The most recurring, quoted number in India today is 1,411 – the mean count of tigers ostensibly remaining in the wild in the country. Everyone knows and everyone seems pretty upset. The number, of course, can be disputed and refuted too if needed; but that can be the topic for another discussion. What is evident is that given the rate of decline, it might be just another 20, or maybe 50, years by when tigers would vanish from our landscape. This number, till the other day, remained in the knowledge domain of wildlifers – conservationists, activists, enthusiasts. Thanks to the biggest ad campaign of the year, most people now know that 1,411 is too small a number in itself. Alarming, is how most ordinary people have been describing the number as.
What ought to disquiet people more is another number – one that is much slighter than the disputed figure of wild tigers in the country. That count is 300-odd; that’s the number of the indigenous Jarawas of the Andaman islands who stand in the danger of extinction. If 300 per se doesn’t make sense to you, look at it this way. That’s the number of people you can pack in one of those smaller theatres in a multiplex. You probably have more friends on Facebook; I certainly have five times that number. In other words, the number of Jarawas is so small that if you knew all of them, you could even remember them all by name and face.
Yet, Jarawas don’t make news. If they don’t make news when nothing happens, it is of course acceptable and understandable. But when they fail to do so even when there is an important official announcement about their very survival, it is a cause for worry.
On Monday, the Indian government told the Supreme Court that the Jarawas would soon be isolated from the commercial world and no tourist would be allowed to interact with them. Terming the Jarawas to be highly vulnerable to diseases and viruses carried by urban population, Attorney-General GE Vahanvati told the court that no tourist resort would be allowed to function within a 5km buffer zone created around their habitations on the western coasts of the South and Middle Andaman Islands.
That’s what the Times of India reported this morning. If you track Google News, you will come to know that this newspaper was the only Indian news outlet to carry the news. The only other to publish the item has been the Telegraph (UK). Others haven’t, probably, the faintest clue.
There, however, was one Andaman-related incident that had made some news last month. An 85-year-old woman, Boa Sr, the last Bo-speaking member of the Great Andaman tribe believed to have migrated to the islands from Africa 65,000 years ago, died. The news made it to the offbeat sections of dailies and websites and receded as mutely into history as Boa Sr did.
The Jarawas, for their bit, have been a tad luckier than the Bo. That’s because of the official Indian policy of reservation. No, that’s geo-physical reservation that one is talking about – not about seats in Parliament or jobs in the government. Their luck, however, has stood in the danger of running out since the late 1990s when bigtime tourism hit the islands. Twice – in 1999 and 2006 – they were hit by measles. Their numbers went down. It wasn’t the rate of decline that was so alarming; it was their eventual population count that was disconcerting.
The biggest threat to the Jarawas does not come from measles or other infectious diseases, but those from the mainland who flock to the Andaman islands to see them in the wild. If there is a cause for anxiety, it is this unbridled ‘Jarawa tourism’. A conniving local administration and tourism companies have made the place a virtual human safari park. Tourists have this irresistible urge to give something to the Jarawas – from drinks and chocolates to paan parag and foodstuff. Like you see many of our citizenry doing shamelessly, callously at zoos.
Trying to save the Jarawas may well be a lost cause; but it is certainly worth a try. And the best way to do it would be to keep them out of our sight.
