Elephants (not) in the room

The national heritage animal of India is in mortal danger and govt is ducking its head

Alok Tiwari

In the hullabaloo of elections in Haryana and J&K, an important news published in the Indian Express last week completely escaped public attention. It was about a report on elephant estimation exercise that is conducted once in five years. Hundreds of copies of the report were printed when the government decided not to release it citing usual flimsy reasons. The main finding of the report was that wild elephant population in the country has suffered a precipitous decline. The numbers were never healthy to begin with and the trend was negative. But the last five years have seen an unprecedented steep decline.

Overall, the population dropped nearly 20% from close to 20,000 to about 16,000. The drop was highest in central and eastern cluster where the number of majestic beings declined 41% to under 2000. It was least in Himalayan foothills at about 2%. Even in Western ghats, where a bulk of India’s elephants live, the fall was over 17% to just under 12,000 from 14,500. This should have set the alarm bells ringing just like it did in 2006 with tigers when the estimation exercise revealed a drop in numbers to just over 1400. That invited an intense internal and external scrutiny resulting in concerted efforts by forest departments across the country. Thanks to those efforts the tiger numbers in the wild have more than doubled.

However, back then we still had a semblance of democracy. The government now in saddle believes no news is good news. Any figures not to its liking are simply buried. That is exactly what is happening with the elephant census report. Its publication would have undoubtedly resulted in a national and international uproar. But it would also have hopefully led to corrective action as it did in case of tigers. However, the government has cited absence of figures from northeastern landscape as the reason for not publishing the report for the rest of India. There is no timeline given for when those figures might be available.

Meanwhile, the government has already begun working on excuses. A favourite obfuscation tool for the governments wanting to hide damning revelations is simply change the methodology of calculating anything. This makes new results incomparable with the old ones. Then you insist that the new figures are correct ones. It is the playbook followed in many cases including GDP, inflation, or unemployment figures. It instantly makes any crisis disappear and any talk of solution gets pushed years into the future. Future census can be postponed over any little excuse and if the figures still look bad one can always change the methodology again, so the real picture never becomes public.

This is being done with elephant census too. Officials are calling the present method a better way of estimation and the new figures a reality check. It is not that India has lost nearly 5000 elephants in five years, they insist, India never had them in the first place. While this may avoid a scandal for the government it does so only on paper. The life of elephants in India’s forest continues to get more difficult, dangerous, and precarious.

In India, poaching does not pose as much a threat to elephants as it does in Africa. With us it is our own actions that are driving them over the edge. The eastern landscape comprising Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Odisha etc. where the decline has been most pronounced is also the place where new India’s rapacious capitalism has caused maximum harm. This happens to be the mining belt of India, and the industry has exploded in recent years with close friends of the rulers getting leases for everything from coal to iron ore. In almost all the cases, the mining areas overlap with elephant habitats or corridors.

The government’s massive infrastructure push has meant that gleaming new expressways, railway tracks, powerlines, and canals are snaking through the forests. These are linear intrusions that cut forests in many parts making it difficult if not impossible for wildlife to cross over. Elephants need huge territory to wander, and these projects are coming in the way. These result in almost daily deaths by electrocution or collision with trains. They are also forced to migrate to other areas bringing them in conflict with human settlements where in almost all cases the animals lose out. These factors affect wildlife in general but large species like elephants are specially at risk. They need huge contiguous areas of forests to survive and multiply in a genetically diverse manner. Confining them to smaller, disjointed areas is akin to passing a death sentence on them.

This is a tragedy of, well, literally elephantine proportions. India is lucky to be home to perhaps the largest population of wild Asiatic elephants. These are among the most charismatic animals on earth. More than just beauty, elephants play an important role in safeguarding health of forests. It is said elephants shape the forest with everything they do. Everything from their browsing, their movement, and their droppings influences the architecture and health of the forest. Their presence helps safeguard other, minor species. They are thus important for our own survival too.

These should be reasons enough for us to protect them, but their presence also brings more tourism and employment to local communities. It is not without reason that they are national heritage animal and hold a special place in Indian mythology and culture. Indeed, they are represented by the most loved deity of India, Ganesh. The present government, which swears by India’s, particularly Hindu, heritage, should be more serious than others in protecting them. The terrible irony of the situation is that far from doing anything to protect these guardians of our forests, the government is fighting shy of even acknowledging the threat to them.

This column was published in Lokmat Times on Oct 9, 2024