Hyderabad - May 06

So, camp's over. I am in Hyderabad now, being pampered. Which means, being fed. And for once, I am enjoying it. The last few days in Bangalore were a whirl wind and I hardly remember anything much. Getting off at Majestic, taking an auto home. I suddenly had this craving for food...good food...it was as if I hadn't eaten for months. There were no provisions at home so I went to the next door Pizza Hut for a bite...got a bill of 200 something...from 12 Rupee full fledged meals to a whopping 200 Rupee snack...welcome to the city! :)

So back in Hyd...I am thinking about the camp. It was a good camp. A unique experience. I am missing the walks, the routine. What I am NOT missing is the heat and the grime. It's nice to be back - good food, comfortable bed. I miss the sound of birds though. Every morning I would wake up, often without the alarm to the sound of birds. In Thalacauvery, it was the Jungle Fowl and the long drawn, sweet, idle whistling of the Malabar Whistling Thrush, along with a variety of other bird songs, big and small. It was like waking up to a celebration - celebration of a new day. Quite similar was the scene in all the other places, except for the IB in Sakleshpur. I suppose being bang on such a busy highway, it wasn't a preferred bird habitat, though there were forests and trees all over - right behind it, across the highway on the other side. Says something about the disturbance these roads and highways through the forest cause, doesn't it? Birds, in general, avoid places of heavy human activity. Similar argument can be extended to animals as well. Back in the city, all I hear is the sound of traffic...buses, scooters, cars. It is disquieting. I'll get used to it soon. Which in a way is more disquieting. Hmmm....

So the camp offered opportunities of some really good birding. I am thrilled with the birds I saw in the forests and near the guest houses. Similarly the walks were a good initiation into understanding the delicate balance of nature - forests and animals. I have just about begun to observe, understand, co-relate, and make inferences. Also apparent in the walks was the impact of human disturbance in the forest - fuelwood and NTFP collection, timber extraction, livestock grazing, poaching. The forests which have high human disturbance are degraded and have low signs of wildlife - which in turn leads to further degradation. It's a cycle.

Forests that have good signs of wildlife, in addition to less human interference, are generally better protected by the forest staff. The forest staff in most cases is generally handicapped and gets a beating from all sides. In the cities we have an opinion that the forest department is generally apathetic, languid and demotivated, corruption ruling the ranks. The ground reality is different. There is always a lack of funds, which means low(and often late) salaries and poor infrastructure. So even where there is a will to maintain, to protect, it is severely inhibited by a lack of support. The poachers on the other hand, the timber mafia, the big plantation owners, the developers with those big development projects have big money, and big politicians in their pockets. If the forest department becomes strict with the peripheral villages for example, with respect to livestock grazing in the core forest areas or NTFP collection, the villagers get antagonistic, sometimes even violent. Villagers ganging up against the forest staff are common. The forest staff has no backing. It's highly political, everything, and it's all about money. And yet, in such circumstances also, there are so many of these men in khaki, from watchers to guards to rangers, who are battling all odds and trying to work with sincerity to protect the last remaining patches of our forests, our carbon sinks and fresh water sources.

Since I am suddenly on this remembrance drive, I'd stop by and remember the people I met in the course of all our walks. People in plantations, villagers, forest watchers and guards - most of them were warm and helpful. And most of them were really very poor. Just want to quote P. Sainath's Ramon Magsaysay Award acceptance speech which came in the papers a couple of days back:

In nearly 14 years of reporting India's villages full time, I have felt honoured and humbled by the generosity of some of the poorest people in the world. People who constantly bring home to you the Mahatma's great line: 'Live simply, that others may simply live.' But a people we today sideline and marginalise in the path of development we now pursue. A people in distress, even despair, who still manage to awe me with their human and humane values. On their behalf too, I accept the Ramon Magsaysay award.