There was big news about the State of Texas alone in the US having more tigers in the cage than across the entire wild of India. The Union Environment Minister felt exceedingly proud in declaring that the Indian tiger population has increased by 30 per cent to a count of 2,226 cats. In the US, there are reportedly 20,000 big cats including lions, leopards and similar species in cages of the zoos and in the domestic environments of pet lovers. The US’ States have no uniform law on keeping wild animals as pets. Even if the statistic is grossly wrong, the Texas comparison is a bothersome one. The US is geographically three times as large as India and four times less in population. They love democratic rights and enjoy hunting but believably are not mad killers of wild cats.
Odisha used to be home to most beautiful tigers known to mankind. It provided, once upon a time, fantastic habitat to all kinds of wild cats. But after independence, wild cats were indiscriminately poached to make quick money. Stray cases of human killing led to tiger elimination in the habitat regions. Experts say tigers don’t love to eat human flesh. It’s only by mistaking men and women in dark as prey that they kill humans and, that too, only during horrific hunger. Study shows most humans killed by tigers have lost lives while defecating in dark. If the successive Governments had promoted toilets and running water in the tiger habitats, precious lives both of tigers and humans would have been saved. The tigers were blamed for no fault and killed.
Odisha today is a tiger-zero State, and shamefully so. More painfully, the top ranking IFS officers (not the Foreign ones) have only been wasting time as clerks in cool environments by organising for themselves posts on deputation that do not force them to work hard in the wild. With a zero count, the Odisha Forest Ministers will never discuss tigers ever again. They will remain focused on ‘elephants’ for some time until they are gone too.
*Undivided India around independence time in 1947 had a population of only 390 millions. Pakistan and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) took away 30 million each, leaving behind only 330 million in the partitioned India. Odisha was then a 1.2 crore-people State with an enviable female ratio. The monarchs of Odisha respected women, it seems. The Adivasis valued women at all times because they were considered asset. Young women brought in dowry-like money and goods from the grooms’ family, worked in the fields to remain healthy apart from routinely bearing and rearing kids. The tribals valued females more than males.
But unfortunately today, the so-called emancipated and mainstreamed Adivasis have degenerated so badly that they have begun considering women ‘liability’ because the ‘out-of-woods’ Adivasi Babus expect big dowry from the bride’s family, unlike of yore. Our civilised world has turned them terribly uncivil. The once women-heavy tribal communities of Odisha are fast losing the female species like elsewhere. The female population profile of Odisha across a century has remained noteworthy: In 1901, Odisha had 1037 females to 1,000 males against the national women count of only 972.
Ten years later, the country-average slid down to 964 when Odisha had 1,056. Around 1921, Odisha had a whopping 1,086 women to 1,000 men when the country-average had dipped further to 955. The undivided India was witnessing a most horrendous fall in female population every successive census year. But Odisha had remained female-wealthy.
Very surprisingly, just after independence, Odisha’s female population started sliding down. In 1947, the State had nearly 1,050 females to 1,000 males. Just four years later, the standard census count displayed a dismal figure. For the first time in centuries, the female population had slid too badly to 1,022. It sank further to a 1,001 in 1961 and by 1971 Odisha had become a male-heavy population with only 988 females to 1,000 males. By 2001, the State had become dangerously female-deficient, which shows Odisha is unforgivably retrograde on the development scale. The development authorities have never expressed anxiety, nor intellectuals fought over the matter and nor even have activists and development practitioners of the current times ever raised a cry over the issue as a grave development failure.
The least said about the funds-crazy NGOs, the better. At any given point in time, NGO founders only talk of the new ‘money pot’ they have discovered to keep remaining in circuit. They would not know the grave consequences of a female-weak society despite the rhetoric is a dominant one in their lingo.
They scream about ‘women empowerment’ wherever they are permitted to sit and talk but have never used brains to discover age-old values eroding fast like among the tribal communities. If they had truly espoused women’s cause, at least one of their founders would have raised hell about the last Devdasi in the famous Jagannath Temple parlance. NGOs have raised no protest against gross wastage of money in the name of a single-faith festival; yet they talk of secular rights of citizens as sacrosanct. The women issue subject logically focuses on the sad tale of the last Devdasi of the Jagannath Temple Shashimani Devi now fighting for life at 93.
She had appealed to the temple administration for help to live on for a few more days until the super-hyped Nabakalebar. She has much bigger right to get temple support than many servitors because she has sacrificed a whole life in the service of the deities. She is divinely wedded to lord Jagannath. But the temple administration never bothered to know she was dying. It remains engrossed in trying to placate unruly and greedy servitors by emptying the temple coffers. The Hundi collection could have taken care of Shashimani. She may not even live to be around during the coming Car Festival. Fortunately, though a bit strangely, the Tourism Department came forward with help. The erstwhile Chief Administrator Arvind Padhee organised a hundred thousand rupees for the dying Shashimani.
If he had remained the Chief Administrator, Shashimani, may have been lying in a super-specialty hospital with scores of dignitaries bee-lining to offer ‘get well’ messages. The Hundi money has turned unsacred for this simple reason of unkindness. May the lord keep her life until the big festival happens in a couple of months!
*Naveen Patnaik is no doubt magician Chief Minister who will be completing two decades of uninterrupted rule in Odisha, for sure. He has grown hugely larger than life and enjoyed the status of an invincible ruler. Not a single political fellow has surfaced by now to challenge him on any score of corruption or political error. Consequently, no second line of command has developed in the BJD, which is perpetually plain bad news. Some BJP and Congress members have repeatedly told the Press that Naveen trusts bureaucrats more than elected politicians. He probably believes IAS officers are incomparably efficient to determine what’s happening around and what to be done in the best interest of the people. All that is fine, but not getting to know several critical issues is just not fine. He may not ever have been told that the Nabakalebar hype is no good in a secular State and that the State is losing female population alarmingly which could cause demographic disaster in no time. If only they had done things to this effect, Shashimani would be a global celebrity with help from myriad sources, and the dismal ‘tiger count’ would never have happened.
lastly, Naveen’s bureaucratic aides have never told him that a polythene ban and promotion of electric rickshaws can save the people from disease and environmental disasters. The steps could begin at the temple town of Puri that attracts millions of tourists. The administration showcases Puri as the face of Odisha; the bureaucratic brains advise Naveen to surrender before the deities on the calendar New Year day as if that would ensure him paradise. Yet, indiscriminate polythene use and toxic fume-emitting auto rickshaws have not diminished in number. The CMC has miserably failed to impose the polythene ban in Cuttack despite a notification quite a while ago. Similarly, despite abundantly available silent and eco-friendly electric rickshaws around the country, no super brain among the CM’s advisors is expressing concern over the disturbing issues. Hopefully, before it is too late, the bureaucrats, educated politicians and the sensitised media people raise a cry over the factors pulling down the State on the development score.
The only happy news in hand is that Odisha is one of the five ‘Best Performing States’ in having ensured good roads and electric power. There could be more happy performance reports, but no one seems to know any. May the Nabakalebar festival instil the critical consciousness among the thinkers, planners and doers of good things in Odisha!
(The writer is a core member of Transparency International, Odisha)