Narain is also the head of the Tiger Task Force appointed by the Indian government, which presented its report this August. It has been said that there are now only a mere 3,000 tigers in the country.

“The tiger is such a sexy animal,” Narain explained, “that it is difficult to put across a complex message regarding its conservation.” One of the first appeals for its safety—in the light of the scare stories regarding the disappearance of the big cat from the Sariska National Park in Rajasthan state earlier this year—came from a group of Mumbai businessmen.

It is easy to put out messages from businessmen or the tourist industry or even children, for that matter, regarding the crying need to preserve the tiger. But it is quite another matter to ensure that a proper mechanism is in place for doing so.

At the outset, Narain clarified that she wasn’t a paid-up member of the ‘wildlife club’ (referring to a coterie led, presumably, by such articulate and powerful spokespersons as film-maker Valmik Thapar, Sanctuary magazine editor Bittu Sehgal and conservationist Belinda Wright, among others). When she was appointed head of the Tiger Task Force, somewhat controversially considering that she lacked a background in wildlife biology, she set about to establish the facts with her training as a good journalist.

A seminal incident influenced her approach. When the task force arrived at Sariska, during their three-month-long discussions, not a single villager came to meet them. It was obvious that the forest dwellers were completely hostile towards any official intervention in favor of the tiger. Thus, the dilemma was that the animal not only had to be protected against all odds, as from outside interests (such as poachers and the thriving trade in China and elsewhere in South-East Asia in tiger parts), but also faced a siege within the sanctuary itself.

This task force was by no means the first attempt to protect the animal. In 1972, the government appointed a committee and the IUCN had weighed in too. Project Tiger, originally with World Wildlife Fund assistance, was hailed as a major international wildlife success during the national emergency in the mid nineteen-seventies (leading The Guardian to mistakenly allege that the burgeoning population figures were trumped up by Indira Gandhi as a PR exercise during her infamous regime).

Narain is skeptical of western approaches to saving the tiger and, indeed, her report is being dubbed “the Indian way”.

Foreign experts, largely influenced by the scenario in the US and Australia, advocate that large ‘reserves’ ought to be set aside. Yet, in both the US and Australia there are huge wilderness areas, and sparse populations which make it feasible to do so. It has, for instance, been recommended that each tiger sanctuary here, in India, should have an average size of 1,500 Km² and, what is more, there ought to be a 2,000 Km2 area as a buffer contiguous to each. This is obviously not possible in this country: the land is just not available.

Today, India’s 28 Project Tiger sanctuaries occupy 5.6 % of the total forest area of the country and 1% of the geographical area. However, half the tiger population lies outside these sanctuaries, which should give a graphic idea of where the problem lies. At best, there are only 1,500 tigers within these protected areas. Since the CSE has espoused the ideology enunciated by its founder, the late journalist Anil Agarwal, who once wrote an article famously titled “Beyond Pretty Trees and Tigers”, the human dimension is always uppermost in its mind, as it ought to be.

When she presented her report to the Prime Minister, Narain pointed out that the “core tragedy”, as her task force members saw it, was that “the poorest people live in the richest lands” in India. The entire central tribal belt, stretching from Maharashtra in the west to West Bengal in the east, was where the bulk of the country’s forests, mineral resources, and watersheds lay. This is the central paradox of India as a whole, considering that it is so often said that it is a rich country with poor people. “Why are they so poor?” questioned Narain. There are no easy answers.

This author can recall visiting the Bandhavgarh National Park in Madhya Pradesh 20 years ago. While there, a Baiga tribal was killed by a tiger while he was collecting some forest produce off the ground. Apart from the gruesome death, another factor remains etched in memory.

The tribal’s widow stood at a distance, while the forest guards made their report. Apart from her stoic behavior, my photographs of the scene captured her extreme poverty. She was half-clad in a cloth without a blouse and completely bow-legged, a sure sign that she was suffering from malnutrition. Thus the tragedy was compounded by the fact that these hapless occupants of the forest were literally skin and bone, eking out a bare existence, even if they evaded the jaws of the tigers.

According to Narain, over the last 25 years, as much as US$ 220,000 has been spent on protecting every tiger in Sariska, but that has not prevented it from disappearing from this forest. In other Project Tiger sanctuaries, it amounts to US$ 53,000 per beast over this period. Plainly, when a single guard has to keep an eye on 14 Km², and a forester on 35 Km2 in these tiger sanctuaries, it is difficult to prevent poaching. Sariska should have been an ideal park, with some 22 tigers (if there were actually that number ever).

In the nearby Ranthambhore National Park, US$133,000 has been spent per tiger over this period but there too, their number has dwindled. Obviously, throwing money at guns, guards and fences will not work.

Narain believes that there ought to be isolated areas for the tiger, and these should be expanded, but only if that is possible. It is 1% at present, or 37,000 Km2, which is only around 30 times the size of a large city. “If you can’t relocate people, you must learn to live with them,” Narain says, much to the chagrin of wildlife experts. She was appalled to discover during her task force period that “there had not been one assessment of how many people live within sanctuaries, or have been relocated”.

From the evidence her team was able to garner, there are 273 villages still in the core areas of these 28 parks, amounting to 19,000 families.

In these reserves as a whole, which includes their buffer areas within the boundaries, there are as many as 1,500 villages, with 66,000 families.

In the 30 years that Project Tiger has been in place, only 80 villages have been relocated; indeed, in some cases, the villagers have trekked back to their original jungle homes. When you do the sums, it negates the argument that people have to be moved to render the sanctuaries the sole domain of these big cats.

As the task force report shows, in the 273 villages in the core areas alone, which are the prime target, at the minimum compensation of US$ 2,200 per family, the cost will amount to US$ 42 million. At the enhanced and preferable rate of US$ 5,500 per family, it will add up to US$ 111 million. Lest this sound too high, it is worth remembering that when Bhadra National Park in Karnataka was initiated, the compensation amounted to US$ 18,000 per family when the cost of land at the relocation site was factored in.

If land had to be paid for in the case of these 19,000 families, it would stack up to US$ 666 million and for all 66,000 families, to US$ 2.4 billion. Against this staggering sum, the government has only spent US$ 4 million on relocating people from Project Tiger sanctuaries in the past 30 years and another US$ 7 million on conserving tigers. And where is the land available for such relocation? The only possibility is forest land, which begs the question.

One major recommendation of the task force is that locals living within tiger sanctuaries ought to benefit from the tourism that these areas attract. Ranthambhore has 21 hotels, which rake in US$ 5 million a year, none of which finds its way into the pockets of local villagers. The natives have even threatened to torch the sanctuary and raze it to the ground; so intense is their anger against what they see as outside interests benefiting from their local resource.

This is why the task force has recommended that a third of the turnover of these hotels should be earmarked for the benefit of local people, as a dis-incentive to being hired by poachers. Once they are ensured a share in the profits of tourism, they will have a stake in preserving the flora and fauna; at present, they are entirely alienated. There could be an ‘eco-fare’ imposed by the Rajasthan government on all visitors, including the bulk who make trips during the day. Whatever the misgivings of wildlife experts on the call for co-existence between people and tigers—Valmik Thapar submitted a strong dissenting note as a member of the task force—this is surely one recommendation which ought to be accepted by everyone.

Other recommendations include making the Prime Minister the head of the steering committee on the tiger, to which he has agreed, upgrading Project Tiger to a statutory authority; creating a Wildlife Crime Bureau, employing more scientific methodology in conducting tiger censuses (the earlier pugmark method led to over-counting) and, above all, preparing plans for relocation and peaceful co-existence.

Narain is at pains to emphasize that there can be no “one size fits all” strategy for all 28 Project Tiger sanctuaries and that specific considerations will apply at different sites. She also raises an important issue regarding the international surveillance on the smuggling of tiger skins and parts. Trade is being openly conducted in Tibet, where skins are sold in marketplaces, flouting CITES and other international laws. One explanation ad to why the international community is unable or unwilling to check this crime is the simple fact that since China is the main offender—and a major economic power to contend with nowadays— no one wants to bell this cat.

At the conclusion of her presentation, Narain was asked whether she was in favor of using the Indian army to curb poachers. She cautioned against using the armed forces against their own people, which would virtually amount to a war within, where they would be shooting down their fellow nationals. There are very strict norms for employing the army for purposes other than war, and this would surely not be one of them. On the other hand, she mentioned how in certain areas occupied by Naxalites, or Maoist-inspired insurgents, because foresters couldn’t enter, tigers were better protected. In fact, these Naxalites were proud to announce that “their” tigers were safe.