March 4^th, 1999, Thursday, sunny,

    

[14:11]     This morning, Faiyaz left around 07:45 with Amar, on a route designed with the help of Tirath.  It will take him about 12 hours to do.  He will strive to line up meetings with panchayats on a daily basis as of tomorrow.

     Anne came out of her room around 08:15, and we started a strategizing session in which Tarun participated, very vigorously this times, as of about 10:30 when he returned from Baihar.  Obviously, he’s done some serious thinking of his own.  More on this later.

     He did succeed in reaching Pradeep by phone this morning, who apparently still had not read my letter, and made no comment on the panchayat conference project.  According to Tarun, he assured Pradeep that there are no promises made by me and Faiyaz that Tiger Trust cannot keep, and informed him about the amount of work we have already done, and the number of people who said would attend the conference.  Pradeep asked Tarun if he had attended any sessions I and Faiyaz had conducted, and Tarun replied “no”.  Pradeep said that he wanted to speak to Faiyaz directly, tomorrow morning at 10:00.  Is he going to suspend Tiger Trust action again? 

     Doesn’t it sound ridiculous, that we are so constantly concerned that Pradeep would try to deter or sabotage the progress of his own organization?  As far as I’m concerned, if you don’t play the game, you don’t make the rules.  If you don’t do anything, you should at least say nothing.  But just in case, since Faiyaz cannot say “no” to Pradeep and still work for Tiger Trust on the project, and I cannot do without him, I would have to say ‘no’ for him.  I will therefore go into Baihar with Faiyaz and standby just in case, which would dovetail well with Anne’s plan to go to town to speak with Judge Chandra..

 

[17:01]           The in-depth meeting with Tarun this morning brought out some interesting points, ones from an Indian’s point of view (Kim should be interested), albeit from another province, bearing in mind that Faiyaz often opines to the contrary, and his is an Indian view point too.  Slightly paraphrased:

     “The tribals are not civilized enough to be quickly convertible to ecological thinking,” he opined.  “By the time they voluntarily give up their eco-unfriendly practices such as wood burning and poaching, there would be no tigers left to save.  Therefore, we should concentrating on fast track, short-term solutions, such as strong-armed anti-poaching measures.”

     “This sounds a bit elitist, Tarun,” said Anne in her usual mild yet forceful manner, “though I think I understand what you’re saying.” 

     “I can understand his sentiments almost totally,” I was prompted by an internal sentiment to say.  “It’s exactly the way I feel about those Chinese, Japanese and Korean people who use tiger parts for medicine.  The immediate strategy should be strong-armed law-and-enforcement control.  It would take time to change basic attitudes, perhaps generations.  However, my experience with the panchayat leaders thus far has shown that at least they are not as ‘uncivilized’, nor as reluctant to change, as Tarun said they were.  Tarun, why don’t you come and observe one of our panchayat meetings?  I would be most interested in your conclusions.”

     “Sure, may be I will, but, Anne, it is not elitist.  It’s basic human nature.  It would be difficult to convince villagers to not used wood because it is so easily available here in Madhya Pradesh, versus in the desert-like conditions of Rajasthan, where people walk for miles just to get a bundle of wood.”

     “That’s true,” I recalled.  “Back in 1997, near the Ranthambhore tiger reserve in Rajasthan province, I clocked the distance between a woman with a bundle of wood on her head and her village on the odometer of the jeep I was in.  It was 7.5 km.  There was not a tree in sight between that bundle of wood on her head and her village.  So, your opinion is that people will just keep on cutting down trees and burning wood until there are no more trees to be cut and no more wood to be burnt, before they will take on alternative energies?”

     “You got it.”

     I wanted to talk to a local tribal.  Tarun called in Santosh and Deleep and asked them some questions in Hindi.  Santosh answered first, and Tarun said, “Santosh’s opinion is that although the solar cooker physically works, the villagers would not readily adopt it, because it requires too many changes in their traditional way of cooking – they have a full breakfast in the morning before the sun is hot, and they have a full dinner in the evening after the sun has set, but hardly any lunch; the women like to be able to smell and try-taste their cooking, which the solar cooker does not allow.  The solar cooker takes too long to prepare a meal; the solar cooker does not work during the monsoon; the villagers usually keep the fire going in the hearth all day long; the villagers use wood in the evenings to keep warm; etc, etc..  Santosh was raised in a tribal village and should know what he is talking about.  It seems to be a case of ‘you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink.’”

     “I can only counter a part of this,” I said.  “First, the solar cooker as a concept has proven workable in certain areas, in Africa as well as in Asia.  Granted, some of these areas may no longer have a tree standing.  Second, accord to my reading, people need only to set up the solar cooker in the morning, line it up due south and leave it for the rest of the day and come dinner time, the rice and other dishes would be cooked and still warm.  It is true that the solar cooker would be useless in the early morning and during the monsoon, but solar cooking can work in conjunction with biogas, of whose raw material, cattle dung, India is not in short supply.  Biogas can serve as fuel for both morning cooking and night time heating.  And as for basic human nature, I believe in the flexibility of the species, that we can adapt to environmental changes.”

     Santosh spoke some more.  Tarun translated.  “Tribal villagers are used to getting things from the government free of charge, and what is given to them is seldom used as intended.  He cites the example of a villager selling a hand pump for alcohol.  He thinks that a solar cooker will likely be treated likewise.”

     “We’re not giving them irreplaceable solar cookers,” Anne pointed out.  “We are teaching them how to make the cookers for themselves.  They can make as many as they want.  In fact, the more they make, the more they can then sell for more money.” 

     I asked Tarun to ask Deleep whether the carpenter had the solar cooker reflector-frame ready, which he promised to deliver on March 4^th – today.  Deleep went to Manjitola to check, but he carpenter was nowhere to be found.  Tarun said, “Deadlines in India are often not made to be met.  You have to constantly monitor the progress and push people to meet them.  Service and product quality in this region is not high due to low competition.”

     Both Tarun and Santosh believe that electricity is a much better alternative than solar energy in terms of acceptability to the villagers.  Important is the nature of the end-use, as also pointed out by other advisors before.  This means that the villagers will more readily accept an alternative energy technology if they can do with it the number of things they can do with wood burning.  The solar cooker, for example, does not meet this criterion well.  Electricity, on the other hand, does so almost perfectly, and it is relatively cheap, at Rs.50 (C$2) /outlet/month for two light bulbs, and perhaps Rs.100-200 per month for an electric stove.   There is an upfront cost of an electric hot plate of Rs.75-200.  We decided to try it on a minimal scale – to provide to Santosh and Deleep each a 2-element electric stove to take home to try out.  Both Santosh and Deleep have large families of about a dozen members each.  It is estimated that about 30% of the villages in the Buffer Zone have access to electricity.  Tarun believes that it would be relatively easy to persuade government to move towards providing electric power to all villages within a short time period.

     But to my challenge of, “If there is electricity to spare, there wouldn’t be daily rotational blackouts,” they gave no answer.

     Other information includes:

·       Killing of wild animals in the Buffer Zone is rampant,

·       90% of all government loans to villagers are forgiven due to non-repayment.,

·       Manjitola, a “peripheral village” (adjacent to the park), extracts about 25 headloads of fuel wood from the forest, mostly poached from the park.  Of these, about 30% are for domestic use and 70% for selling mostly at Baihar for Rs.15 per headload.  This means a number of things, that even if Manjitola accepts the solar cooker totally, the cooker can solve only 30% of the problem; they would still poach wood to sell. 

·       People in urban and suburban areas are not likely to use the solar cooker due to the predominance of shadows; that electricity is available in Baihar, but people still purchase wood from the villagers.

·       Legal wood is available for purchase, but people still purchase poached wood; that neither solar cooking nor electric cooking can produce the income the wood brings into the village.  25 headloads a day means about 700 headloads a month or about 8,000 headload a year.  70% of this is about 500 headloads a month or 5,600 headloads a year.  This would bring into the village Rs.7500 (US$180) a month or Rs.84,000 (US$2,100) a year.  If all the 200 villages in Kanha’s Core/Buffer Zones follow the same formula, the total loss should wood-cutting be stopped would be Rs.1,500,000 (US$40,000) a month or Rs.16,800,000 (US$420,000 or CDN$720,000) a year.

     “So how do we offset this loss if the villagers stop selling wood?” I asked.

     We seem to agree on that freeing up time of the wood-packing women can be more than offset if they spend it in developing cottage industries and selling the products instead of wood for more than Rs.50 per person per day, say Rs150 (C$6.50).  The village revenue then will more than triple that of packing and selling wood.  Bearing in mind that a headload of wood can fetch only about US$1, which is often the fruit of a full day’s work for a village woman, surely, they could make more money and enjoy more of life.

     In conjunction with this is that if the park fee is raised 10X from the present US$2.50 to US$25 per person per visit for foreign tourists (about 3,000 per annum) and perhaps a little less for out of state Indian visitors (about 20,000 per annum), the park revenue will be in the region of Rs.9,000,000 + Rs.4,000,000 = Rs.13,000,000 (US$325,000 or CDN$500,000), half of which going to the park service, and half towards a village benefit fund, amounting to Rs.6,500,000 (US$160,000 or CDN$260,000) a year each.  The half going to the park service can create a powerful anti-poaching squad (a la Tarun), and the half going to the villagers can help provide basic services such as schools and medical clinics and kick-start cottage industries.

     What should we aim for in the panchayat conference?

·       All panchayats must unify their voices to drive for such a park system, not only for Kanha, but for all tiger reserves in India.

·       If workable alternative energy is provided, villagers must promise to stop gathering or cutting and especially poaching of wood.

·       Villagers and government officials must work together towards protecting the park and tiger habitats in both the core and buffer zones.

·       Poaching of anything must stop, in both the core and buffer zones.

 

[22:47]     Faiyaz didn’t get back from his day-long trip until past 20:00.  Dinner at the usual time, i.e. about 20:30, where we (Faiyaz, Anne, Kim, Chris C., Tarun and I) inevitably talked about the oncoming arrival of the tourist group headed by Peter Cambridge, whom nobody likes on account of his rudeness to the volunteers on previous visits.  But the topic of conversation was not Cambridge but Pradeep.  We were all concerned, including even Tarun (if only in anticipation of our reaction), that Pradeep would repeat his previous order that when the tourists come, Tiger Trust activities should be suspended so that Faiyaz could devote his full energy to serving the tourist clients.  Given the high-gear nature of the conference project, and the shortage of time which limits us to contact no more than 50 of the 75 or so panchayats as it is, plus going to neighbouring towns such as Jabalpur and Mandla to invite forest officials and media, plus working with Tarun to organize the physical aspect of the conference, there is not a moment to spare.  Suspending Tiger Trust activities even for one day, let alone at least three, just cannot be done if the conference is to be successful.  With Tarun, Kim and Chris hosting the tourists, it is not as if there’s a vacuum situation at KJL (Kanha Jungle Lodge). 

     Anne thought that this time it would not come to that, since Pradeep must have at least come to some grasp that there is an urgent and momentous conservation project going on in the names of WCWC and Tiger Trust, and that Faiyaz is indispensable for the project to continue. 

     Tarun offered a sneaky solution, “Say ‘yes’ but do ‘no’.”

     Kim concurred, “Yeah, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” 

     But I heard myself saying, “Don’t worry about it.  I’ll say no, and do no.”

     But I do worry, and thanks to Pradeep, this worrying is ruining my enjoyment here at Kanha.  I hope Anne is right and that we’re just spinning our worrying wheels.

     In theory, it should be Faiyaz to say it, since he is the official Tiger Trust “Project Officer”, but if he did that, he would likely be canned.  So I offered to go to town with him to say the “no” myself.

     One way or the other, some damage to the project is already done.  Because of the damned phone call tomorrow morning at 10:00, Faiyaz will be unable to get on the road till noon, instead of his usual 06:30.  And this half-day’s loss we can ill afford. 

     I fumed.  “Ten o’clock be damned.  We’ll call Pradeep at home tomorrow morning at eight o’clock.  That’s late enough.”

     Tarun and Faiyaz exchanged apprehensive glances.

     “We need the morning to do our work.  If you don’t want to call, I’ll call,” I said.

     Tarun hesitated momentarily, then said, “Okay, Anthony, I’ll call.”

     Later, Faiyaz said to me, “If this type of inefficiency exists in our bodies, we’d be lying down all day, and running a fever due to internal friction,” and with a sad smile, “which is about what India is doing.”

     “Well, according to my experience and observation, there might be some truth to that.  I would say that at least its ingestor… its distributor… its internal transducer… its converter… its producer… its motor… its net… its decider…, at least these, are operating at less than optimal efficiency,” I said with a matching smile.

     “What are these?” asked Anne.

     “Have you heard of the book titled ‘Living Systems’ by James Greer Miller?”

     “Can’t say that I have,” said Anne.

     “Neither have I,” said Faiyaz.

     “It gave me quite I shock when I first encountered it.  It was published in the late 80s, I think.  In it Miller asserted that organisms and corporations and societies alike can all be called ‘Living Systems’.  Each living system can be functionally analyzed into 19 subsystems, according to Miller, namely, the Boundary, the Ingestor, the Distributor, the Input Transducer, the Internal Transducer, the Output Transducer, the Converter, the Producer, the Matter-Energy Storage, the Extruder, the Motor, the Supporter, the Channel-Net, the Decoder, the Memory, the Associator, the Decider, the Encoder and the Reproducer.  I have since adopted and absorbed this into Omni-Science.”

     “What are these subsystems again?” asked Faiyaz.

     I repeated them and he wrote them down. 

     “Oh, and there is one more subsystem that Miller did not mention,” I added.

     “And what is that?” Faiyaz asked, pen poised.

     “The Evolver.”

     “Makes sense,” nodded Faiyaz.

     “And 20 subsystems per living system is more aesthetically pleasing than 19,” said Anne

     “That shouldn’t be a determining factor, but it’s nice if it applies,” I said.

     “But Miller did not construct the multi-leveled structure of living-systems-within-living-systems-within-living-system that we have done?” Anne asked.

     “Not that I know of,” I said.  “He did not even go as far as to take the route of the ‘Superorganism’.  But he did go into great depths to analyze what organs pertains to what subsystem in our body-cells and our bodies and in societies.  So his work would be invaluable for an in depth understanding of Omni-Science.”