how events have affected their sharing and cooperation patterns over the use of natural and domestic resources.
Shine on you crazy diamonds. - A dance session in celebration of a new house 2001
Understandably I was weary and the ticket on the old ship back to the base wasn’t a mood-enhancer. Given the condition of the ship, passengers had two choices, the company of bed bugs and cockroaches in steaming hot bunks below, or rats, cockroaches and the occasional bug for company on the airy deck. I’d been on this journey many times before and knew better than to meekly accept what lay in store. After loafing around on the deck till evening – passing time by staring into the blue sea and skimming through my book – I finally came across a friend, the Second Officer. I stored my precious equipment and belongings in his cabin and he kindly offered me a spare sofa to sleep on. Within minutes however, one of the ship’s bedbugs got to me! My friend handed me a few swigs of ‘Royal Challenge’ whisky saying, ‘Drink, you will soon be in a coma and the bugs will disappear!’ I hate the thought of a roach peering up my nostril, or cuddling up with a bed bug in bed. So I chatted with him till he went on to attend duties at the ship’s bridge and then hurried over to my preferred spot—the SOPEP locker on the upper deck! This is a large box containing life jackets, hoses, helmets and other paraphernalia to tackle pollution at sea; being an elevated region on deck, this was my safest bet.
Goodbye blue sky- at the far side, the remnants of Kakana village Central Nicobar
The dark side of the moon-plantations and coastal forests destroyed after the tsunami of 2004
Astronomy domine- at dusk before the stars take over
I laid myself comfortably and looked up at the ships smoke stacks puffing at the stars above. The eager hospital staff nearby were not finished with their carol singing. I imagined the angel Gabriel as a large cockroach descending upon them and lifting them to heavenly bliss twitching its feelers over them soothing them to sound sleep. I was the one who couldn’t sleep. Gabriel is also the name of one of my key informants from a Nicobarese village where natural resources were wiped clean by the tsunami. Survivors of the tsunami including Gabriel were relocated to the heights on a grassland on Kamorta Island as a precautionary measure, though other factors of livelihood were not considered in this monocular vision of safety after the tsunami. The grasslands are a beautiful landscape that is desolate as far as livelihood resources are concerned; given this predicament the villagers relocated to such regions have survived for the past five years on Government aid and dole. Gabriel is one of the few to bounce back and begin recreating some of what he lost.
On the turning away- Housing style post tsunami for nuclear families on the grassland
The majority lived in pecuniary delight for a while, given the flood of cash compensations and their inability to do much else on the grassland. They live distant from the coast now, with few canoes and functional boats. Fish are far to come by unlike in the past. Feeding their domestic pigs is now restricted to few days in a week, compared to the daily routine before. There are many more uncertainties ahead. I looked up above to see the moon obscured by a ghoulish and cottony cloud on its journey across the sky. The stars literally twinkled and danced about. I felt good on my elevated bed; safe, rocking free on the sea’s swell below the ship, breathing the clean cool air of the night. I didn’t have to worry about a livelihood on the grassland, or of what a governmental rehabilitation program meant, or of who stole coconuts kept aside to feed my pigs. Mosquitoes that come to life at dusk are normal; the heat of the day under tin roofed houses on the open grassland is abnormal. Life before the tsunami was lived under the shade of coconut palms on the beach, with the sea throwing up wonderful surprises on the shore each day, sometimes from distant lands. Rope, wooden planks, plastic or wooden toys, footwear from around the globe, containers of all types from the ubiquitous plastic water bottle to jerry cans and even biscuit packets that arrived every blue moon. There wasn’t much need to go shopping often, as the sea threw up different goods every now and then that could be put to some use or the other. It was possible to innovate with goods available for free on the shore. The rest of the world bought and used those goods, then discarded or emptied their bins into drains that led to the sea. The sea’s currents took over and distributed goods for all those along its shores. There is an old saying – the sea knows how to keep itself clean; what we throw into it, comes back on some shoreline. Islanders the world over and those on the coast have made best of these opportunities with the assortment of trash that washes ashore. Uses of this trash apart, seeing the mess on beaches only increases the disgust I have for urban spoils and chaos.
Welcome to the machine- in the days of wind and oar propelled canoes
Interstellar overdrive-a family waits on the beach to sail to their village
Meddle- a beached Akai television to look at yourself
Material goods came with colonizers from distant lands with the promise of development, but largely to make money and lives of people like themselves more comfortable. The locals were soon won over. The few shops in town were for special occasions when cash was available and rations had to be sourced for lean periods such as the beginning of the monsoon. Otherwise life on the coast was a wholesome existence. Fish and other marine life were within easy reach, coconuts with multiple uses hung just above and the tree’s fronds shaded comfortable stilt houses close to the beach. Many families lived together and ate from a common kitchen, now with ‘permanent shelters’ they all live separate and on cement floors. Around those former stilted homesteads, domesticated pigs squealed and grunted while chickens clucked and crowed providing daily life some percussion. The sea’s breeze kept spirits high along with toddy sessions at the ready for any occasion. Canoes slid into and out of the water whenever needed. There were few motorized boats (if at all) then and the putting of an engine would make every head turn to see who passed by or arrived. Life had surely changed with one tsunami. For me, life on the SOPEP locker was good except for the thought of them pigs on the wing below.
Comfortably numb- a pleasant toddy session
Shifting my thoughts, I reflected on times when I had seen animals at sea. There were places where I saw real marine angels- manta rays gliding below the sea’s surface like dark shadows from the deep. Such sights were in contrast to the periscope like stare of saltwater crocodiles lying still on the surface of estuarine creeks. There were dolphins and sometimes porpoises that made an appearance while sailing, spinning or somersaulting out of the water or just popping around our dinghy smirking at us slowpokes. The grandest sight was a multitude, literally thousands of dolphins as far as my eye could see. This was when I sailed south to the Nicobar Islands more than a decade ago. It was some sort of mass migration that I’ve never seen again. The ship I was on seemed atom like amidst the sea of dolphins.
Learning to fly
'Hey you'- if you didn't believe that dolphins can smirk!
My biggest surprise was seeing Orcas in the Bay of Bengal one November in 1999. I was returning to the mainland for a short holiday, and saw large fins shearing the water’s surface and moving perpendicular to the ships path at dusk on our second day at sea. Only when I saw the large flipper of one of the males in the pod did I realize they were Killer whales. Seeing a sperm whale spouting into the sky at sea was very different from an occasion when an adult made its way into Port Blair harbor getting stuck and confused for two whole days until it oriented itself seaward and to freedom. Underwater life while snorkeling is another dreamy world of colour, grace and shapes as you glide above the reef peering through the confines of a mask. What’s seen on the surface is usually fleeting, ephemeral, and all about luck. I realized I was lucky to have seen these and more. I was safe from the ravaging cockroaches for now, and I turned myself to sleep.
The narrow way- part 3. Dolphins cavorting
It was the 25th and I woke up to a beautiful early morning sky tinged orange and blue with a slight but cool breeze. The nurses and hospital staff were still asleep and I had my early morning peace. I sat up cross legged on my prop like crow’s nest, blinking myself awake. The silhouettes of the Andaman Islands were coming into view through the early morning haze. The ship heaved and pitched over a lazy swell taking us closer to urban Port Blair. I reflected on the short visit to my field sites, knowing that it could be a while before I got back again. I idealistically hoped that things would change in the Nicobar Islands and that life wouldn’t be lived on the grasslands forever. My ideal is the beach. Then my eye caught sight of a being below. Just a few yards away from the ship, a huge grey brown shape appeared on the surface, moving in an opposite direction alongside. I thought ‘shark’! but ….in a few seconds, I saw its flat tail and a rounded head that could belong to only one creature- a dugong! It drifted by without a care, being heaved by the swell of the sea and carried on a current past the ship’s wake. A few seconds more and it was gone. The early morning sun reflected off the sea’s surface obscuring any further view. This was it then! Hark the herald O angels! This was a beautiful and rare sight-and a total surprise. An obese but graceful animal that is rare to see was my sight of that morning. I smiled to myself; In the Andaman’s, as in other areas, dugongs are called ‘sea pigs’…nothing close to the notion of being mermaids of the sea, but certainly a lot better than those pigs on the wing. In retrospect those pigs on the wing were the reason I got to see the fat mermaid at the gates of dawn-yet another sight to remember!
See Emily play
The combination of ideas in this account may seem strange (the account is true by the way), but when I wrote them out, I realized that I happen to have a fancy for ‘living in the past’, and have lamented on the changes in lifestyle among the Nicobar Islanders. I do not turn back from that lament, but look forward to the surprises that lie ahead. Through my field research I have come across many instances of resilience among many friends and others islanders I meet. As every turn along the beach can turn up surprises, I do acknowledge that social and ecological processes do take unexpected turns-sometimes churning up beautiful versions of change.
Wish you were here
Got a cup of coffee in hand as you read the paper this morning? Much of the coffee we drink in India is grown in the hilly, southern districts of Coorg, Wayanad and Nilgiris. To the east of these picturesque and popular holiday destinations is a vast tract of impoverished dry-land agriculture. Farmers here have traditionally grown rain-fed crops of millets, pulses and oilseeds.
While coffee is grown by the relatively well-off, farmers in the plains rarely have the capital to invest into seeds and fertilisers each sowing season. They borrow from local moneylenders, who charge annual interest rates between 40 and 300 percent. Few farmers are able to repay these debts, which turn into crippling inheritances passing from father to son.
For decades, this was the saga of farming here. But since the 1990s, a massive but quiet economic revolution has unfolded, driven by trade in a rather unusual commodity.
Cattle dung. Nearly all the 30,000 farmers in these dry-lands keep cattle, mainly as draught animals and also for dung, traditionally an important input into farming. Farmers began selling this humble cow-dung because it fetched a far higher price than chemical fertilisers: for the price of one kilo of cow-dung you could buy 10 times its subsidised chemical equivalent.
But who was buying such expensive manure? It was coffee growers from the adjoining hills. They had had a major windfall in the early 1990s from soaring global coffee prices. The market leaders, Brazil and Colombia, suffered a series of frosts and droughts to which they lost half their produce. This seriously dented the global supply and pushed prices to heights never seen before. Smaller players like India made a killing, bringing massive profits to coffee growers in this region.
Flush with cash, they sought organic manure because it improved the yield and quality of coffee. And of course, conscientious and discerning consumers like you and I were willing to pay higher prices for coffee grown on organic inputs. Does this not sound like a fantastic example of consumer choice benefitting the last link in the value chain—the impoverished farmer of our story who supplied cow-dung to the coffee grower?
But, let’s not stop with the farmer. Let us take this story a step further. Lying just beyond the fields of these farmers is a large and spectacular tract of forest, stretching from Nagarahole and Wayanad, to Bandipur and Mudumalai. Together, these jungles hold nearly a fifth of the world’s remaining tigers and Asian elephants.
Is our demand for organic coffee driving elephants in southern India to the brink?
Which brings us to the twist. The cow-dung that goes into organic coffee, comes straight out of the cattle that graze—illegally—inside the last strongholds of the tiger and the elephant. Farmers have nowhere but these fragile forests to graze their cattle, which number in lakhs. And since the dung trade began, their populations have risen sharply. These cattle convert the forests, with ruthless efficiency, into first class manure. As they have marched in, the forests have retreated and the numbers of wild herbivores—deer, wild cattle and elephants—have declined.
Thus, in a strange juxtaposition only globalisation can bring, the frosts in faraway Brazil and, not to forget, conscientious consumers of organic coffee worldwide, have helped convert some of the best and last remaining elephant and tiger forests in the world first into cow-dung and then into coffee.
So, as you take your next sip of coffee, perhaps you want to check if it tastes… just a little bit strange.
- M D Madhusudan and Pavithra Sankaran
This article appeared in the Times of India dated 25 June 2010.
Nagaraja Shetty did not want the day to dawn. It would mean that he could see exactly how much the elephants had taken. But the remorseless sun did rise, only to reveal a completely destroyed paddy field. Nothing was left of his meagre one acre. Starvation and deepening debt stared him in the face, but all Shetty could say was, “How can I begrudge the elephants their meal? They needed it just as much as I. For us both, the struggle is the same.”
A farmer surveys his paddy field destroyed by elephants. Photo: Sanjay Gubbi
Shetty is not alone. Across India, lakhs of marginal farmers and pastoralists with small livestock holdings compensate for the lack of physical space for wildlife with vast spaces in their minds and hearts. For many of these people who live on the edges of national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, the losses inflicted by wildlife make all the difference between food and starvation. Yet, many of them do not retaliate or kill these animals.
Not long ago, bears and wolves roamed the European countryside but systematic persecution by farmers and herders, unable or unwilling to bear the killing of their livestock, has ensured their extinction. Recently, when it was suggested that wolves might be reintroduced in parts of Spain, local people threatened to shoot the reintroduced animals. Some years ago, when a jogger in California unknowingly ventured too close to a mountain lion’s cubs, she was killed. After a huge public outcry, the people of California voted to have the animal shot.
In stark contrast, dozens of people lose their lives to elephants in Assam each year. Large numbers of lives are also lost to tigers, leopards and bears across the country. But it is to the credit of our rural populace that they have only demanded safety from these animals, rather than their elimination.
The immense tolerance and accommodation millions of people in India make for wildlife, extends a huge and hugely unacknowledged subsidy to conservation. But for their forbearance, it would be almost futile to attempt conservation in a densely packed country of a billion. But this tolerance is not without contradictions; the same farmer who may forgive an elephant for pushing him deeper into debt may also set a snare to catch deer or pigs for an occasional dinner. Persecution and tolerance may seem incompatible, but they do co-exist in the same cultures.
Tolerance must not be seen as a substitute—but certainly as a very strong supportive element—to conservation action. However, this support cannot continue while people’s burdens continually increase. Farmers and pastoralists across India are known to lose around 15% of their produce or livestock to wildlife each year. These losses are driving rural poverty and people’s patience is wearing thin. Since 2008, in Karnataka alone, over 50 elephants have been electrocuted by live wires laid by farmers desperate to protect their crops. Increased desperation always means reduced tolerance.
An elephant feeds on a paddy crop while a farmer watches. Photo: Sanjay Gubbi
The people who share space and resources with wildlife are among the poorest and most disempowered in our country. Conservation efforts today are focused almost entirely on securing wildlife habitats and policing forest boundaries, but they ignore the costs the mere presence of wildlife can place on human communities nearby. If we do nothing to reduce the burdens conservation places on them, or at least to share in their costs, we will only ensure that the cultural space they make for wildlife is lost. And that loss is bound to leave us immeasurably poorer, both ecologically and culturally.
- M D Madhusudan and Pavithra Sankaran
An edited version of this article appeared in the Times of India dated 28 May 2010.
If this is a vision of dying, it is a reassuringly rowdy affair, more bar-room brawl than somber wake. The corpse lies all around, its skeleton slowly decaying and it is difficult to reanimate her in your imagination from the scattered ribs that remain. Rowdy rabbles swarm around, and every so often, soundless scuffles break out between the factions, as they push and shove for prime parts of this carcass. It’s a dynamic dying this, and after more than a century, the process of transforming dust to dust continues unabated.
Our being here is a violation surely, another sacred space invaded in the increasing commodification of voyeuristic experience, and if I am not entirely uncomfortable with being part of this grave-diving party, it is because we are not the first ones here. The giant sweetlips, motionless above the drop-off gives us a patient, tired look as we disturb his hunting ground. There is a quiet disdain in his assessment: with lycra skins, plastic fins, silicone eyes and artificial respirators, we are more synthetic than organic, and rather inelegant aliens in his silent universe. I guess he knows from experience that if he tolerates our presence another hour, either our weak physiologies or our primitive technologies will force us to surface leaving the busy shipwreck to get on with the long, elaborate business of decay.
And as you surface, you look back once more at the wreck below. From out in the blue the ship is a laceration on the face of the reef, a deep gash that starts at 17 meters and continues until it meets the breakers at the surface. The island of Minicoy has several such wounds on her reef face – steam ships that ran aground on trans-Indic voyages, carrying grain and cotton and spices and travellers between Europe and the Indies. After 1885 the wrecks are less frequent after a lighthouse was erected on the southern tip of the island. The lighthouse is manned still; the lighthouse keeper is a gentleman in the old manner – a self-styled naturalist, a collector of flotsam, keenly aware of the historical symbolism of his post, a proud custodian of his craft. He accompanies us up the winding iron staircase of the lighthouse, and from this height you can just about make out where the wrecks of old wounded the reef before this tower was built.
Wounds heal. After the grinding crush of iron keel on aragonite coral, after the life rafts are deployed and the passengers rescued, after the cargo holds are salvaged and the ship stripped of every useable part, the reef calls on its resources to try, as best it can, to repair the tear in its ecological skin. The fish are the first to venture back, and for species that thrive on structure, a fresh wreck can be choice real estate. The benthos takes a little longer. Coralline algae will eventually cover the metal remains, and where there is coralline algae, coral is not far behind. Slowly, the aragonite will grow back again, and although the scars will always show, the reef does its best to embrace the alien structure and make it part of its own complex framework. Given enough time, the wreck is little more than a cicatrix on the bark of the reef, a mild blemish of rusting metal and flourishing coral.
The reef is good at mending bruises. From its pre-Cambrian origins, it has spent most of its existence on a turbulent earth, shifting and gurgling with earthquakes and tsunamis, storms and high waves, extreme tides and shifts in temperature. And by now the threats of ocean warming and El Niño events on coral reefs are familiar tropes to a media-suffused populace. We have all seen, and are perhaps even a little weary of those dramatic images of bleaching coral and dying reefs.
When a small disturbance scales up to catastrophe like this, the self-healing capacities of the reef are put seriously to test. Yet even here, a healthy reef can recover. Much is dependent on having good neighbours close at hand. If a few of these reefs escaped the big catastrophe, they can seed the bare spaces with coral. Like white blood cells to the site of a lesion, a flood of coral spat will descend on the spot made dead and vacant by the disturbance, and occupy every free space. And if the reefs still have a fair complement of grazing herbivores – surgeonfish, parrotfish and the like – those opportunistic algae that can quickly bully out the coral will be kept under check. Given a period of relative calm, and this spat will quickly grow, engaging in a serious-as-death struggle with its compatriots for a space in the sun. Within a decade or so, the wound is mended.
Even in a healthy reef, scars remain long after the healing. Some species of fish and coral may never recolonize a reef if their populations fail. These absences often go completely unrecorded, because we often have no baselines to help us determine the loss. The species that remain have strange demographies, dominated by young individuals, or with some ages completely missing from the population. These populations, like some post-war generation of lost young soldiers, will carry the signature of this loss for a long time after the disturbance has gone.
Back down in the reefs of the Minicoy you can read this signature everywhere. Minicoy bears the burden of its isolation heavily when hit by large disturbances. The once effulgent abundances of branching Acropora are there no longer, and you suspect (although you have no way of knowing) that many of the genus are probably locally extinct. The coral that remain are either very large – survivors of the last mass bleaching – or very small – individuals that managed to recruit to the reef after the event.
As you descend to the wreck 
for one last time, you realise, that viewed in one way, the scornful dismal of the sweetlips on your previous visit, was actually a fair metaphor for the wreck itself. Much like you, the wreck is a bionic entity – and after all these years, the identities blur between human and natural forging. This is not new of course. The ability of coral to take human structures and make them its own is well known. And it does not take long for us to wonder if this ability can be used to help reefs in the process of wound healing – hurry along a repair that would otherwise take decades. It is a neat idea surely, and it appeals to the engineers in us. We are a meddling lot, and it is difficult to leave well-enough alone. Already, on experimental and larger scales, there are efforts afoot to restore reefs through artificial means, using many of the same techniques the reef uses when dealing with a shipwreck. Concrete blocks of different configurations are being cemented to the reef, waiting for recruits of coral to descend. Complex electrified contraptions are being established, with the purported aim of encouraging calcium deposition. For many, even these relatively passive means are not fast enough. Nurseries of coral are being constructed, where coral from the reef is broken into bits and coaxed to grow into individual heads. These will later be taken and cemented to the reef, to produce, in the reasoning of the coral nurserymen, instant reefs.
If I come across as a tad sceptical, it is not because I do not believe that these techniques of engineering reefs are a solution. What I am not entirely sure about is what problem they are a solution for. The dilemmas the reef face today from local and global pressures are complex ecological dilemmas, and trying to solve them with simple – dare I say, simplistic – engineering solutions is appealing surely, but almost certainly blinkered. If it is our meddling that has brought reefs to the current brink of disaster, it is a vain presumption to believe that all it will take is a little more meddling to right those wrongs. More seriously for me, it appears to absolve us of deeper responsibilities – to understand the underlying processes that drive the reef’s immune system in the face of disturbance and catastrophe, and to ensure that these processes are protected. This takes more imagination of course. It requires a certain humility to recognise the boundaries of our own accomplishments. And it requires an intellectual investment beyond cement and epoxy. In the absence of this knowledge, the future for reefs is uncertain. We are traveling without a lighthouse here, and shallow strands are everywhere.
A version of this post first appeared on the NDTV blog site.
Humans have always looked upon everything in nature as resources. Forests continue to provide us a staggering range of raw and finished products. Wildlife too, are resources. And there are different ways of using these resources—we hunt deer for meat, trap tigers for skin, poach elephants for ivory. We cut trees to cook dinner, to make chairs, to lay fashionable floors. We mine ore under forests and use the iron to build bridges. But over time, there has come a small but growing realization that we cannot afford to care only about the commodified value of these resources. More importantly perhaps, we need to value and preserve them as living resources.
This is where tourism offers us a very different way of valuing and utilising forest resources. The consumption of wood, meat and ore may sustain livelihoods and foster commerce. But such use also renders a resource finite. The recognition that these uses leave us with less of the resource for the future, has prompted us to explore sustainable ways of using nature to support livelihoods and further commerce. Tourism, as opposed to mining or logging, does not involve extraction and seems the ideal way of keeping a resource intact, while continuing to derive economic benefits.
Ecotourism, goes one step further. Not only does it mean commercial but non-extractive use of forests and but also sharing of economic benefits with local communities. To be equitable and successful, ecotourism also has to offset the loss of livelihood for people who depend on extractive use of the forest. Unless a different way of making a livelihood is offered to the villagers who gather honey, collect firewood or graze cattle in the forest, preventing them from removing these products from the forest is not just unfair; it simply will not work.
If that is the philosophy of ecotourism, how has it fared, in practice? Are we, to paraphrase a government slogan, “taking only memories and leaving only footprints” when we holiday in our wildlife sanctuaries and national parks?
(Bandipur Tiger Reserve) Feeding wildlife encourages animals to come to the road, causing accidents and wildlife roadkills. (Credit: M D Madhusudan)
Let us look a little more closely at our footprints. We leave them behind in the form of large, old trees cut to make roads within forests so that we can go see wildlife. In the form of vast numbers of vehicles entering sanctuaries and parks on these roads each day. In creating and maintaining artificial ‘view lines’ on either side of forest roads by regularly clearing natural plant growth. In fact, our demand for wildlife holidays has caused the forest department to keep parks like Bandipur Tiger Reserve open to visitors even during the summer, taking staff away from fire prevention and control. We even demand evening campfires in our resorts, burning wood cut from the very forests we have come to see. In a place like Bandipur, which receives around 400 tourists each day, these footprints add up to a massive but unseen impact on wildlife and their habitat.
As for sharing the economic benefits, we must ask if and how the rapid growth of wildlife tourism has benefitted local people. Your weekend may have been made memorable by the herd of elephants you saw on the morning safari. But did you know the same placid herd had just then ambled back from a raid in a jowar field right behind your resort, ruining a farmer for the year? In fact, the man who carried away your breakfast plate may have tilled the very land your resort stands on; unable to bear the losses from crop raiding elephants year after year, he may have sold it.
While local communities certainly have an impact on the forests they depend on for firewood and grazing, they also subsidise conservation in ways that have almost never been measured. Were it not for the immense tolerance of local people, there would be far fewer of these wild animals for us to see. As tourists who derive the benefits of sanctuaries and parks, do we not have a responsibility to share in their costs?
One way of offsetting costs is to provide employment to local people. Few, if any, resorts make it a policy to hire people from villages around the resort; it is far cheaper to employ a migrant labourer. A noteworthy exception is the government-run Jungle Lodges and Resorts where around 80% of the staff in most of their properties are from local communities.
The form of ecotourism we encounter today achieves neither of its original goals. In fact, it enlarges our footprint on the forest and totally ignores the second commandment of giving back to local communities. But this can change. Ecotourism businesses, like any other, care about consumers, not crusaders. You and I can ask the right questions of our resorts, demand responsible behaviour and achieve a change that no amount of regulation can bring about.
- M D Madhusudan and Pavithra Sankaran
A version of this article appeared in the Deccan Herald on 11 May 2010.
