Bahar Dutt bats for the cumulative assessment of development in the wildlife habitats in her book Green Wars. She spoke to Karan Bhardwaj
In a country where over 300 million people live off forests and their natural resources, is it really possible to talk about conservation without touching the lives of peopleIJ That question intrigued Bahar Dutt, a conservationist, journalist and author of Green Wars: Dispatches from a Vanishing World, as she was trying to decode her admiration for nature in late 90s. To begin with, she went to Sapera Basti in Delhi where she encountered thrilling stories of snake charmers. The community was hostile as they were exploited by the administration in more than one ways. “According to the act, they are not allowed to use snakes to earn livelihood. So they were put in jail, tortured and once they return, they would go back to snakes. I was also bowled over by the impeccable knowledge they had about the reptiles. On my first day there, a group of people put a snake in my bag. They were disgusted and simply not interested. But then, my adventurous jounrey in wildlife had begun as I continued to work with these people for next eight years,” she tells us.
Dutt formed a band for them called Hundred Charmers which performed all over the country playing flute apart from setting up shops in the area. “I wanted to empower them with the resources they had,” she says. However, as she came closer to the nature, she realised that the problem was certainly bigger than one community. As the nation reaped the fruits of economic explosion, we intended to ignore the exploitation of resources. “I noticed rivers being diverted, mining projects in tiger reserves and a lot of muscle-flexing with the natural reserves. I was upset since nobody in the media was reporting about it. So I thought of pursuing journalism finally to bring the disastrous activities in light,” she says.
In mid 2000s, she joined television media and started covering the far flung areas which were being affected by the economic activities. One major landmark came when she broadcast the illegal mining activities in Goa. “After we captured the mining, we were attacked by the mafias. They didn’t let us go with the recorded tapes. We tried reaching out from local police to national authorities but the mafias on ground refused to budge. So we finally handed over the blank tapes. I came back to city and filed the court case. The verdict banned the mining there,” she beams.
India is under constant criticism for the size of population but Dutt says there could be harmony if the path towards the development is properly measured. “I don’t consider human population as a disadvantage as far as the environment is concerned. The problem lies in the way we develop. If it is going to be a carbon-intensive growth, it’s going to be an issue. Our per capita emmission is less than the US because we have poorer people who don’t have access to energy. I think more than looking into the population growth, we need to see what kind of energy sources we are providing to our people. Yes, the upper middle class are at par with average American consumer but not everyone because the size of that community is small,” she says. With over 300 dams on Ganga and 150 more in pristine forests of Arunachal Pradesh, Dutt says humans have crossed the limits of taking nature for granted. “We believe we can construct as much as we can and there won’t be any repurcussion or depletion. A year before the Himalayan tragedy, environmentalsis had warned of a big misery. But we turned the deaf ear only to witness the destruction,” she says.