Conservation in India found its roots when the killing of animals were strictly prohibited in and around the Ashramas (hermitages) allotted to Brahmanas.
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Around the third century BC, the founder of the Mauryan empire—Chandragupta Maurya, appointed a Kupyadhyaksha or Forest Department Head. This officer was in charge of implementing the Game Laws laid down in the manuscript known as the Arhtashastra written by Kautilya, the then Prime Minister of the Mauryan Empire.
This in effect became the first official administrative document to spell out wildlife conservation measures. Chandragupta’s grandson Ashoka, besides implementing the written laws on wildlife conservation in letter, went one step further and implemented it in spirit too.
He is known to have done much for the promulgation of Buddhism during his reign, ahimsa and the non violence against all beings, animals included, is well known. His penchant for wildlife also extended to art and aesthetics, evident from examples such as the Lion Capital of Ashoka pillar in the present day Uttar Pradesh, where four lions with their back to each other can be found atop the pillar.
Unfortunately, the streak of good fortune that wildlife had enjoyed until then did not persist through the centuries. Fast forward a couple of centuries to the Mughal dynasty. When the founder of the Mughal empire, Babur, was at the helm, records indicate that rhinoceros were found spread across the Gogra River and across Peshawar. Wild elephants were found in abundance in the Karrah region, the present day Allahabad district.
The number of wildlife were not to grow exponentially. Emperor Akbar, his grandson, was an avid game hunter. He introduced a special kind of hunting known as the ‘Gamargha Hunt’. The hunt would involve hundreds of beaters with drums being sent out over a large distance to literally drive all the wild animals of the region into a circle.
Once rounded up, the King and noblemen would then move around the periphery of this circle and hunt the animals with guns, spears and arrows. Akbar bred tigers and leopards for hunting purposes in specific menageries in Fatehpur and Agra Akbar’s son and heir, Jahangir, enforced strict laws prohibiting the hunting of wild animals as a sport, and prior official sanction was required—granted only to professionals—to shoot man-eating animals.
Hunting leopards aka cheetahs, which were nearly driven to extinction during the reign of Akbar, were successfully bred in captivity by Jahangir. However, royal hunting by the ruling family did not cease. In his memoirs, Jahangir has noted that over 36 years he hunted a total 17,167 big and small game.
Around the time of his death in 1627, just when the East India Company began gaining their foothold in India, wildlife started loosing theirs. The imperialists disregarded all provincial laws set aside to protect wildlife in India. Shikars were organized to denote chivalry, bravery, and a certain status symbol among the British.
Some Maharajas and Nawabs maintained an entire corp of shikaris mainly comprised of local tribal’s with an intricate knowledge of the jungle and its inhabitants. A Mir-Shikari or expert hunter would often head this group. An invitation by the provincial ruler to hunt game within their district was seen as a bonhomous gesture towards the colonists. This misplaced camaraderie between the colonist and the princes resulted in irreversible damage to India’s wildlife.
It was then that several animals were pushed towards their last existing refuge examples of which are the sole surviving Asiatic lions population in Gujarat and the one horned rhinoceros in North-East India. It was under these circumstances that India’s first National Park, the Hailey National Park (Jim Corbett National Park) was founded in 1936, in no small measure due to the efforts of hunter turned conservationist and naturalist-Jim Corbett.
Post-independence, the first genuine need to protect wildlife in India was realized. In 1952, the Indian Wildlife Board was constituted to centralize all the rules and regulations pertinent to wildlife conservation in India, which until then deferred from state to state. In 1956, this Board passed a landmark decree that accorded all existing Game Parks the status of a Sanctuary or a National Park.
The 1960’s expose by Rakesh Sankhla and Razia for the Indian Express detailed the appalling abyss that wildlife conservation had sunk to when they exposed the trade in several hundred skins of endangered species. The need for wildlife conservation now made the shift from the government and policy makers to the general public at large.
The 1970’s bought with it two landmark events that were to influence wildlife conservation in India for decades to come. The first was the introduction of the stringent Wildlife Protection Act in 1972 and the second being Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, doing everything within her power to protect wildlife in India. Project Tiger, the largest wildlife conservation project of its time, was initiated in 1973 under her watch.
In the 1980’s, the Chipko Andolan movement by the Bishnois gained worldwide recognition for its simplicity and non-violent approach. What the Bishnois did was to surround their trees, literally hugging them, in order to protect them from anyone who came to fell them. Until today, they are involved in actively protecting blackbucks and other wildlife found in their region.
The last two decades since the 1990’s have witnessed the application of technology and science to conservation on a large scale. Wildlife forensics, telemetry, remote sensing techniques and geographic information systems were all integrated into the practice of wildlife conservation in India.
Conservation has evolved from an informal practice providing arbitrary protection to wildlife to its present avatar as a practiced art and science. If ever the need to evolve and expand it beyond its present realms was of prime necessity-then the time is now.
Recent Posts
- In the Large States category (overall), Chhattisgarh ranks 1st, followed by Odisha and Telangana, whereas, towards the bottom are Maharashtra at 16th, Assam at 17th and Gujarat at 18th. Gujarat is one State that has seen startling performance ranking 5th in the PAI 2021 Index outperforming traditionally good performing States like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, but ranks last in terms of Delta
- In the Small States category (overall), Nagaland tops, followed by Mizoram and Tripura. Towards the tail end of the overall Delta ranking is Uttarakhand (9th), Arunachal Pradesh (10th) and Meghalaya (11th). Nagaland despite being a poor performer in the PAI 2021 Index has come out to be the top performer in Delta, similarly, Mizoram’s performance in Delta is also reflected in it’s ranking in the PAI 2021 Index
- In terms of Equity, in the Large States category, Chhattisgarh has the best Delta rate on Equity indicators, this is also reflected in the performance of Chhattisgarh in the Equity Pillar where it ranks 4th. Following Chhattisgarh is Odisha ranking 2nd in Delta-Equity ranking, but ranks 17th in the Equity Pillar of PAI 2021. Telangana ranks 3rd in Delta-Equity ranking even though it is not a top performer in this Pillar in the overall PAI 2021 Index. Jharkhand (16th), Uttar Pradesh (17th) and Assam (18th) rank at the bottom with Uttar Pradesh’s performance in line with the PAI 2021 Index
- Odisha and Nagaland have shown the best year-on-year improvement under 12 Key Development indicators.
- In the 60:40 division States, the top three performers are Kerala, Goa and Tamil Nadu and, the bottom three performers are Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar.
- In the 90:10 division States, the top three performers were Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Mizoram; and, the bottom three performers are Manipur, Assam and Meghalaya.
- Among the 60:40 division States, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh are the top three performers and Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Delhi appear as the bottom three performers.
- Among the 90:10 division States, the top three performers are Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland; and, the bottom three performers are Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh
- Among the 60:40 division States, Goa, West Bengal and Delhi appear as the top three performers and Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Bihar appear as the bottom three performers.
- Among the 90:10 division States, Mizoram, Himachal Pradesh and Tripura were the top three performers and Jammu & Kashmir, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh were the bottom three performers
- West Bengal, Bihar and Tamil Nadu were the top three States amongst the 60:40 division States; while Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan appeared as the bottom three performers
- In the case of 90:10 division States, Mizoram, Assam and Tripura were the top three performers and Nagaland, Jammu & Kashmir and Uttarakhand featured as the bottom three
- Among the 60:40 division States, the top three performers are Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa and the bottom three performers are Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Goa
- In the 90:10 division States, the top three performers are Mizoram, Sikkim and Nagaland and the bottom three performers are Manipur and Assam
In a diverse country like India, where each State is socially, culturally, economically, and politically distinct, measuring Governance becomes increasingly tricky. The Public Affairs Index (PAI 2021) is a scientifically rigorous, data-based framework that measures the quality of governance at the Sub-national level and ranks the States and Union Territories (UTs) of India on a Composite Index (CI).
States are classified into two categories – Large and Small – using population as the criteria.
In PAI 2021, PAC defined three significant pillars that embody Governance – Growth, Equity, and Sustainability. Each of the three Pillars is circumscribed by five governance praxis Themes.
The themes include – Voice and Accountability, Government Effectiveness, Rule of Law, Regulatory Quality and Control of Corruption.
At the bottom of the pyramid, 43 component indicators are mapped to 14 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are relevant to the States and UTs.
This forms the foundation of the conceptual framework of PAI 2021. The choice of the 43 indicators that go into the calculation of the CI were dictated by the objective of uncovering the complexity and multidimensional character of development governance
The Equity Principle
The Equity Pillar of the PAI 2021 Index analyses the inclusiveness impact at the Sub-national level in the country; inclusiveness in terms of the welfare of a society that depends primarily on establishing that all people feel that they have a say in the governance and are not excluded from the mainstream policy framework.
This requires all individuals and communities, but particularly the most vulnerable, to have an opportunity to improve or maintain their wellbeing. This chapter of PAI 2021 reflects the performance of States and UTs during the pandemic and questions the governance infrastructure in the country, analysing the effectiveness of schemes and the general livelihood of the people in terms of Equity.
Growth and its Discontents
Growth in its multidimensional form encompasses the essence of access to and the availability and optimal utilisation of resources. By resources, PAI 2021 refer to human resources, infrastructure and the budgetary allocations. Capacity building of an economy cannot take place if all the key players of growth do not drive development. The multiplier effects of better health care, improved educational outcomes, increased capital accumulation and lower unemployment levels contribute magnificently in the growth and development of the States.
The Pursuit Of Sustainability
The Sustainability Pillar analyses the access to and usage of resources that has an impact on environment, economy and humankind. The Pillar subsumes two themes and uses seven indicators to measure the effectiveness of government efforts with regards to Sustainability.
The Curious Case Of The Delta
The Delta Analysis presents the results on the State performance on year-on-year improvement. The rankings are measured as the Delta value over the last five to 10 years of data available for 12 Key Development Indicators (KDI). In PAI 2021, 12 indicators across the three Pillars of Equity (five indicators), Growth (five indicators) and Sustainability (two indicators). These KDIs are the outcome indicators crucial to assess Human Development. The Performance in the Delta Analysis is then compared to the Overall PAI 2021 Index.
Key Findings:-
In the Scheme of Things
The Scheme Analysis adds an additional dimension to ranking of the States on their governance. It attempts to complement the Governance Model by trying to understand the developmental activities undertaken by State Governments in the form of schemes. It also tries to understand whether better performance of States in schemes reflect in better governance.
The Centrally Sponsored schemes that were analysed are National Health Mission (NHM), Umbrella Integrated Child Development Services scheme (ICDS), Mahatma Gandh National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SmSA) and MidDay Meal Scheme (MDMS).
National Health Mission (NHM)
INTEGRATED CHILD DEVELOPMENT SERVICES (ICDS)
MID- DAY MEAL SCHEME (MDMS)
SAMAGRA SHIKSHA ABHIYAN (SMSA)
MAHATMA GANDHI NATIONAL RURAL EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE SCHEME (MGNREGS)