|
Hatod <notes from a Central Indian village> |
 2004 update(2003 update) **review India's proposed National Environment Policy** Our microreserve project called "The Last Resort" in Hatod village of Shivpuri district, in the Central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, will be ten years old next year ~ a time we had slotted from the very beginning for 'final orientation' of the project,.. with final focus upon the year 2020. It is impossible to estimate how successful, or not, we have been thus far by any universal measure such as a headcount of wildlife, for too many circumstances around us are profoundly changed. And it is certainly far from clear how exactly we should now proceed forward with the original basic concept of a sustainably 'balanced' micro-environment, right in the midst of a very harsh macro situation. On the one hand, we have (along with Ajit Singh., north of us) pretty stringently restricted-and actually almost eliminated-all casual human and cattle traffic through our critical little wildlife corridor for more than seven years now. On the other hand, the large neighbourhood hill this was/is meant to service has itself been very badly served on the sides away from us by mad felling of trees for the local moonshine-stills, and actual sandstone quarrying has been launched by a cartel of powerful local landlords on the side closest to the Madho National Park (i.e. diametrically away from us). Meanwhile, the Barhai river, which the corridor links through to, is in a terrible state from construction of a multitude of check-dams, and desperate drawing of it's waters everywhere possible along it's length in our neighbourhood. The deepest root of all of these problems has directly of course got to do with the burgeoning growth and spread of the local human population, with all of it's acoutrements, peripherals and support systems (e.g. cattle), but just *too much* of it all has actually to be ascribed to government policies,... and a historically/traditionally privileged local upper-crust. The simplest example is of course still about free & subsidized electricity for farmers' water pumps. And that's still about the most damaging example too. Looking back to when we first took up the project, one recalls how the biggest local landholders vied with each other then to bore as many tubewells as possible on their lands, and then stuff each with a 5hp submersible pump,... which would then be run 24/7, whether actually needed or not, because electricity for all rural pumps *up to 5hp* was/is free. Which in turn means that I know of at least one chap brazenly operating a 35hp pump (pretending it's just 5hp) to draw water from the Brahai, with free electricity today,.. after he'd spent years evaporating his undergound water-table via multiple bores and pumps to support a primitive imagined machismo. Nevertheless, there's also no getting away from the fact that the primary engine of all of these dangerously distressing phenomena in places like Hatod, and also much of the rest of India and even across the entire 'third world', is that end of the spectrum of human population growth which is fuelled mainly by the so called 'under classes' in particular. Now, I do pride myself in generally maintaining a class-blind attitude, but this is an altogether different matter manifested quite clearly on the ground. For example, our share-cropper Maiya presently heads up a pyramid of more than 20 progeny, even though he's probably never earned even an average dollar per day through any single year of his life. For the record, he's just had his youngest daughter married off recently at about age thirteen, while the one before her is already a mother at about age fifteen,.. and pregnant again. However, my own very broad theory on this unfortunate burgeoning of unfortunates across so much of our world today, drawn mainly from observations gathered in my many travels as an adventure-travel writer and photographer through various Indian rural-scapes through the 1980s, actually absolves these 'under classes' of any direct 'responsibility' for this terrible mess. In fact, it seems to me to actually be an innocent by-product of some of the most well-intentioned aspects of what we've all come to know as 'globalisation' and the spread of 'civilization'. Put simply, what that means in this context is that when communities become accustomed over centuries to producing an excess of progeny because too many children do not survive into adulthood, all it takes to decimate their environment--and their own intrinsic viability as a community within the given situation--within a generation or two is any and every intervention that immediately increases the survivability of such progeny. I know it is a terrible thing to point out in this manner, but I have witnessed this phenomenon first hand in too many places all the way from Nagaland in East India through to Rajasthan in the West. And the cost has been very high. Taking just the example of Nagaland: witness how low the survival chances of an average child there was until just about the mid-20th Century, on account of disease, other generic perils of jungle life, and also the wild old traditions of head-hunting between neighbouring communities,... which had individual couples routinely producing 12-15 children each so that at least some might survive into adulthood. Now, imagine what happened after universal inoculation of children against common local diseases was suddenly thrust upon them, and headhunting was forcibly banned within a few years,.. by folks too far away to be able to view or care about the full picture. You guessed it ~ a boom of population-growth in mind-boggling multiples almost by the year, before other more slow-moving inputs of modern civilization, such as education, agrarian technologies and an informed worldview could kick in. Not surprisingly, Nagaland, which used to be a rainforest hill-state, is an almost treeless desertscape today.... and places like Hatod are obviously in much-much worse shape. So, what's the way forward? Well, let me propose that it is not enough to keep children alive ~ they need to have 'a life' too. One sound step in this direction would certainly be to have advanced civilizations be as forthcoming about contributing technologies to disadvantaged communities of the world, as they've been all this while about so many other interventions into these worlds far away. But I propose that they should also look to welcome a lot more of these populations into their own rich and relatively so ample spaces upon this lonely planet, rather than just trying to pump their own populations to produce more of their own children to make up for numbers declining there. Same for our wildlife too I suppose. And is that what's needed now at 'The Last Resort' too? Amongst much else, yes, I do suspect so.  Shankar Barua ~ June 2004 |