They can show you the money, if not tiger

PM visits Ranthambhore tomorrow, funding shouldn't be a problem: this reserve gets almost as much as all 27 across country

21 May, 2005

When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visits Ranthambhore on Monday, there's a little equation that should worry him as much as the tiger crisis. In the last 10 years, at least Rs 55 crore have been marked in the name of the tiger here. That works out to Rs 1.5 crore per tiger, not exactly a princely sum, but still more than what the Government kept aside for all 27 tiger reserves across the country.
Clearly, Ranthambhore is the crown jewel and of its estimated population of 35 tigers in the reserve, 18 are missing - no one knows why.
Records accessed by The Sunday Express - which first exposed the dwindling number of tigers in Sariska and elsewhere - show that whatever the reason for Ranthambhore's plummeting tiger count, lack of money isn't one of them.
Just NGOs have got at least Rs 5 crore over the last 10 years. This excludes private donations that come from visitors, each running into lakhs. The Centre and the state have spent about 12 crore in the last decade. The World Bank also chipped in with its Rs 38 crore Ranthambhore ecodevelopment project.
''After such expenditure on areas like resettlement, community care and general conservation, it's surprising that the Ranthambhore tiger reserve still faces huge biotic pressure and we need armed policemen to stand guard around the Park. We are not even in a position to conduct any constructive dialogue with the local population. If money was not the problem, we must ask what was?'' says Rajesh Gopal, director, Project Tiger.
That's a valid question, consider this:
Between 1994-2000, as ''Support for Ranthambhore'' four UK-based groups, Global Tiger Patrol, Care for the Wild International, David Shepherd Conservation Foundation, and 21st Century Tiger earmarked $447,091 (about Rs 2 crore) to Valmik Thapar's Ranthambhore Foundation and Fateh Singh Rathore's Tiger Watch. Ostensible purpose: ''increase law enforcement...activities relevant to tiger conservation...and general support for daily management of protected areas''
While there is no mention of purpose in the biggest installment of $325,000 in 1994, what we can find in specific terms include: $17,000 for 2 jeeps for Rathore's NGO; $13,200 for motorbikes, office equipment for Ranthambore Foundation; $9200 for 6 motorbikes, office equipment for both NGOs and even $3,100 for first edition of The Ultimate Ranthambore Guide 2000.
In 1998, the Washington-based Save The Tiger Fund, gave $103,000 to Fateh Singh's Tiger Watch for conducting ''a voluntary resettlement project for nearly 70 families living around the edge of Ranthambore'' Objective: helping families get access to better health care, reducing poaching.
Almost six years later, in a letter dated 27 March, 2003, then Park manager G V Reddy informed Project Tiger director Rajesh Gopal that no work had been done on any such project. ˜During last 6 years from 1997 to 2003, no voluntary resettlement project was taken up by Tiger Watch. Nor by any organization in and around Ranthambhore Tiger reserve. No amount has been spent on any such project'' the letter read.
Fateh Singh accepts that no family was resettled under the scheme but claims Tiger Watch never availed of the money. ''When the government was not keen to facilitate the project, we didn't access the money.''
Prakritik Society, an NGO run by Fateh's son Govardhan Singh, got $14,316 from Save The Tiger Fund for a project on bio-gas and forest conservation in 1999. The same year, it got another $30,280 from the same source to ''support community healthcare and family planning.'' Objective this time: to ensure incentives for local people to ''tolerate tigers,'' compensation for livestock predation.''
During 1998 and 2001, Save the Tiger Fund gave Prakritik $199,300 for ''capacity building'' and ''support for day-to-day Protected Area management.'' The same project mandate for which other agencies were funding other NGOs. WWF-India also opened the pursestrings. It spent about $30,000 on Ranthambhore ecodevelopment project during 1998 to 2002. The project aim was to ensure ''economic incentives for local people to tolerate tigers'' - More or less the same goals for which Prakitik about $50,000 around the same time.
During 1995-2000, David Shepherd Conservation Foundation, Tiger Fund and the US Fish & Wildlife Service sent a grant of $104,990 to TigerLink. This is the newsletter for the Ranthambhore Foundation's ''collecting, collating and making available information on tiger conservation in India.'' Thapar was mentioned as the point person for managing this corpus.
Government agencies weren't exactly feeling a financial pinch either. The World Bank project was launched in 1996 with a budget of Rs 38 crore and it was supposed to cover 96 Ranthambhore villages by 2002. The state was supposed to spend about 10% of the budget in terms of staff salary and infrastructure. Eventually, irked by the state government's indifference and slow implementation, the Bank slashed the budget to Rs 20 crore. More than a year after the project was over, Rajasthan still has about 1.5 crore left which it has to refund to the Centre. Says P K Sen, ex-director, Project Tiger: ''With so much money, one could appoint dedicated staff 24x7 for vigilance of individual tigers. Too much hype ruined Ranthambhore.''

= Valmik Thapar: A National Park is the jurisdiction of the forest department. If they can't ensure proper protection, NGOs working in villages cannot work miracles. During 1990-1998, there was a complete breakdown of the Park management and we stopped accepting funds. Then GV Reddy did some good work as the park manager. Money was never a problem at Ranthambhore. What we need are efficient managers. Today, in the entire state forest department, do we have three efficient officers who can turnaround Ranthambhore?

= Fateh Singh Rathore: Whoever wants can check our balance sheets. Today, there are queues for bio gas. Students throng our school. Our hospital can't cope with the pressure. But the government must step in and NGOs have limited capacity. Money is not an issue. I managed this Park with Rs 9 lakh in 1988. Today, they have money but no management. The government can't stand me. They harassed me for years for my land which I got in exchange for my fertile plot in Ganganagar in 1983. I am even ready for a CBI probe.

The Scandal that is Ranthambhore

On February 6, Express was first to report the tiger crisis in Ranthambhore:
= Officials couldn't account for 18 ''missing'' tigers
= Officials admitted adjoining sanctuaries Kela Devi in the north and Sawai Mansingh in the south are ''death traps.''
= Hardly any check on poaching by Moghiyas - tribal hunters hired by villagers to guard their fields
= Hundreds of villagers enter NP daily for anything between Rs 150-250 paid to forest guards to collect wood and grass
= Lakhs of pilgrims enter the core area on foot every year and are allowed even LPG supply, loud speakers and diesel generators
= Grazing pressure is huge, during the monsoons when villagers herd in thousands of cattle and settle down for the season
= Forest staff is inadequate and aging
=Management blamed shortage of funds for delay in post-monsoon repair of patrolling roads. Vehicles donated by foreign agencies rust in garages.