Jaideep Hardikar

Medha Kale

Editor

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Sitting quietly on a
chair inside his home, Goma Rama Hazare is whiling away his time, staring
listlessly at the empty main road of his village.

Once in a while, he
chit-chats with the passers-by who drop in to check on his well-being.
The man lost his wife from a protracted illness just about a week ago.

It’s 5 p.m., mid-April (2024),
and very hot. Palasgaon, a village in the lap of rich bamboo and teak forests
of Armori tehsil in north Gadchiroli is exceptionally quiet. Voting for
the Gadchiroli-Chimur Lok Sabha constituency is due in a few days. The sitting
BJP MP Ashok Nete is contesting for this seat again. But there’s no excitement.
In fact, there’s worry.

For the past two
months, Goma has had no work. Usually, during this time, the landless labourer
in his early 60s and many like him would be collecting mahua or tendu
or cutting bamboo in the forest or doing farm work.

“Not this year,” Goma says.
“Who’ll risk their life?”

“People are keeping to
themselves at home,” Goma says. Days are hot. You can’t go out. Many villages
are used to such curfews as Gadchiroli has been troubled by an armed conflict
for four decades and torn by a bloody strife between the security forces and
the armed Maoists. But this time the guests are different and pose a direct
threat to life and livelihoods.

A herd of 23 wild
elephants, mostly female with young calves, is camping in the vicinity of Palasgaon.

For a month or so, the
herd, which trudged all the way from north Chhattisgarh, has been feasting on
the shrub and bamboo forests and paddy crops here, putting the villagers and
district forest officials on tenterhooks. Around four years ago, these mammals
entered the eastern Vidarbha region of Maharashtra as mining and deforestation
were affecting their natural habitat and corridors up north.

Moving across the three
districts of Gondia, Gadchiroli and Chandrapur in Maharashtra and Bastar in
Chhattisgarh, part of the erstwhile ‘Dandakaranya’, the elephants – members of a
larger herd in Chhattisgarh that experts say perhaps got separated – is a new
addition to the state’s wildlife. 

Gadchiroli district did
have some trained elephants in southern parts helping the forest department in
their transportation work, but the eastern parts of Maharashtra are seeing the
return of the wild tuskers after over a century and a half or perhaps more. The presence of wild elephants is common to the western ghats.

Forest officials have
asked the Palasgaon villagers – mostly tribal households – to stay home until
the guests migrate to another location. And so, landless
people and small farmers of this village of 1400 people (Census 2011) and the neighbouring
villages like Vihirgaon have had to forgo their forest-based livelihoods. 

The state forest
department compensates for the crop loss immediately, but there is no
compensation for the loss of income from forest produce. 

“My family subsists on mahua
and tendu the entire summer,” Goma says.

With that income avenue
gone, Palasgaon can only hope that the wild elephants move on, allowing people to
get back to work.

“The herd did not cross
over to Chhattisgarh as they did in the last three summers,” says S Rameshkumar,
the Chief Conservator of Forest (CCF), Gadchiroli. “Maybe because one of the
females gave birth to a calf a few days ago.”

There are a couple of
offsprings in the herd, he says. Elephants are matriarchal.

Last year (2023), the same herd rummaged through the 11-household hamlet of Nangal-doh in the neighbouring
Arjuni Morgaon tehsil of Gondia district, about 100 km from Palasgaon,
where it stayed for a few months in the dense forests.

“Not a single hut
survived the fury of the tuskers that night,” remembers Vijay Madavi, among the
people now living on an encroached piece of land near Bharnoli village. “They
came knocking in the middle of the night,” he remembers.

Nangal-doh was evacuated
that night and people shifted to the zilla parishad school in Bharnoli,
where they stayed all through the summer of 2023. When the school restarted
after the summer vacations, they cleared a portion of forest land on the
village outskirts and built temporary huts sans electricity or water. Women
walk a few miles to fetch water from a farm well. But all the villagers have
lost their small patches of farmland that they once tilled after clearing the shrub
forests.

“When will we get a
house of our own?” asks Usha Holi, another evacuee, as they await rehabilitation
package and a permanent home.

Across these three
districts, as the tuskers shift their location, farmers reel with crop losses,
something that was never a problem.

Underlining the
complexity of managing a wild elephant herd in north Gadchiroli region,
Rameshkumar says the north of India is very densely populated, unlike a sparser
south. The biggest problem is crop-depredation. The tuskers come out of their
zone in the evenings and trample over the standing crop, even if they don’t eat
it. 

The forest officials
have a quick response tracking team and early warning groups on the field
following the herd round the clock with the help of drones and thermal imaging.
They alert the villagers when the elephants are on the move to avoid any
conflict or accidental confrontation. 

Come evening, Nitin
Mane, a farmer with seven acres of land in Palasgaon, and a group of five villagers join the hulla
gang for the night vigil. Led by the forest guard Yogesh Pandaram, he moves
around the forests tracking the wild elephants. Hulla gangs, experts in
managing the wild elephants, have been hired from West Bengal to assist the
local officials and train the village youth in the management of this herd. They
man two drones in the field to keep an aerial eye on the tuskers, Nitin says,
and walk around the elephants after having spotted their location.

“Some villagers have
been roped in to the Hulla gang to shoo away the elephants if they try
and enter the village,” says Palasgaon’s first-time woman sarpanch Jayashri
Dadhmal, a Mana adivasi. “But it has become my headache; people complain to me
about elephants and take out their frustration on me,” she says. “How am I
responsible for the elephants?”

The catch is, when
normalcy returns to Palasgaon, the villages in whose vicinity the wild tuskers
find home will be in a bind. Forest officials say the region will have to learn
to deal with the wild elephants as a new way of life and living.

Jayashri sympathises
with the villagers as she herself has had to forgo mahua collection from
the forest this year. “We may not get to collect tendu leaves because of
the elephants,” she says. Each family will lose at least Rs. 25,000 over two
months, she estimates based on her earnings. 

“Pahilech mahagai
dokyavar aahe, aata hatti aale, ka karave aamhi?” asks Goma. “Inflation was
already a problem, now we have elephants, what do we do?”

There are no easy
answers, only more questions. 

The most important of
them is not who enters the parliament, but who leaves the forests soon.  (The Gadchiroli-Chimur
Loksabha constituency, reserved for the Scheduled Tribes (ST), voted on April
19 in the first phase with 71.88 per cent turnout).

'Inflation was a problem; now we have elephants'

’مہنگائی تو پہلے سے تھی، اب ہاتھی بھی آ گئے پریشان کرنے‘

‘ద్రవ్యోల్బణం ఇప్పటికే నెత్తిన ఉంది; ఇప్పుడు ఏనుగులు కూడా వచ్చిపడ్డాయి’

‘விலைவாசி உயர்வு ஒரு பிரச்சினை, இப்போது யானைகளும்’

‘ਮਹਿੰਗਾਈ ਤਾਂ ਪਰੇਸ਼ਾਨੀ ਸੀ ਹੀ; ਹੁਣ ਹਾਥੀ ਵੀ ਸਮੱਸਿਆ ਬਣ ਗਏ’

‘ପୂର୍ବରୁ ଦରଦାମ୍‌ ବୃଦ୍ଧି; ଏବେ ହାତୀ ଉପଦ୍ରବ ସମସ୍ୟା ପାଲଟିଛି’

'പണപ്പെരുപ്പം ഒരു പ്രശ്നമായിരുന്നു; ഇപ്പോഴാണെങ്കിൽ ആനകളും'

'ಮೊದಲು ಹಣದುಬ್ಬರ ಸಮಸ್ಯೆಯಾಗಿತ್ತು, ಈಗ ಆನೆಗಳ ಕಾಟವೇ ದೊಡ್ಡ ಸಮಸ್ಯೆಯಾಗಿದೆʼ

'महंगाई पहले से थी, अब हाथी भी आ गए परेशान करने'

'મોંઘવારીની મુસીબત તો હતી જ; અધૂરામાં પૂરું હવે હાથીઓ આવ્યા'

‘महंगाई के मार ऊपर हाथी के भार’

‘महंगाई पहिले समस्या रहे, अब हाथी बा’

‘একে মূল্যবৃদ্ধিতে রক্ষে নেই, তায় হাতি দোসর’

‘মুদ্ৰাস্ফীতি আছিলেই, তাৰ ওপৰত আহি পৰিল হাতী’

‘पहिलेच महागाई डोक्यावर आहे, आता हत्ती आले’

Gadchiroli, Gadchiroli Taluka, Gadchiroli District, Maharashtra, 442605, India

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'Inflation was a problem; now we have elephants'

This summer, the residents of Palasgaon, an Adivasi village in Maharashtra, are staying indoors, forgoing their forest-based livelihoods due to an unforeseen threat. More worried about their life, the villagers are not excited about the General Elections 2024

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