Valmik Thapar is apparently an angry man, left stranded on the battleship of tiger conservation, evident from his replies below. It's not hard to guess his anger. Incredibly unifocal for past thirty one years, his life's mission of saving tigers, in his own words, has failed. The tiger program at present, he points is run by those who have little interest in tigers. Statistics are fudged, tiger count is wrongly inflated, tiger reserves are converted into human reserves even as politicians & environmentalists remain ignorant & insensitive to the tigers. In an interview with IndianNGOs.com, he openly challenges every authority clamouring for human tiger coexistence.

Author of fourteen books on tigers, spending years & years in woods, his reminiscences with tigers are delightful reading. Demystifying the predator, he captures the minute details of tiger behaviour in every season. With such passion for the tiger, his restlessness at present state of tiger conservation is easily discernible. After all, how many of us can write such preface of a book, "Ranthambore's tigers rewrote their own natural history while I watched riveted." Note the humility of this seemingly furious person. Who assails every authority, was reluctant to give appointment for this interview, at first meeting took a loud dig at this reporter wondering why he wanted to interview him; yet humbly asserts -he merely watched riveted, as the tigers themselves wrote their historie

March 22, 2007

You have repeatedly said that if there were no protection for tigers, they would not have survived in India.
The tiger is a large predator. It's a carnivorous animal. Unless you have a ring of steel to protect its habitat, it can not survive. The reason is that it salivates. It means it feels hungry when it sees four legged cows & buffaloes. When it sees cows & buffaloes, it wants to eat them. When it eats them, the man who loses his cattle, in revenge poisons the tiger & the tiger dies. The relationship between man & the tiger is full of conflict. This relationship has carried over for centuries. If you look at the record between 1850 & 1950, you will see that at least 20000-25000 forest dwellers & tribals were killed by tigers. If you look at the Gazetteers of India done by British, one of the column mentions the people killed by man eating tigers across the India.

At the same time, at least 35000-40000 tigers were killed during the given period.

To keep the tigers alive, any kindergarten child- unfortunately politicians do not go to kindergartens- will tell you that if you want to save the tiger, keep people & tiger separate. The tiger does not live with people. It can not co exist with people.

People who believe that, I call them brainless.

However, more than half of the Indian tigers live outside the protected reserves
Who told you that? Go & find out. Project Tiger's stupid, silly statistics can not be believed. If you ask researchers from Wildlife Institute of India, who are now estimating tigers, they will tell you that barely of the 15% tigers are outside the reserves. The only tigers they can count are inside the reserves & they are not crossing even 1200.

If you take the official figure of 3500, then you have 50% outside, but no serious observer of tiger will tell you that 50% tigers are outside. In whole of Rajasthan, there are only 25-30 tigers & all are inside Ranthambore National Park. If you look at the last census that Madhya Pradesh did with pug marks, four of their sanctuaries have no tigers. Those who are outside are called strays. There are hardly any strays left. They are about to die & are ready for going to hell. That's the way this country governs its wild life.

I do not believe, will not believe & will not accept that 50% of India's tigers are outside the reserves.

It is mere eyewash.
It is total eyewash. Anybody who says it should come & meet me. It's a challenge. Let them prove 50% of the tigers outside. Ask them, Mr Valmik Thapar, who spent 31 years watching tigers tells you to prove it. He will not believe this figure. This is a lie. Total lie.

It is also claimed that tiger is one of the most pampered specie. On an average more than 2 million is spent on one tiger since inception of Project Tiger.
This is also eyewash. Money spent on Project Tiger reserves does not mean you only save tigers. You save butterflies, insects, grass, trees, birds & all the species. You can not save the tiger in isolation. You have to calculate all the species that are being saved with this amount of money. It is too convenient for our uneducated media to quickly put figures of 3 million on one tiger. Sunita Narain comes out with a report that in Sariska so much money is spent on tiger. This is ridiculous.

When you save the tiger, you save Sambhar, Cheetal, dragon flies, scorpions, snakes, and crocodiles. The entire habitat is saved with it. The tiger is only an apex specie through which you save everything. The costing game is played by people who write articles or people who think that they are intellectually smart. Unfortunately no one in the country serves the tiger. They serve their human masters. Project Tiger serves the ministry. Activists serve their Gurus who are activists but have no interest in the tiger; therefore these statements are made to excuse themselves. It's an argument to capitalize upon grey areas.

How do you escape from accountability, when tigers die? Why did nobody resign when they die? Why even one senior official did not resign from Project Tiger or Ministry when an entire Tiger Reserve lost its tigers. This is the level of Indian governance. We are at the lowest ebb of the governance. Nobody is answerable & accountable.

Seems the change of leadership since Indira Gandhi is a major reason for it.
Rot started in Narsimha Rao's times when the focus shifted to free market economy & the share market index. Nobody gives two hoots about the wild life or forests. But the worst time is this Congress government headed by Manmohan Singh, who though is very well intentioned, highly dedicated principled man, but has no understanding of forest & wild life. He depends on the bureaucracy. The present bureaucracy has allowed forest wild life & tigers to go to hell. The legacy of Indira Gandhi & Rajiv Gandhi is forgotten & the reason is simple. You have a Ministry of Environment & Forest where the DG Forest Special Secretary post has been lying vacant for nine months. The post of Additional DG in charge of wild life is also vacant for eight months. There is no National Board of Wildlife, no National Committee of Wild Life, no Forest Advisory Committee. There is not even one recruit to Wildlife Crime Bureau. If this is how you govern forests & tigers, you can not have even a butterfly alive.

Is relocation of villages feasible? Do we have the land & resources to relocate people from reserve areas to outside cities?
Relocation is feasible if you treat the person who wants to go from the forest with dignity. Give him the best deal the money can buy. Treat him like a king. Relocate him on the best land. If someone leaves forest of Madhya Pradesh, for instance, give him land outside Bhopal, what stops anyone from doing it? If he leaves in Harayana, give him land in Gurgaon.

But do we have the land?
Why not? In Bhadra Tiger Reserve, they relocated two villages on the very best agricultural land where canal was flowing. Ten villages left Bhadra. Bhadra does not have a single human living inside & the tigers have doubled. But, don't give them a far flung waste land. If you do it badly like they did in Panna national park, it may not work. They shifted 3 villages but left 50 people behind, it can not work.

If you give them land in accessible place, everyone will go because the younger generation of forest dwellers or the tribals wants to be in the city today. They do not want to live in the forest. I do not want to hear hogwash from the activists that this is not feasible. I do not believe that all the villages listed in the Tiger task Force should be moved out. Out of a group of fifty villages, twelve are strategic & rest are non strategic for the tigers. Move the strategic ones. Bhadra has shown it is possible. Everybody there is demanding to be shifted now.

Following recommendations of Tiger Task Force, Tiger Conservation Authority has been set up. What do you expect from it?
I expect nothing from it because TCA does not have people who have experience in tigers. Except for one retired forest officer HS Pawar, who has some experience in 1980s of the tigers, no body in the TCA has experience of tigers. Dr Sukumar is a scientist who works with elephants, another scientist from Aligarh Muslim University works with birds & ungulates & the rest are representatives from universities & JNU, who are tribal activists & are concerned with forest dwellers & tribals. After spending 31 years studying tigers, I have no expectations from TCA.

Under the pressure of leftist parties, parliament made 37 amendments in TCA last week, weakening the TCA. If you come to my original point, tigers only live when human beings are not there. If you dilute the legislation to make sure that humans can live with tigers, tigers will die

How do you find the Recognition of Forests Bill?
It not only weakens the tiger conservation, it also fights Supreme Court's order of 14 Feb 2000. It clearly said that not a blade of grass can be taken out from a national park or a sanctuary. The Recognition of Tribal Rights & Forest Dwellers Bill allows tribals to do agriculture inside national parks & sanctuaries. It also gives many rights inside the protected area.

I am certain this Bill will be challenged in court of law.

Your book, The Secret Life of Tigers is a wonderful memoir with tigers, a diary, a personal account of tigers in Ranthambore. How situation has changed since you wrote it?
The Secret Life of Tigers relates to 1980s, which is altogether another world. We can't find that world today. If you visit Ranthambore today, it is no more like it was earlier. It now has five star, seven star, eight star hotels facilitating tourism. Instead of ring of steel, there is a ring of hotels. That era has gone.

Such book can never be written today.
True, because over the years things have not progressed, they have regressed. In those days, I could see sixteen different tigers in a single day from one end of the park to the other. That's my record. You could see the fantastic behaviour of the animal, which you can never expect today because there wasn't much tourism then. We do not develop tourism properly. We just let it overload the system & destroying the wild life.

You were doing great work as a wild life writer. Why did you set up Ranthambore Foundation?
I established it in 1988 to try & find peace & harmony amongst people, tigers & the forests. I was idealistic & believed that may be there was a way. In the 1990s, Ranthambore Foundation focussed on various issues including dairy development, increasing milk yields, enhance income generation of women through handicrafts & agro forestry. But they all failed. All my work for creating Ranthambore Foundation & trying to do something to integrate man, nature & tigers failed. Ranthambore Foundation is a failure. I gave it up in late 1990s. It's 95% closed down.

P K Sen, former Dir Project Tiger is reviving it these days.
Yes, he is trying to restart it. I do not believe running NGOs for the sake of it. I realized that local people around Ranthambore are not interested in this park. They are interested in use & exploitation, take the wood out of the forest & bring cattle inside. We could have no impact on these people. So we failed.

The park is looked after by the forest department. It's under their jurisdiction. We can have no impact unless there is a very good director who works very closely with NGOs. But that's not easy. You may have either good or bad director. As far as I am concerned, the NGO movement I created thinking it can have an impact, did not make any impact & failed.

You accept your own failure.
Totally. My life is a failure. I accept my failure fully. I am the first one who shouts to all that I have failed in my life. My life's mission was to make sure that tigers could be saved. I believed I could do it. I met the Prime Minister, the present one, the last one & the one before that, the leader of the opposition & various MPs. I met whole range of people involved in decision making. I am on the Chief Minister's of Rajasthan's committee, on Madhya Pradesh Wild Life Board. I met the PM & told that national parks & sanctuaries must be kept out of populist legislation.

Everybody in India promises you, but that remains only lip service & rhetoric. Nobody cares about implementation, whether forest lives or dies. The only leaders who cared were Indira Gandhi & Rajiv Gandhi. I do not agree with Indira Gandhi's politics but I respect her for her decision making ability & interest in tigers & forests.

It requires immense honesty & courage to accept one's failure.
I accept it hundred percent. I write about it. My life is a failure. I know it. I live with it. Thirty years of my life failed because I could not get across. Six hundred rivers with perennial streams are born inside the reserves, which must be kept alive. Mining & degradation should not be allowed. I am accused of saying that poor people require their rights in the forests. If you put people first & tiger second, tigers will die. That's precisely happening India. Even in national parks & sanctuaries, people are placed first & tigers second.

You have a law that puts people first inside the national park. But then what's the purpose of a national park? Was it made for people? It was made for the tigers. You look at the statistics of last hundred years, how many tigers were killed by man & how many men killed by tigers & then go to politicians who claim a harmonious relationship between tigers & humans. Tell Mr Rajesh Gopal( Director Project Tiger) to prove the number of tigers Project Tiger claims.

If you were given entire authority, tell us how would you save tigers?
Just one thing, protection. Make a ring of steel. Ensure best training of the forest department & give best anti poaching equipments. Recruit young people so that the average age of forest guard comes down from 50 years.

You can not keep six hundred places alive, therefore decide & come down to top fifty places in India, which are A class places, world heritage sites. Make them nature's paradise for the unborn Indian. Do not forget Inter Generational Equity. These are the areas of water catchment, water reservoirs, medicinal plants & rare species. We need to put ring of steel for the unborn Indian. Sacrifices have to be made today for future generations. Money is unlimited in this country. We are not short of money. We are short of political decision making.

You wrote extensively on tigers, made films on tigers, advocated for tigers & also lived with tigers. You are also on advisory committees of various wild life boards. Which of these you enjoyed most?
I did not make films. I only presented films. Maker was someone else.( Smiles. The only lighter moment, though very brief, during entire interview).

Well, my best task has been to follow the trail of a tiger. Till 1993-94, before I was sucked into hundreds of the committees of the government, I had a happy life. I was anonymous, nobody knew me. I took photographs of the tigers & wrote books. After that life became hell. Working with government means go to hell. You are immersed in committees, paper works, lip services, promises which are never kept.

Film making is also a good experience, but that makes a person known face & you can not move freely. People place hope in you & expect you to deliver. However, when my life is a failure, how can I deliver? In the context of what happened in India, with populist legislations in place & tigers are relegated to oblivion, nobody can deliver.

TCA as a people’s authority for tiger conservation could have better served cause of the tiger, if it had tiger experts as its members rather than present members which include persons like Professor Munda, who actually hate Project Tiger.

If you want delivery & good governance, you have to select selfless people devoted to the cause of the tiger

Tell us your ideal composition of TCA.
Dr Ulhas karant, a very best of the scientist & researcher. At the moment scientists of TCA have no experience of tigers. Dr Raghu Chundavat, top class scientist from Panna, Mr Bitthu Sehgal, who worked for thirty years for the cause of the tigers & the sanctuaries.

Put one retired forest officer, who knows working of the government & who is also honest & blunt like Mr P K Sen. He is hated by his colleagues because he is honest. Honesty does not have any quality today in this country.

These four are good enough to carry TCA.

- Ashutosh Bhardwaj
IndianNGOs.com