Hastir Kanya Hastir Kanya
Bamoner Nari
Mathai Niya Kam Kalasio
Haate Sonar Sakhio 

(Oh daughter of elephant! You are the wife of a Brahmin, You wear a golden bangle in your wrist and carry your sorrow like those heavy water pots all the time with you)

These are the first few lines of a folk song sung by generations of mahouts (elephant rider/keeper) of Assam.

It’s about the wife of a Brahmin who is deserted by her husband for the daughter of a rich man. One day, a herd of thirsty elephants come to the river and finds the river water salty from the tears of the inconsolable, sobbing woman. The elephants hear her story and take her to the elephant kingdom to make her their queen. 

Assamese folklore is full of elephant songs and stories that celebrate the romance between man and elephant. In the modern age, however, this relationship has changed. Today, elephant and man play the shifting roles of predator and prey, with man often being more predatory.

In November, there was a terrible tragedy near Kaziranga National Park when one elephant died and two were injured. A she-elephant fell into a 10-feet ditch while trying to save her calf. The ditch had been dug in the proposed site for Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Project.

“The recent death of an elephant in Patanjali project site is because the site is in an elephant corridor,” says Rachel Pearlin, Greenpeace wildlife campaigner. “Man-elephant conflicts have been on the rise in the last 10 years in both northeast and central India. We are invading their habitats. It’s the same for other animals too.”

In the last decade, several hundred elephants have been killed in Assam. Scores have died in accidents. Others fell to electrocution. Many have died of starvation and in floods.

Not just that, Assam forest minister Pramila Rani Brahma has said 770 persons were killed by wild elephants across 22 districts in this period.

Northeast India used to be home to over 10,000 wild elephants. That is 25 per cent of the world’s elephant population. More than half of the elephant habitats in the region have been lost since 1950. 

Hiten Baishya, coordinator of WWF India’s Elephant Conservation Project, says the population of Asian elephant is showing a declining trend.

According to the elephant census of 2012, there were a total of 5,620 elephants in Assam. The state government has announced an increase in compensation — from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 3 lakh — for human victims of man-elephant conflicts.

“Elephants are considered ‘endangered’ as per the Wildlife Protection Act (1972),” said Baishya. “Habitat loss fragmentation and degradation and loss and blockage of movement corridors are the main threat(s) for the elephant population.”

Paradise lost

Imagine a golf course in the middle of elephant kingdom! Actually, there’s no need to imagine it. It exists: built by Numoligarh Refinery Limited inside the international elephant corridor in Telgaram area is a golf course that is proving to be death for elephants.

A two-kilometre stretch of the golf course ‘wall’ has razor-sharp barbed wire and the golf course is laid out in five acres of land in an area marked by the environment ministry as ‘No Development Zone’.

In April 2015, four elephants died of starvation; six were killed while trying to bulldoze the wall built by the oil refinery management to cordon off the golf course.

The corridor is home to 110 elephants. “Earlier, elephant herds used to come at night in search of food and water and return to the hills before daylight. Now the wall blocks their way to food and water,” said a Kaziranga National Park official. 

“The Assam government needs to intervene immediately and take action,” said Dr Jahan Ahmed of the Wildlife Trust of India.

Numaligarh Oil Refinery is not alone in disturbing the ecosystem for elephants in Assam. Many other entities have flouted the 1972 Wildlife Act.

Here are a few instances:

* 35 polling stations were set up inside the Sonai Rupai Wildlife Sanctuary at Dhekiajuli in Sonitpur district during the Assembly elections in 2011 and 2016.

* An Army firing range is being set up in the region.

* Construction of high wall for a government-supported Bamboo project in Karbi Anglong on the Assam-Nagaland border in a natural elephant corridor.

* Inside Kaziranga and Manas National Park, a number of tea gardens and hotels are being set up. 

* Indian Oil Corporation Ltd’s oil dispatch terminal in the Golai elephant corridor.

* Construction of the NH-38 bypass in Assam without the mandatory forest clearance.

* Municipal bodies are dumping waste in the Dehing-Patkai Wildlife sanctuary

Forest minister Pramila Rani Brahma had no answer to whether action will be taken against companies violating wildlife laws.

“Man-animal conflict is a result of rampant destruction of forests,” said Brahma. “Animals have been compelled to stray into human habitations in search of food and space. We are trying to save forests by making them encroachment free, but the people should cooperate.” 

In a hotbed of conflict

Assam Forest Department data shows a total of 245 humans and 146 elephants killed between 2001 to 2014 in man-animal conflicts in the border between Assam and Bhutan. 

On a wintry morning in early 2014, Jit Munda was out in the jungle, collecting leaves for a puja near a tea estate in Badiapara, in north Assam’s Udalguri district close to the Bhutan border. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a wild male elephant appeared and struck Munda down with his trunk, before trampling on his right leg, breaking his thigh bone. More wild elephants appear and one of them, a female elephant, charged and butted the male attacker away from the helpless Munda.

“She tapped me on my back with her trunk even as she fought, as if signalling me to stay down,” remembered Munda. “Maybe a human had been kind to her once, given her food or got her out of some trouble.” 

It took Munda six months to walk again. He’s fortunate; luckier than 86 other human beings who were killed by wild elephants in the last five years in Udalguri. In the same period, poison, electrocution and pits have killed 36 elephants.  

“Such encounters are increasing day by day because of the destruction of the elephant corridors on the Assam-Bhutan-Arunachal border,” said Jayanta Das, a wildlife conservationist. “Small tea gardens of politicians and certain social organisations in the forests have posed a serious threat to elephant habitats.” 

As per Forest Department data by 2014, 50 per cent of the reserved forest land on the Assam-Bhutan border in Udalgiri district has been encroached upon and forests have been cleared.

The government is yet to pull down the wall constructed on the elephant corridor by the Numaligarh Refinery, and order a review on the several concerns and notifications on green issues raised by NGT and other environmentalists.

At the recent World Sustainable Development Summit-2016 in New Delhi, Yuri Afanasiev, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in India, had these words to say: “We are the first generation to end poverty, but the last to save the environment”.

Northeast India is rich in natural resources, but sustained conflict, geographical isolation, insurgency and migration have led to a lack of opportunity for governments to take up sustainable development. As a result, we’re now looking at a future when the songs that the Assamese have been so integral a part of this landscape will sound like the stuff of fantasies.