Uninformed preference can’t be termed as a handy work of mafia

[Published on January 31, 2010]

Forget villagers, even amongst the educated Indian citizens, how many would be aware of the birds and animals enlisted in scheduled lists of Wildlife Protection Act, 1972? Not too many, for sure. Therefore, terming the killing of a tiger by uninformed villagers who does not know ABC of any Acts (forget WPA) as handy work of mafia in a mainstream newspaper is bizarre. That is not to say that tiger should be killed.

It is a documented fact that traditional forest dwellers had been hunting to gather food in various forms: solo or couple and community hunting, popularly known as kiiruk, in the Siang belt. And those were the days when greatness of hunters were measured in terms of their kills-lion, tiger, leopard, bear, monkey likewise. According to ‘kill’, hunters had social standings in the society. Today, that is no longer the case. Along with modernity, better means of livelihood ensured that hunting is no more a practice and hunters are no more glorified. Nevertheless, once in a blue moon, hunting of lion, tiger, leopard etc does occur in a different context even today; therefore, wildlife enthusiasts and activists must try and understand the reason behind hunting of these endangered species and campaign for a win-win solution and should not campaign with ‘I win- You lose’ attitude as has been done since 1972.

Then and now, fundamental difference lies in the purpose of hunting.  Objective of hunting is based on simple economics as much as preference of ignorant villagers. In olden days, hunting was for safety, security and food. Now, hunting of ‘cat family members’ is mostly to save their mithun aka bos frontallis, and cows. Mithun is not only costly but is also a sacred animal in cultural context. A mithun cost not less than Rs 20,000/- and may even go upto Rs 40,000/- during festivals or during marriage season! As per mythology, mithun has been associated with human being since the days of Abo Tani-first human being on earth; but even today, mithun is sacrosanct and most of the customary settlements in Kebang- the traditional judiciary system, revolve around mithun. And this sacred animal is killed by cat family members every year. Now, when such a sacred and costly possession is killed by ‘cat family’ and when there is no mechanism to compensate the owners of mithuns, villagers are left with Hobson’s choice. Thus, hunters get hunted too, wildlife department is hapless since wildlife department is grappling with inherent challenges: state has 81.37% forest cover; two, human habitation is as low as 13 people per Sq Km; three, wildlife department is poorly staffed and finally, personnel of wild department are not equipped with high technology gadgets. Under such milieu, expecting concerned department to implement Wildlife Protection Act in toto would be foolhardy, so only way out for government agency is to create high and higher stake for community to prevent killing and for sharing of information, in case of killing. For instance, villagers from a remote circle headquarter sought compensation from District Forest Officer who willingly considered their genuine grievances and forwarded the cases to higher authority. Unfortunately, higher authority too is helpless in absence of any policy or rule to compensate. Compensation file is still pending with the office of Additional PCCF. Looking into the urgency of the subject, one hope that state government would wake up to the ground reality and handle the matter in the most pragmatic manner. Wildlife activist must champion the grievances of indigenous tribe.

In essence, informing and educating villagers about WPA alone would not serve the purpose; time is ripe for wildlife department to frame and implement a policy to compensate village folks to prevent recurrence of such killings. Unless trilogy of informing, educating and compensating goes together, WPA would remain another Act amongst the piles of non-implementable Acts of India. And statistics on tiger, true or false, provided by Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun would remain as enigmatic as ever.  In nutshell, government cant’ have the cake and eat it too, at the cost of indigenous people. ‘Mithun And Tiger ’, not ‘either Mithun or Tiger’, should be the choice.