📰 Nepal PM pitches for Indian investments
Starts dialogue on development projects and assistance
•“A more stable Nepal is open for Indian investments,” said Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli, addressing Indian businessmen here on Friday.
•He made a pitch for more businesses to invest in Nepal, while telling the Nepalese diaspora in Delhi that he would “build an environment” that would help attract them back home as well.
•Mr. Oli arrived in India for a three-day visit on Friday, on his first visit abroad since he was sworn in two months ago.
•As a special gesture from the government, he was received by Home Minister Rajnath Singh at the airport.
•Ahead of their formal talks on Saturday, he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in previously unannounced one-on-one talks at the Prime Minister’s residence, centred on development projects and assistance that will be unveiled on Saturday.
•“I had an excellent discussion with PM Modi covering all aspects of our ties, especially economic aspects,” Mr. Oli told presspersons. He met former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Rahul Gandhi.
Economic issues
•Rebuilding the Nepali economy, still scarred from the 2015 earthquake as well as systemic issues, is the focus of Mr. Oli’s visit to India, he said stressing the big mandate his party had received during elections as a guarantor of stability.
•Nepal’s economy at present depends heavily on global remittances, which make up about 30% of its GDP. More than four million Nepalese live and work outside the Indian subcontinent, with about five to seven million estimated to be living and working in India, crossing an open border between the two countries.
•On Friday, Mr. Oli spoke to members of the diaspora at the Nepal Embassy in Delhi as well, promising more opportunities for them back in Nepal.
📰 Invest in Nepal, Oli tells Indian industries
Areas like infrastructure, tourism hold huge opportunities
•Prime Minister of Nepal K.P. Sharma Oli on Friday sought investments from Indian businesses saying his country offered investor-friendly environment and incentives for industries.
•He said areas such as infrastructure, tourism, power, agriculture and IT hold huge opportunities for investors.
•“Nepal has a strong government at the centre, and stable government gives stability and continuity in policy regime,” he said here at the India-Nepal Business Forum meet organised by industry chambers, including CII.
•Law and order situation had improved and this meant Nepal was safe for foreign investments, he said, adding that the country needed massive investments in every sector.
•“Indian investors have invested across the globe, so why not go to the next door Nepal. Geographical proximity, easy access and cultural similarities are all there to make you feel good about Nepal. Seize the opportunity,” Mr. Oli said.
•“Investors always look for market. Look at Nepal’s position. For us, market is not a problem, [but] production is a problem. It is lying between two vibrant economic powers with huge population of the world — India and China. That assures you of a promising market of 2.5 billion people,” he said.
Attractive incentives
•He said Nepal enjoyed duty-free access to European markets. “We are ready to listen to you. Your advises and suggestions. We want to know your views. We are committed to further improving our business climate,” he said.
•“Nepal has to offer attractive incentives compared to other countries. We have reduced tariffs, simplified tax regimes,” he said.
•The country was planning to establish special economic zones (SEZ) in the cities bordering India with incentives for industries, including liberal labour laws, Mr. Oli said.
📰 U.S. sanctions target Putin’s allies
Seven oligarchs, 12 companies they control, 17 senior officials & a state-run arms exporter on the list
•The U.S. struck at the heart of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle on Friday, imposing sanctions on seven of Russia’s most influential oligarchs and stoking a diplomatic crisis that some have dubbed a new Cold War.
•Those hit include metals magnate Oleg Deripaska, described as operating for the Russian government, as well as Alexei Miller, director of state-owned energy giant Gazprom. Any assets they hold in areas under U.S. jurisdiction could now be frozen.
•Also on the list are tycoon Suleiman Kerimov, under investigation in France over allegations he brought in millions of euros in suitcases full of cash, and Kirill Shamalov, a billionaire reported to be Mr. Putin’s son-in-law.
•Russia’s state arms exporter, a key tool in Mr. Putin’s efforts to support the modernisation of his own military by selling advanced hardware around the world, was also added to the sanctions list.
•In all, President Donald Trump’s administration targeted seven oligarchs, 12 companies they own or control, 17 senior Russian officials and a state-owned arms export company.
•“The U.S. is taking these actions in response to the totality of the Russian government’s ongoing and increasingly brazen pattern of malign activity across the world,” one official said. “This included their occupation of Crimea, instigation of violence in eastern Ukraine, support for the Assad regime in Syria... and ongoing malicious cyber-activity.”
•“But most importantly, this is a response to Russia’s continued attacks to subvert western democracies,” said the official.
•Campaigners against Kremlin corruption welcomed the U.S. move. Bill Browder, a U.S.-born British financier whose lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died in a Russian jail after protesting alleged tax fraud, tweeted that Washington was “finally hitting Putin and his cronies where it counts”.
Election interference
•Russia analyst Boris Zilberman, of Washington think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the sanctions might finally give Mr. Putin’s allies pause as “until there is a change in the Kremlin’s behaviour their bottom lines will suffer and their ability to enjoy the spoils of their corruption will be hampered.”
•The measures were taken under a U.S. law passed to punish Russia for its alleged bid to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, engage in cyber-warfare and intervene in Ukraine and Syria.
•But Friday’s announcement also came as Washington and its allies face a new diplomatic crisis with the Kremlin over the attempted poisoning of a former Russian double agent on British soil.
•Mr. Trump begrudgingly signed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) in August last year, despite arguing that it undermined his own authority to lead U.S. foreign policy.
Cyber espionage
•The President had long disputed the idea that Russia's alleged cyber-espionage and propaganda efforts sped him to victory in the election, seeking better relations with Mr. Putin.
•But Congress persisted, backed by evidence from U.S. intelligence agencies, and in March the administration finally imposed sanctions on 19 Russian entities for “malicious cyber attacks.”
•U.S. officials confirmed that their action against the oligarchs was in part related to Russia’s alleged interference in the U.S. vote, but stressed the broader nature of their concerns.
•“The Russian government operates for the disproportionate benefit of oligarchs and government elites,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said. “Russian oligarchs and elites who profit from this corrupt system will no longer be insulated from the consequences of their government's destabilising activities.”
📰 WTO is unfair to us, says Trump
‘China gets tremendous perks, especially over U.S... We were badly represented’
•U.S. President Donald Trump teed up a fight with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on Friday, claiming the 164-country body was biased against the United States.
•A day after China asked the WTO to referee a rapidly escalating trade fight with Washington, Mr. Trump questioned the organisation’s impartiality.
•“China, which is a great economic power, is considered a Developing Nation within the World Trade Organization,” the President said in a tweet.
•“They therefore get tremendous perks and advantages, especially over the U.S. Does anybody think this is fair. We were badly represented. The WTO is unfair to U.S.”
•Mr. Trump has repeatedly expressed skepticism about multilateral bodies — from the WTO to the UN to NATO —believing they constrain U.S. power.
•“Trump has made clear more than once what he thinks of multilateral institutions like the WTO,” said Marie Kasperek of the Atlantic Council.
📰 Will fight U.S. tariffs at any cost, warns China
‘We are not afraid of a trade war’
•China on Friday warned that it was digging in for a long campaign to counter Washington’s attempts to undermine its economy, following President Donald Trump’s threat to impose new tariffs.
•The spokesman of the Chinese Commerce Ministry said on Friday Beijing would take “comprehensive countermeasures” and fight “at any cost”, if the U.S. continues its unilateral, protectionist practices, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. “On Sino-U.S. trade, China has made its position very clear. We don’t want a trade war, but we are not afraid of such a war.”
•On Thursday, President Trump said he had asked the U.S. Trade Representative to consider additional tariffs on Chinese products worth $100 billion.
•“In light of China’s unfair retaliation, I have instructed the USTR to consider whether $100 billion of additional tariffs would be appropriate… and, if so, to identify the products upon which to impose such tariffs,” Mr. Trump had said in a White House statement.
•The President’s remarks feed into tit-for-tat spiral, which began when Washington stated its intent to impose fresh levies on steel and aluminium products from several countries including China. This was followed by the listing of Chinese products worth $50 billion, which could face 25% additional tariffs. Analysts said the new wave of tariffs targeted the hi-tech Made-in-China 2025, central to Beijing’s transition to higher level “intelligent” manufacturing.
•In response, China first unveiled its intent to impose fresh duties on items worth $3 billion. On Wednesday, China announced that it had earmarked U.S. products worth $50 billion for higher tariffs, which cover 106 items, including soyabeans, cars, petrochemicals and aircraft.
•“Concerning the U.S. statement, we will not only listen to the words but also watch the deeds,” the Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesperson said. If the U.S. continues its protectionism, China will fight to the end at any cost to “protect the interests of the country and the people”.
📰 Disruptive Mr. Trump
The consistent undermining of multilateralism by the U.S. must be countered
•This week has seen rounds of tit-for-tat tariffs between the U.S. and China, set off by U.S. President Donald Trump levying import duties of 25% and 10% on American steel and aluminium imports, respectively, in early March. Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly used the U.S. trade deficit of over $500 billion as a barometer for the country’s lot in the international trade order, has railed against the U.S. being treated “unfairly” by its trading partners, often singling out China. While it is true that China produces approximately half the world’s steel and that the European Union, India and other countries have complained about international steel markets being flooded with Chinese steel, only 3% of U.S. steel is sourced from China. Interestingly, among those exempted from the tariffs are Canada and Mexico, top sources for U.S steel imports. Mr. Trump has linked the threat of tariffs to the North American Free Trade Agreement, a trade deal among the U.S., Canada and Mexico that Mr. Trump has pried open for renegotiation. Earlier this week China retaliated with tariffs that would impact $3 billion worth of American goods. This was followed by the U.S. proposing tariffs on more than $50 billion of Chinese goods, including in the aerospace, robotics and communication industries — the outcome of an investigation of several months into whether Chinese policies were placing unreasonable obligations on U.S. companies to transfer technology and hand over intellectual property while setting up shop in China. Beijing responded with a second round of proposed tariffs impacting a similar value of U.S. imports into China. Mr. Trump has now asked the U.S. Trade Representative to examine if an additional $100 billion worth of goods can be taxed.
•Since the proposed tariffs have not kicked off, there may be room for negotiation. The economic ties between the countries are deep; China holds some $1.2 trillion in U.S. debt, and it is in everyone’s interest to avoid escalating matters. However, the larger cause for concern here is that Mr. Trump continues to undermine the World Trade Organisation and the international world trade order, now that it has served the West well and developing countries are in a significantly stronger position than when the WTO came into existence in 1995. Mr. Trump has pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, is pushing changes to NAFTA and has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement to combat climate change. While large-scale protectionism and unilateralism may please some of Mr. Trump’s constituents in the short run, undermining existing rules arbitrarily serves no nation, including the U.S., in the long run. In the current climate, it is therefore especially important for India to be a good steward for responsible globalisation.
📰 Forging a culture of innovation
India’s innovation policy has to shift beyond a mere focus on R&D spending to transforming the ecosystem
•On paper, India should be in a good position in terms of research and development (R&D) spending. Our pipeline of researchers seems undiminished; we are ranked third in the world in number of science and technology PhDs awarded and have improved our ranking in the Global Innovation Index, from 66 to 60. And yet, there is no Indian university in the top hundred (QS World University Rankings, 2018) and only 46,904 patents were filed in India in 2016 (China filed over a million patents). Somehow, we have enabled an ethos of publishing, but not “patenting, publishing and prospering”.
Between the numbers
•India’s gross expenditure on R&D has increased by three times over the decade 2005-15, crossing the Rs. 1 lakh crore mark in 2016-17. The Centre spent 45.1% of the total amount in 2015, while private industry contributed 38.1%. In comparison to the West, the contribution of higher educational institutions in R&D spending was lacklustre. The government’s R&D spending is equivalent to an Amazon or Alphabet’s R&D spend, while only 26 Indian companies figure in the list of top 2,500 companies globally by R&D spend. Our R&D activities still seem to be conducted in an ivory tower, instead of being market-focussed.
•India’s R&D spending, as a percentage of GDP, still lags significantly, at 0.69% in 2015 — this share has been stagnating for the last decade. Even among other BRICS countries, only South Africa lags behind India in terms of R&D expenditure. Allocation of spending is also significantly constrained. Over 90% of Indian start-ups face a risk of failure in their initial failure, partially due to a lack of access to financing. Access to such financing streams, to public and private players needs to be improved significantly, with a reduction in institutional barriers.
•The translation of R&D spend into patents can be affected by institutional constraints as well. Only 28% of patents registered for applications are eventually filed. Meanwhile, patent pendency times in India are among the highest in the major economies, with a patent taking about 6-7 years between a request for examination and a final office action. In comparison, South Korea and China have pendency timings of 16 and 22 months, respectively. Meanwhile, the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), which filed over 13,000 patents (2014-2017), shut down its commercialising arm, CSIR-Tech, due to lack of funding. India’s intellectual property rights (IPR) policy is ripe for transformation — requiring an amendment encouraging start-ups to utilise filed patents on an initial no-royalty basis, with revenue sharing occurring once significant commercialisation is achieved.
•Spending aside, the lack of transformative innovation across industries is something that India should be concerned about. Over 77% of Indian venture capitalists believe that India lacks unique business models or new technologies. R&D, as a professional function, fails to attract top talent — our 216 researchers per million compare with China’s 1,177, Russia’s 3,131 and the U.S.’s 4,232. The number of scientific publications has risen from 62,955 papers in 2009 to over 106,065 papers in 2013, with India’s share of global research publications rising from 2.2% in 2000 to 3.7% in 2013. And yet, over 35% of publications in “bogus journals” comes from India. The CSIR’s patents, mentioned earlier, were mostly “bio-data patents”, and are claimed to have been filed primarily to enhance a scientist’s resume. The hoarding of patents has a significant cost; acquiring a higher number of patents, without due regard for quality, has become an institutional mark of success, to up our index of innovation.
Tested by application
•We need to push beyond metrics, papers and patents to focus on providing solutions to development and economic challenges. A focus on building an innovation culture is necessary, particularly giving the transformative shifts under way in sectors critical to India’s economy — from electric cars in automobiles to insourcing in IT services, the economy is exposed to significant job losses and a fall in exports over the coming decade. Our innovation policy has to shift beyond a focus on increasing R&D spending to inculcating a mindset of “out-of-the-box” thinking in our universities, start-ups and corporates. India’s educational policies need to be redesigned, with a focus on building cognitive abilities, beyond rote learning and focus on quantitative subjects. The Atal Innovation Mission is an encouraging start, focussing on facilitating school-level financial grants to help nurture an initial layer of innovation. But we need to move beyond this to focus on taking advantage of the data analytics boom, improving educational qualities beyond our existing islands of excellence to the whole university system. A supporting ecosystem for this will require providing greater access to public data, through the Right to Information Act and a push to providing public data (for example, on train punctuality, water scarcity, air pollution metrics) for building innovative applications on a real-time basis.
•The impact of R&D spending on shifting a nation’s trajectory from a commodity-based growth to one based on capital and IP is well-noted; South Korea increased its GDP 12 times over the past 45 years, while R&D spend rose from 0.26% of GDP in 1965 to well over 4.04% in 2011; private players accounted for 76.5% of total R&D spending in 2011. For a nation whose public debate is often given to recalling innovations in our historical and mythological past, the future state of India’s R&D activities demands significant attention.
📰 RBI raises limits on FPIs’ debt investment
Move to lift cap by Rs. 1 lakh cr. in FY19
•The Reserve Bank on Friday upped debt investment limits for foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) across all segments, which will cumulatively result in an increase of more than Rs. 1 lakh crore in fiscal year 2018-19.
•The total debt limit will rise to Rs. 5,94,600 crore by September 2018 and go up further to Rs. 6,49,900 crore by the end of the fiscal year from the present Rs. 5,45,823 crore, a central bank notification said.
•RBI has decided to increase the FPI investment limits in central government securities by 0.5% to 5.5% of outstanding stock of securities in 2018-19 and 6% of outstanding stock of securities in 2019-20, it said.
•The limits on FPI investment in state development loans (SDLs) would remain unchanged at 2% of outstanding stock of securities, it said. On corporate bonds, the FPI investment will be fixed at 9% of outstanding stock of corporate bonds and all the sub categories within the segment will be discontinued.
•In the government securities general category, the limit has been revised up to Rs. 2,07,300 crore by September 2018 and Rs. 2,23,300 crore by March 2019 from the present Rs. 1,91,300 crore, it quantified.
📰 All the rhinoceroses
Counting one-horned rhinos in Kaziranga National Park, home to nearly two-thirds of the world’s population of the ‘vulnerable’ species, is no easy task.Rahul Karmakarreports on the unique challenges faced by the officials in the recently concluded census
•There is nothing ‘casual’ about Biju Saro, 26. His day begins at dawn as he goes about his job of keeping watch at the Bokabil anti-poaching camp, located about 2 km from Borbil Misinggaon, his village. He brings to it the same seriousness that fellow campers, forest guard Natun Chandra Das and home guard Dilip Khakhlari, do. But Saro is a casual employee, one of the 200 contracted to guard the great one-horned rhinoceros (or the Indian rhinoceros), Assam’s iconic mammal.
•Bokabil is one of the 178 anti-poaching camps in Kaziranga National Park (KNP), the rhino domain important to the fragile Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot that stretches from eastern Bangladesh to Vietnam.
•For Rs. 7,500 a month, which is much lower than the Rs. 20,000 that the ‘regular’ guards get, Saro patrols a five sq km area around Bokabil camp, takes turns to monitor the animals round the clock from the camp’s watchtower, updates the Kohora range office regularly on his walkie-talkie, and cleans the weapons, usually a 12 bore rifle or a .303, that the guards use to battle poachers. Kohora (or Central) is one of the five ranges of KNP. The others are Agratoli (or Eastern), Bagori (or Western), Burapahar, and the Northern Range. The KNP used to be 1,030 sq km, with a core area of 482 sq km, when it was notified as a tiger reserve in 2007. But erosion by the Brahmaputra has shrunk it to 884 sq km now.
•Former KNP Director M.K. Yadava says that Kaziranga would require at least 3,000 men if they were to be deployed in eight-hour shifts. However, the park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985, only has a staff strength of about 1,300, of which 200 are casual workers. In the current arrangement, the guards are not expected to work by the clock.
•“We sleep in the afternoon between patrols,” says Saro. “And this is because both animals and poachers rest during this time. [Records show that poachers invariably strike at night]. Night-time is for keeping awake, listening to unfamiliar sounds, and gunshots.” What drives him is the hope of becoming a regular employee one day. “I have been a casual worker for three years now. As a local resident, I feel I deserve to be regularised when the department recruits guards the next time,” he says.
Chasing the rhino
•It is early morning. The Borbil camp is not on the itinerary of Debasish Baruah, teacher of a local school and one of the enumerators for the Rhino Population Estimation 2018. Harun Chamru, a 45-year-old adivasi, is the driver of Baruah’s Gypsy. He seems to have lost his way after taking the wrong track at a fork flanked by tall elephant grass. “We normally don’t take jungle tracks other than the specified tourist routes,” says Chamru.
•The Gypsy reaches Borbil camp at 8 a.m. Baruah’s team decides to have their breakfast — bread, butter, egg, an apple and two bananas — that has been packed for every member of the rhino census at the Kaziranga convention centre in Kohora. As they start eating, a sudden swaying of the elephant grass about 300 yards away alerts Saro. He dashes up the camp, which is on stilts. Annual flood levels are marked on its pillars with charcoal. He finds a rhino chasing another. “It’s a female,” he announces, pointing to an animal emerging from the grass.
•“There are many ways of differentiating a female from a male rhino,” explains Bhupen Talukdar, a retired forest officer who is delivering the pre-census briefing. “We look at the skin fold, the size of the bib (dangling under a rhino’s neck), cut marks on ears, the pattern of tubercles (the series of small lumps on a rhino’s hump), and, of course, the genitalia. But the easiest way is to observe the size of the head. A female rhino has an elongated, narrower head while the male’s head is thicker and shorter. Focus on the horn too. The male’s horn is broader and invariably broken, while the female’s is thinner, unblemished, and tapers into a conical form.”
•Rhinos are solitary animals, Talukdar says, but an adult with a calf is invariably a female. “If you spot them, you can simply jot down the sex even if you are unable to observe its head or horn.”
•The enumerators are asked to report to the convention centre before 5 a.m. for the estimation exercise the next day. “Your kitbag includes a GPS device, a compartmentalised map of Kaziranga, a note sheet with columns for male, female, ‘un-sexed’, and calves under three and over three years. ‘Un-sexed’ is for rhinos whose gender is difficult to determine from afar,” says Rabindra Sarma, KNP’s Research Officer.
•The GPS is a first for a Kaziranga census. About 40 elephants, 29 of them hired from private owners, are parked at strategically located camps, ready to take the observers around. Sarma has a word of advice for enumerators who would be on an elephant’s back. “Tie your GPS, binoculars, note sheets, everything around your neck. You never know when a rhino might give chase. If the elephant suddenly starts running, you’ll be caught off guard.”
•Sarma’s warning proves prophetic. Dilwar Hussain, a policeman turned environmentalist, is perched on an elephant, Urvashi, who starts running when a male rhino chases her away from a group of rhinos. “We couldn’t count that group properly,” he says later. “It was only when the mahout put a ‘gamosa’ [decorated Assamese cloth towel] on her eyes that she stopped running and we could resume counting.”
•The elephant-back estimation, which begins at 6:30 a.m., lasts for five hours. “It is tough on the elephant. Given that it is carrying our weight, it sweats more as the day gets hotter,” says Kaushik Barua, an environmentalist who counted 107 rhinos on Day 1 and 21 on Day 2 of the estimation exercise.
•The observers on jeeps have a longer day — they finish by 1 p.m. Baruah, a veteran, says counting on jeep is less challenging than doing it from an elephant’s back. But his vehicle ran into a herd of elephants, which blocked the track for 45 minutes. “We had no choice but to wait for the elephants to move,” says Chamru. “Elephants are less aggressive than rhinos.”
Counting controversy
•KNP has had rhino censuses since 1966. But earlier estimation exercises were not dogged by controversy, which sets the latest exercise conducted on March 26-27 apart. In the run-up to the 2018 Rhino Population Estimation, some experts were sceptic about the methodology being adopted, pointing out that the headcount approach based on sighting by humans could lead to inflated figures, as had happened with tiger censuses in the past. They have suggested alternate methods such as distance sampling and camera traps.
•“The number of rhinos is important, but what matters most is how many breeding females, mothers, and calves we find. That is what gives us an idea about the trends and the health of the habitat,” says N.K. Vasu, Assam’s Chief Wildlife Warden. “We have been tracking the headcount since 1966, when Kaziranga had only 366 rhinos. Techniques such as distance sampling and random sampling have evolved since then, but headcount based on actual sightings [the total counted by every enumerator within his or her specified area of estimation] still offers the best results, given the sincerity with which forest officials and wildlife enthusiasts do their job.”
•Moh Chaturvedi, a Delhi-based independent environment consultant, counted 69 rhinos along an eight km stretch near the Mihimari and Gendamari camps straddling the Kohora and Bagori ranges. The boxes ticked on her census sheet say that the gender of a third of the rhinos could not be identified.
•Baruah has counted 16, six of them ‘un-sexed’. “They were too far away to be identified properly,” he says. The enumerators gather at the convention centre for a de-briefing in the evening. Each sheet is sealed in packets. A committee will pore over them carefully and arrive at the final tally.
•“The final counting is not an easy process. Two old rhinos died soon after the estimation was done. Such animals are removed from the list, as are those likely to be double counted by enumerators of adjoining blocks,” says Akashdeep Baruah, Director, KNP.
•The total count method relies heavily on the visibility of animals. Officials say that poor burning of tall grasses and reeds due to high moisture content have led to fewer rhinos being sighted this time. These grasses, which grow taller than elephants, are burnt by the forest guards around March every year, which is the time they dry up and constrict other vegetation. In a ‘normal burning’, 50-60% of the grassy stretches are burnt, while a ‘poor burning’ would cover lesser ground. It is difficult to spot rhinos and other animals hidden deep inside the acres and acres of tall grass and reeds growing in dense clusters.
•In this year’s exercise, 67 enumerators (38 forest officials from across Assam and 29 invited observers) undertook the census on the back of 40 elephants and jeeps. They have produced an estimate of 2,413 rhinos, 12 more than in 2015.
•“Kaziranga is a mixture of woodlands, grasslands and wetlands. The rhinos prefer the grasslands and wetlands, but we could burn only 20% of the grasslands this time against the annual rate of 60%. This affected visibility of the rhinos. So we have decided to go for a recount next year,” says Akashdeep Baruah.
•Kaziranga does have a precedent of estimation in successive years, though the gap between two censuses is typically three years. The 2012 estimation had a grass-burning issue too, and officials were apparently unhappy with the 2,290 rhinos counted that year. A re-estimation in 2013 yielded 2,329 rhinos. Keeping records of rhinos has become crucial, as poaching is the main reason for the decline of rhinos in Assam, apart from flood-related deaths, since the banning of legal hunting. Rhinos are poached for their horns and nails, used in traditional medicine. Government records say poachers killed 247 rhinos in Kaziranga between 1996 and March 2018. In the same period, 76 poachers were killed, while 575 were arrested for illegal entry in the park.
•“Estimation of rhinos should be deferred if the conditions are not right. We should ideally go for an assessment of the conditions before conducting the estimation,” says Vasu.
•Some experts have suggested different methodologies such as distance sampling — calculating the number of animals in quadrants defined by an imaginary line — that do not rely on actual sighting and are reportedly more accurate. Distance sampling involves counting a part of a population in a specified area and then extrapolating from it.
•In the case of tigers, camera traps (a remotely activated camera with motion sensors) and distance sampling ended the practice of estimating populations by counting pug marks. Before the birth of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), tiger figures were allegedly inflated from 1,800 in 1972 to more than 3,500 in 2000. The estimate came down to 1,411 in 2006 following the application of sampling methods and camera traps.
•“I have been involved in rhino and tiger censuses since 1999, and I can that say no method is foolproof as it all boils down to the efficiency and sincerity of the enumerators. We cannot rule out the possibility of a rhino being counted twice, but past experience suggests that there are greater chances of rhinos being undercounted. That is the reason why the estimate is always within a range of plus-minus 100 from the figure arrived at,” says Sarma. “Nonetheless, I still feel that sampling methods added to headcount can erase doubts. This time, we used GPS for the first time to ensure more accuracy. But to use GPS effectively, we need to design good transect lines along which an animal is expected to be present,” he adds.
•“People find fault in tiger estimation methods too. So it is not proper to say this method is better than that method. Every method has room for improvement,” says Dev Prakash Bankhwal, regional head of the NTCA.
•Whatever the method, officials insist that they do not want the rhino population to grow beyond Kaziranga’s carrying capacity. A 2014 population module by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) sounded the saturation alarm for Kaziranga rhinos and suggested adding more areas. “Studies revealed that Kaziranga has a carrying capacity of 2,700 rhinos, but the park has already lost land to erosion,” Sarma says. Creating more space for the rhino is believed to be the reason behind an eviction drive mandated by a Gauhati High Court order of October 2015.
•Of the six areas or ‘additions’ comprising Kaziranga’s buffer zone of 548 sq km, the northern range, encompassing islands along the Brahmaputra, has been cleared of settlers, as has been the Burapahar area. Most of the settlers here were migrant Muslims, making parties such as the All India United Democratic Front label the drives as selective. Non-Muslims in a couple of other additions are yet to be ejected or relocated.
Indebted to a shikari
•According to a study by the Wildlife Institute of India, the old generation of shikaris (hunters) who subsequently turned into forest rangers had the tradition of regularly tracking tigers and mapping their movements. The rhinos of Kaziranga — and elsewhere in Assam — owe their existence to a shikari too, though he had earned the moniker for guiding white sahibs who hunted rhinos for trophies. There is a little tale which bears repetition here.
•Bapiram Hazarika, more popularly known as Nigona Shikari, had in 1905 guided Baroness Mary Victoria Leiter Curzon around the core area of the present-day Kaziranga on elephant back. The baroness was the wife of Lord George Curzon, who as Viceroy of India would go on to earn notoriety by dividing Bengal.
•Impressed by the forest, Lady Curzon asked Nigona how the rhinos could be saved. “Stop the sahibs from hunting them,” he replied. Convinced, she persuaded Lord Curzon to prohibit the hunting of rhinos. Six months later, an area of 57 lakh acres was declared as the Kaziranga Proposed Reserve Forest. The park formally became a Reserve Forest in 1908, a game sanctuary in 1916, and was thrown open to visitors in 1938. It was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1950 and became a national park in 1974.
•“There are many legends behind the name Kaziranga. A popular one says it refers to two tribal lovers, Kazi and Rongai, who eloped to live among the animals,” says Rohini Ballave Saikia, Kaziranga’s Divisional Forest Officer. “Kaziranga is a love story between man and animal and between forest officials and the local people,” says Lohit Gogoi, who runs a restaurant at Kohora, the main tourist point. “People here know that their existence depends on the well-being and conservation of the rhino.”
•Officials say that they ensure synergy with local people, who keep them informed about any potential poaching activity. “There can be no conservation without the cooperation of the local community. We let people graze their cattle on the fringes of the park but ensure that they are immunised free of cost, for it is vital to prevent diseases from spreading to the wild animals. We also organise free trips inside the park for local children,” says Akashdeep.
•By afternoon, as counting ends, 2,413 rhinos have made it to the enumerated list: 758 males, 942 females, and 385 calves. The sex of 328 remains undetermined. Hopefully, all doubts about numbers will be put to rest after the recount next year.
📰 Not above the law
The verdict in the Salman Khan blackbuck case is a huge blow for conservation
•The stiff sentence of five years in jail awarded to actor Salman Khan for hunting blackbuck in Rajasthan’s Kankani village in 1998 should send out the message that stardom does not confer impunity. Unlike the average wildlife poaching case, where State forest departments struggle to gather credible evidence, the prosecution in the blackbuck case has been vigorously supported by the local Bishnoi community. What sets the case apart from so many other episodes of poaching and animal trapping in India’s forests is its naked celebration of bloodsport. Stars like Khan, who is no stranger to controversy surrounding hunting expeditions, seem to think conservation is not serious business, and the clock can readily be turned back to an era when the wealthy and powerful organised ‘shikar’ parties to hunt for pleasure. That era is over. If the verdict of the Jodhpur court in the blackbuck case survives the appeals process, it would send out the powerful message that the judicial system feels no constraint in exerting the full weight of the law to protect threatened wildlife. Equally, it should bring a feeling of empowerment to forest department personnel, and help them resist the intimidation that they routinely face from influential sections in the discharge of their duties. Protecting the blackbuck case verdict — and the witnesses who made it possible — is the challenge they face today.
•The Wildlife (Protection) Act, the landmark law from 1972 that shields the diversity of India’s endangered animals mainly in 4% of its land area designated as protected, struggles to be effective and conviction rates are low. Besides restraining ‘VIP’ poachers, forest guards must combat organised hunting gangs that employ traps and snares for a thriving trade in animals, body parts and trophies. Even the population of the tiger, the most protected species, faces erosion due to poaching. At least 136 tigers were killed between 2014 and 2017, according to an estimate by the Wildlife Protection Society of India that includes official data on poaching. What is more, several species protected under the Schedules of the Wildlife Act are often found in areas that lie outside sanctuaries, and are commonly hunted. Forest departments must see the need for greater vigilance in such territories, which they can exercise in partnership with local communities. The verdict in the Salman Khan case strikes a blow for these free-ranging animals, sending out the message that hunting of protected species is certain to invite severe penalties. The court makes the important observation that personalities who are capable of influencing the behaviour of others must naturally be conscious of what they do. It is to be hoped that this will convince the high and mighty that bloodsports are grotesquely incongruous in the present day when environmental concerns rule supreme and engaging in them invites deterrent action.
