Chhattisgarh's elephantine problem

A rail corridor in the state’s coal belt that cuts through the elephant route has put the animal in direct conflict with humans

Manmohan Rathiya, a resident of Sithara village in the Dharamjaigarh block of Chhattisgarh, woke up to a deafening sound in the dead of the night. Before he could realise what was happening, a portion of his hut’s back wall came crashing down.

It was an elephant attack. Hearing his cries for help, the villagers rushed to the rescue. They burst crackers and beat drums to drive the elephants away. Eventually, the herd of 47 tuskers retreated from the village, which is located in the thickly-forested pocket of Dharamjaigarh.

The villagers were, in fact, prepared for this faceoff that took place early last week. The herd had been roaming in the forest for a couple of days and had damaged crops across 30 acres.

Ready for future confrontation, the villagers are now conducting night patrol and have set up machaans (platforms on trees) to monitor the movement of the pachyderms.

This was not their first such encounter, but they fear that such man-elephant conflicts will only become more frequent. The latest in the series of events that has led to their problem is the upcoming rail corridor that cuts through the elephant territory.

The project is being executed in a belt that is endowed with rich coal deposits.

Aggravating the problem

The Chhattisgarh government is developing a 180-km-long east rail corridor on the Kharsia-Chhal-Gharghoda-Korichhapar-Dharamjaigarh-Korba route.

The project is part of two rail corridors that would be coming up in the state. The other, east-west rail corridor, will connect the Gevra and Pendra roads.

Besides ferrying passengers, the rail corridor would felicitate the transport of coal from the Mand-Raigarh coalfield that is spread over an area of 520 sq km.

The field has a potential for mining of power-grade coal, much of which can be extracted through open-cast mining.

According to the Geological Survey of India, the Mand-Raigarh coalfield has about 18,530 million tonnes of total reserves (including proved, indicated and inferred reserves) of non-coking coal.

A special project vehicle of Chhattisgarh East Rail is developing the project. South Eastern Coalfields, a subsidiary of Coal India, holds 64 per cent stake in it, while the Indian Railways-promoted IRCON has 26 per cent share. The state-run Chhattisgarh State Industrial Development Corporation (CSIDC) has 10 per cent stake in it.

The project is likely to pose a serious challenge to the elephants as the rail line would cut through the belt that has been an established path for the tuskers.

Though the project design includes underpasses and overpasses for the smooth and natural movement of the elephants, social activists have raised objections to it on technical grounds.

“The bridges do not meet the minimum width-height requirement recommended by the Wildlife Institute of India for building wildlife underpasses,” says Sajal Madhu, a social activist working in the area. He, along with Bilaspur-based lawyer Sudeep Shrivastava, had challenged the project before the National Green Tribunal.

Though Chhattisgarh earlier did not have resident elephants, the herds have been migrating from Jharkhand and Odisha after their homes there were taken over for mining. In the last 10 years, over 250 elephants have been spotted in the forested belts of Dharamjaigarh, Chaal, Lailunga and Lemru.

Social worker Dheerendra Singh Maliya says  that 78 villagers in the forest range have been killed in elephant attacks. And, 32 elephants have died in the human-animal conflict, he says, while raising concerns that the tussle is likely to intensify with the rail corridor project.

“Since the movement of the tuskers would be affected because of the rail line and the trains that chug on it, they could take another route and come in contact with humans frequently,” says Maliya, who is also the principal of Dr BSP Tribal College, Dharamjaigarh. The elephants, he cautions, could even start venturing into villages more often.

Avoiding disaster

The clash, says Madhu, had already started. “The authorities have taken away 56 hectares of dense forest for the project that was home for the elephants,” he says.

Naturally, the elephants have started moving towards the villages and the impact of this can be seen at Sithara, which is about 15 km from Dharamjaigarh, and where villagers are now spending sleepless nights.

The conflict intensified when the elephants started damaging paddy fields, destroying houses and killing those who came in their way.

The villagers, desperate to protect themselves, their homes and their fields, even laid electric cable wires that led to some elephants being electrocuted, says Madhu.

In August 2013, the villagers held a gram sabha - the first of its kind in the country - to register a complaint against the ever-increasing incidents of human-elephant conflict. People from nearly 20 villages demanded a “corridor” for the elephants.

Interestingly, the administration, in its report, said that there was no movement of elephants in the area.

The state government authorities have, however, refuted the charge of flaws in the design. The government, they say, is serious about avoiding human-elephant conflict in the region and would welcome suggestions because the project is still under way, and not complete.

"We have provided more passes (for elephant movement) than required,” says CSIDC managing director Sunil Mishra. The passes were included on the basis of a report prepared by the Tropical Forest Research Institute, Jabalpur and vetted by the Wildlife Institute of India.

Nearly 30 per cent of the project, slated for completion in 2019, is ready. It is expected to cost around Rs 3,500 crore (Rs 35 billion).

In all, 27 passes have been proposed as part of the project. Earlier, 24 passes were designed, but that number was increased and two more underpasses and one overpass added.

The problem, however, persists.

Photographs: Rupak De Choudhuri/Reuters