REWILDING INDIA (II)- WE CAN'T RELY ON GOVERNMENTS ALONE.

   As I have stressed in my last blog (Part-I), the job of rewilding is too big and innovative  for governments to handle. Globally, the responsibility is being taken up by individuals, retired corporates and environmentalists wishing to return to nature in some measure what they have extracted from it. There are various models which are being followed in the USA, Europe and Latin America. It would be illustrative to share a few examples with the reader.

  Perhaps the best known and most successful instance is that of Kristine Tompkins and her husband, both ex-corporate honchos. With their own money they have purchased 15 million acres of barren, degraded wildlands in Patagonia (Argentina and Chile) and manage them in PPP mode in coordination with the Wildlife wings of these countries and the cooperation of local natives in matters such as restrictions on grazing of livestock and felling of trees. Photographs show that these lands have been successfully restored to their former status, wildlife species which had disappeared have returned in ever increasing numbers; they include peccaries, swamp deer, the highly endangered green Macaws and jaguar. Out of these millions of acres 13 new National Parks have been established: the Tompkins have also promoted marine reserves. One Eoghans Daltun has purchased 73 acres of barren land in Cork, Ireland and rewilded it, hoping to make it a tourist attraction too.

                                    

                                           [ Colours of Pin valley in HP. Photo by author.]

There are a couple of notable examples in India too, by socially responsible citizens. Perhaps the best known is Jabarkhet Nature Reserve, just outside Mussoorie, established by environmentalist and ex-Programme Director of WWF for Nature, India, Dr. Sejal Worah and businessman J.P.Jain who is the owner of the land. Extending over 950 acres this private forest had gone to seed, overgrown with invasive plants, filled with trash, trees felled by local villagers, damaged by regular forest fires, devoid of any wildlife. It has now been restored with sustainable forest management practices: new planting, coopting locals into banning felling/lopping, removal of more than three tonnes of garbage, measures against forest fires, laying out of fire breaks and walking trails. All this has paid off big time, the forest has regenerated itself and all kinds of wildlife have returned: leopard, bear, red fox, ghoral, sambhar, jungle cat, and 140 species of birds. To make it financially sustainable, its owners have launched a membership drive, made it an ecotourism destination on a payment basis: it broke even in its third year itself!

Tiger expert Aditya "Dicky" Singh has bought 50 acres of wildland just outside Ranthambore National Park and restored its natural habitats and green cover, to the extent that the water table in his rewilded area is at 50 feet, whereas outside it lies at 500 feet. Naturally enough, wild animals including tigers, are regular visitors to his private forest and its brimming waterholes.

  A more humble example is in Majuli, Assam, at 550 hectares the world's biggest riverine island. Subject to biotic pressures and rampant tree felling, Majuli has lost half its area to erosion by the mighty Brahmaputra since 1917. One resident, Jadav Payeng (named the "Forest Man of India" by former President APJ Abdul Kalam), has taken it upon himself to replant the island and give it back to nature. He has been doing so, quietly and anonymously, since 1979, when he was just 16 years old, and has so far planted an area larger than the size of Central Park in NYC- an astounding 340 hectares! Native animals- rhino. elephant, tiger- have all started residing in Payeng's forest. Which makes one wonder- if one ordinary villager can do all this on his own, why can't our vaunted 140 billionaires, 150000 HNIs and $4.33 trillion stock market companies not do so too? 

  India's rapidly degrading eco-systems are in dire need of rewilding, especially in niche areas like the north-east, the Himalayan states and the Western Ghats. The root cause, of course, are the mindless "development" projects, in the teeth of opposition by local people and tribals, and the only beneficiary is Big Capital. The failure of govts, both central and state, to rewild nature is evident in the steady reduction of primary forests and increase in scrub and open forests. Corporates, rich individuals and socially minded citizens owe it to our country to step in and intervene.

                                          

                                    [ Puranikoti landscape. Photo by Geetika Khanna]

Of course, it is not easy to replicate the marvellous feat of the Tompkins in a place like India. Our forest departments and laws suffer from a colonial mind-set- that only the govts. can be trusted to manage forests and wildlife. The Forest Act, Forest Conservation Act, Wildlife Protection Act and various rules are so restrictive as to rule out the entry of any private player or organisation in this area. A prime example is ecotourism. Himachal was perhaps the first state in the country which developed an ecotourism policy in 2006 or 2007 and proposed to lease out forest areas to private entrepreneurs, under strict conditions and regulations, for the development of camping sites. This was shot down by the MOEF on the grounds that forest areas could not be used for non-forest activities! The Ministry has acknowledged its stupidity since then and this activity is now allowed, but we had lost precious years and confidence of the market by then. Another example: farmers who grow plantations on their own land (like "khair") have to struggle against a regressive forest bureaucracy to obtain permission for harvesting them.

  For the concept of rewilding to succeed this mindset has to change. Laws and rules have to be amended, the dog in the manger attitude will no longer work. Private players should be allowed-indeed, encouraged- to buy degraded wild lands, unfarmed farm lands and to rewild them; they should be allowed to mange them under strict rules and guidelines; they should be encouraged to develop their own Working Plans for these forests, reintroduce native wildlife species, and to make these ventures financially viable by setting up ecotourism projects in them. The role of the forest departments should be one of mentoring rather than intrusive and officious regulating.

  CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) funds can play a huge role in making rewilding possible, and this should be included in the CSR rules specifically as a permissible activity. More than Rs.15000 crore (almost US$ 2 billion) is spent annually under CSR: if even 5% of that went into rewilding it would be a huge step forward. And the icing on the cake would be if our 140 dollar billionaires spent just 1 million dollars every year in this sector, instead of just donating to political parties!

  Incidentally, rewilding should not be confused with the central govt's recently launched "Green Credit" scheme, which is a pure business investment, whereas rewilding is motivated by "wildlands philanthropy". Under the GC scheme, companies pay money to the state govts for greening of barren scrub lands (belonging to the govts) and in return get green credits which are set off against any payments they may be required to make for use of forest lands for their industry/ business purposes. Not only is this hare-brained scheme old wine in a not very new bottle (it is simply Compensatory Afforestation under a new label) like most of Mr. Modi's programmes, not only does it suffer from the same inefficiencies as the CA and CAT Plan schemes, not only have such schemes been discredited world wide, but it also does not conform to the voluntary and philanthropic nature of rewilding. Rewilding is an acceptance of the serial rape of nature by industry and the super privileged, an atonement and reparation for the wrongs inflicted by them on this planet. It cannot be a thinly disguised sop for industry. It cannot be a plea bargain. 

REWILDING INDIA - IS "VANTARA" THE FIRST BABY STEP ? [PART I]

   Amidst the extravagant obscenity of the Ambani pre-wedding in Jamnagar last month, there was, for me, one bright spot of hope. It was news of the establishment of Vantara, the "world's largest private zoo", spread over 1000 acres in which more than ten million trees have been planted, in Jamnagar, Gujarat. According to a very well researched article by Ayaskant Das and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta in Newsclick [An Amazing Zoo Story, 29.2.24] the facility is a personal venture of one of the Ambani scions, Anant Ambani, and contains 1461 endangered and 3889 non- endangered species of animals, some of them imported. Vantara has a long history of litigation, objections and questions raised by animal activists. There are issues like: Is it (as it claims) an elephant rescue and rehab centre under the Wildlife Protection Act? Have wild elephants been shifted to the zoo in violation of the Act and rules? Have the rules been tweaked to accommodate the Ambanis? Are private zoos permissible at all?

  These questions will no doubt wend their way through our tortuous judicial system, and I am not commenting on them because they are not the focus of this piece. What I find welcome is that, perhaps for the first time in India, a prominent corporate entity has taken an interest in a matter relating to the natural environment, and in rehabilitating essentially wild species of animals. Even more heartening is the fact that this initiative is being partly funded by CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) funds which are otherwise disbursed more on political grounds than anything else. This may be the first baby steps towards the conservation and rewilding of our diminishing natural eco-systems, including their wild life.

  Rewilding is a concept and initiative which is gaining traction in many parts of the world, though it is yet to arrive in India in any meaningful way. What it seeks to do is to revive degraded habitats and their indigenous biodiversity which is being destroyed by mindless "development" (in India, think Andaman and Nicobar mega container/tourism/power/township project, the 20000 acre solar plant in Ladakh, Aarey forest in Mumbai, four lane highways through National Parks and tiger habitats, continued decimation of the green cover in the Western Ghats, just for starters). Restoring these areas is no favour to Nature, it is in our own interest. For wildlands provide four essential ecosystem services that sustain all life on this planet: provisioning (timber, food, medicinal plants), regulatory (climate moderation, water flows, carbon capture), cultural (sacred groves, tourism) and supporting ( nutrient cycles, pollination).

                                    

                                                

                                        [ No architect can replicate the beauty of this canopy ]

 There is an urgency to the "wildlands philantrophy" because forests and bio-diversity are disappearing at an alarming rate. Globally, 10 million hectares of forests are lost every year, about the size of Portugal. 30% of the Amazon rain forests are gone. India has lost 2.33 million hectares of tree cover since 2000 [Global Forest Watch]. 500 animal species have become extinct, and animal populations have plummeted by 70%, in the last 50 years. It is estimated that one million species of all life forms are staring at extinction, primarily due to anthropogenic interventions, including climate change. Rewilding could be a means to reverse these trends.

                                

  The job is too big for governments to do, even if they had the political will or aptitude to do it, which they don't. In India, particularly, our colonial minded forest departments, badly funded and poorly led, are ill equipped to meet this challenge. Just to provide an example, take our flagship conservation programme, Project Tiger: the NTCA (National Tiger Conservation Authority), which oversees 52 Tiger Reserves, has an annual budget of Rs. 50 crores, as compared to the Delhi Horticulture Deptt. which is provided Rs. 125 crores every year! Ranthambore National Park has just about one fifth of the number of Forest Guards it actually needs. It is no different in other countries, which is why the initiative for rewilding globally is being adopted and pushed by individuals and corporate entities. 

  There are many dimensions to, and models for, rewilding, including creation of National Parks, Wildlife sanctuaries and marine sanctuaries; removal of dams and allowing the rivers to flow freely again leading to revival of fish populations and restoring livelihoods of people who have traditionally depended on them(European countries have removed almost 700 dams in the last two years, according to figures compiled by Dam Removal Europe; the USA has removed 2119 dams since 2012); creating nature habitats in urban areas as more and more natural and farming habitats are taken over by sprawling urbanisation. Needless to say, India is an outlier and laggard in all these initiatives, except perhaps the first. Our governments are content to trot out fudged figures of forest cover and tiger populations, and to maintain that our forest area is increasing every year. Whereas the truth is that dense forests have been declining at an alarming rate and what has increased is open forests and scrub land, according to the Forest Survey of India reports. To maintain this statistical charade the definition of "forest" is being regularly diluted: the current one defines any area of 2.50 acres with a tree cover of 10% as Forest! As pointed out by conservationist Aditya 'Dickie' Singh, that would mean that both the Bombay Gymkhana and Delhi Golf Club are forests! (With the mandatory watering holes, of course, to cater to the wildlife which gathers there).

                                                    [Continued in Part II next week]

 

THE VANPRASTHA MOMENT IS ARRIVING, FOLKS !

 

  Notwithstanding that the BJP is not my favourite political party, my family has some connections with it. I myself served with Mr. J.P.Nadda, the BJP President, for three years in Himachal, he was my Minister in the Forest Department, a thorough gentleman and polished politician. My "mausa" was a highly respected RSS Pracharak for many years in Kanpur, till his death. My entire immediate family has been voting for the BJP ever since Mr. Modi opened his tea shop in a Gujarat station that didn't even exist at the time. On voting day I am not served any meals because I vote otherwise. My wife of many years and tears, Neerja, thinks the arrival of Modi is the Second Coming. My mother-in-law  chants the Narendra Chalisa every day. Even my Indie dog (named Brutus in a momentary mis-assessment of his personality), of stout Haryanvi lineage, is a strong votary of the "ghar me ghus ke marna" brand of diplomacy: if he sees an open door in any flat in our society he is wont to rush in and eliminate a few of the neighbours, without bothering to out source it. 

  Comprende, amigo? No, you don't, because you're wondering why I'm telling you all this, and where this is heading. So here's a clue: I'm approaching the age of 74 with the speed of a mythical Bullet train and soon will have reached the mile-stone of 75. That, friends, is the Marg Darshak age in the BJP sub-culture, and seeing that that culture has seeped into the Shukla family, it has grave implications for me.

  The Marg Darshak phase of a politician's life is a modern adaptation by the BJP of the Vanprastha stage in the Hindu Vedic system of life. Just as the BJP is the Congress plus a cow (in the unforgettable words of Arun Shourie) and Mamata Banerjee is Modi with a saree, so Vanprastha can be better understood as Marg Darshak without the Bharat Ratna. It is the third stage of the four stages of Chaturasrama, the first two being Brahmacharya and Grihasta and the final fourth one being Sanyasa. Its literal meaning is "way to the forest" or "retiring to a forest", and its practical meaning is the giving up of worldly possessions and responsibilities, concentrating on moksha or spiritual liberation, and taking up an advisory role. See the connection now between Vanprastha and Marg Darshak? Think Mr. Advani (without the advisory role, of course) and you've got it! The stripping of any Prime Ministerial ambitions or the possession of leadership of the BJP from him in 2014 was, therefore, in the best traditions of Hinduism and Vanprastha, and Mr. Modi can certainly not be faulted for adopting it.

  Actually, Vanprastha is a pretty benign and benevolent concept if you consider what happens to the old critters in other parts of the world. In ancient Egypt they were shoved into hastily constructed pyramids with all their finery and walled up; in Japan they are left in abandoned villages to fend for themselves; in the USA the old fogeys are dispatched to dismal old age homes to watch TV and play canasta; in certain parts of Africa they are left in the bush to provide the main course for the hyenas' night out festivities. Vanprastha, by comparison, does none of this, it simply asks you to take a chill pill, step aside, divest yourself of all responsibilities and properties, and concentrate on moksha. Too bad if you like your Grihasta role just fine and wish to continue being an active RWA Uncle.

  Which is why yours truly is beginning to get worried. Methinks my family, all staunch Modi acolytes, are thinking of persuading me (the gentle, ED brand of persuasion) to go into Vanprastha mode the moment I turn 75. They have the support of most of my friends, various IAS groups, the ungrateful pooch, and the RWA. Not only have my blogs become a nuisance, I continue to refuse to buy a bulldozer to demonstrate my support for the new Bharatiya Nyaya Samhita. The other day I found my son scrolling on the Make My Trip website  looking for reasonably priced caves to book near Amarnath. I don't mind giving up my responsibilities, since the responsibility for everything that goes wrong in the house is laid at my door: it would be a relief to be unburdened of that weight! But I certainly don't want to give up my single malt, or the collection of Bill Bryson books, or the framed photograph of Sunny Leone fully dressed in an enchanting smile, or the award I received in 1958 for my role as the seventh dwarf in the school play Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I'm sure a cave would have no place for all these memorabilia.

  But hold on!- maybe I won't have to be put in moth balls, come the 4th of June. You see, there are only two possibilities then- either Mr. Modi loses or he wins. If the former, then he will pack his capacious "jhola" and proceed (without cameras, hopefully) to that cave in Kedarnath he likes so much and hopefully disappear into the fog of history. In that case the 75 year sub-rule shall become 'non est' and get automatically repealed and Marg Darshak/Vanprastha shall be consigned to history. If, on the other hand, he wins, then he will want to savour the loaves of office for another five years (as commanded by God) and continue to, well, bond with his cronies. In which case he will have to amend the Vedas along with the Constitution to expunge Vanprastha along with secularism, federalism, fundamental rights, socialism etc. etc. A win-win for me (and all 75ers), don't you think? As for those who are already in the Marg Darshak phase, they will get a double promotion and transit directly to the Sanyasa stage. I'll worry about that when I turn ninety- the way things are going, I'll probably wish I were dead by then anyway! 

THE SOONER SARKARI ECONOMISTS BECOME EXTINCT THE BETTER.

   In my 55 years of adult life (not adultery, as Spellcheck tried to insinuate, though I wish that was true) I have been trying to understand economists and have consistently failed. In my student days I briefly considered doing Economics, till the chowkidar at the gates of Delhi School of Economics pointed out that I had failed every Maths exam I had taken in my life. He advised me not to bother applying, and I, bowing to superior wisdom, took his advice. I tried English at St. Stephens: apparently, all chowkidars are made of the same timber, because this chap wouldn't even let me enter the hallowed portals, saying the gate was meant to keep gentlemen in and vagabonds out! Hindu College was more broad minded and so I joined there, but let us return to economists.

  Economists have to be a yet-to-fully-evolve sub-set of homo sapiens, with DNA inherited from the dinosaurs, and it would not be a bad thing if their sarkari version at least becomes extinct soon. No two economists can ever agree on any thing, and there are more schools of thought in economics than there are schools in Bihar. Put ten economists in a room and there will be eleven opinions- and all of them will be wrong. Their entire collective wisdom is contained in gems like: you can pull on a piece of string but you cannot push on it. Give me a break, guys, even my Gurgaon born Indie doggie knows this, and he never went to DSE!

  Why is this guy so bugged with economists, you may well ask? Well, they have almost destroyed the planet with their focus on just consumption and GDP,  they consider India's projected fall in TFR (Total Fertility Rate) to 1.29 by 2051 (the latest issue of The Lancet) an unmitigated disaster even though we have 1400 million already, the largest number of poor in the world, cannot provide jobs, food or health care to most of them. And these wise men still want our population to grow? Just so that more "productive labour" is available for their icon capitalists? And now, to further confirm that this discipline should be disbanded, we have three outrageous statements by some of our own, home grown, made-in-India, saffron hued economists.

  Mr. Sanjeev Sanyal, a historian and alleged economist who is a member of the PM's Economic Advisory Council, recently stated that sitting for the UPSC civil service exams was a waste of time, that it betrays a lack of aspirational qualities, that the bureaucracy is boring and offers no excitement or challenges, that the youth should aspire to be entrepreneurs instead ; he spouted some more of the same drivel but I hope you have got the flavour of his wisdom. He has been effectively countered by Sanjeev Chopra, author and retired IAS officer, in a recent article in the THE PRINT , but I need to add my two-bit too.

  With all due respect Mr. Sanyal should stick to history, where he cannot do much damage. People like him in critical policy making bodies, with their ignorance of ground realities, can do immense harm to the country and they are probably the reason why 83% of our educated youth are unemployed, why the state has to provide free food to 800 million persons, why India is the most unequal nation in the world even though we have the fifth largest economy in the world. Sensible policies cannot emerge from brains that think like Mr. Sanyal's does. He understands neither the psyche of the aspirational classes nor the civil services.

  Mr. Sanyal's number- crunching and graph-gazing  job may be as exciting as a romp in the bed with a nymphomaniac, but he has no idea at all about the nature of jobs like the IAS, IPS or even the IFS. No civil service in the world has the kind of diversity and challenges which the All India Services do- from law and order to development programmes, from handling politicians to holding elections, from building infrastructure to providing relief at times of natural disasters. They have kept the country together through 75 years of the most difficult challenges, notwithstanding all their own deficiencies and the disastrous policies of economists of Mr. Sanyal's ilk. There is reason enough for the youth of this country to aspire for these services, something which Mr. Sanyal should commend, and not pour contempt on. Take a chill pill, sir.

  Alarmingly, this gentleman is not alone !One Mr. Anantha Nageswaran, Chief Economic Advisor to the Govt. of India, at a function on the 27th of March said that it is not the govt's responsibility to create jobs, and that the govt. cannot solve the unemployment problem. (83% of the educated youth in India are unemployed, and the more educated you are the more likely you are to be unemployed). To me this sounds very much like Mr. Amit Shah's "selling pakoras on the road is also employment" revelation, and betrays the same arrogance of ex-BJP Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad's " government ne naukri dene ka theka nahi liya hai." I have a couple of questions for Mr. Nageswaran: Is it the govt's job only to create billionaires, to ensure that 77% of the country's wealth is owned by the top 10% of its population? [OXFAM report]. Who, pray, will mandate the conditions for job creation if not the govt. of the day?

  Wait! There's more of this hogwash. Another economist, Mr. Arvind Panagariya who is the Chairman of the 16th Finance Commission , has made an even more bizarre pronouncement: that income inequality is a necessary side effect of wealth generation, that those who worry about it are "inequality alarmists". The World Inequality Report ranks India as among the most unequal countries in the world in income parity, another report says that income inequality is now worse than in the colonial era, a billionaire spends on his son's pre-wedding celebrations as much money as 100,000 Indians earn in a year, and Mr. Panagariya says we are being alarmist? The irony, of course, is that he heads a body which is constitutionally mandated to REDUCE inter state disparities and ensure a fair deal for all!

  I shudder to think what kind of advice these gentlemen are giving the political executive on a daily basis. All these eminence grises are of a distinct saffron hue, which is why they probably occupy the positions they do; such statements are necessary, I suppose, to ensure that the colour does not fade, with disastrous consequences for their cushy sinecures. But the fact is that they continue to wallow in  archaic economic ideas which have been discredited long ago by a world now more concerned about rights than privileges. Which is why, like the tyrannosaurus, it is time for them to go.