Tag: tigers

Hunting for crabs in the shadow of the Bengal tiger

The fisherwomen of Sundarbans wandering into dangerous territory

“How do I describe my fear? My heart races in terror. My thoughts are always on when I will escape back to open spaces,” says 41-year-old crab hunter and fisherwoman Parul Haldar, about the cold fear she feels during the days that she searches for crabs to catch in the dense mangrove forests of the Sundarbans. During the crab-hunting season, she rows a boat up and down the rivulets and creeks through the mangrove forest, always in a state of high alert for lurking tigers.

Now directing her wooden boat down the Garal river, Parul, a resident of Luxbagan village, squints in the direction of the criss-cross net fence beyond which lies the Marichjhapi forest. It was in this forest, near her village in the Gosaba block of the South 24 Parganas district, that Parul’s husband, Ishar Ronojit Haldar, was killed by a tiger seven years ago.

She rests the oars on the edges of the boat in which she and her mother Lokhi Mondal, 56, are out on a scorching summer day. Like her daughter, Lokhi is a fisherwoman too.

Parul was only 13 years old when she married Ishar. Her marital family was poor, but they had never gone into the forest to fish or catch crabs. “I convinced him to come and brought him to the jungle,” she recalls. “Seventeen years later, he died in the jungle.”

Parul lapses into silence at the memory. Ishar was 45 when he died, leaving Parul to raise their four daughters.

Parul and Lokhi pull the heavy oars again, sweating. The women steer the boat a safe distance away from the mangrove forest, now closed for fishing. Fishing activities in the mangrove forest are closed for three months, from April to June, to allow regeneration of fish. When the fishing season is paused, Parul usually sells fish from her pond for a living.

PHOTO • URVASHI SARKAR

PHOTO • URVASHI SARKAR

Left: Parul Haldar recalls the death of her husband, Ishar Haldar. Right: A picture of Ishar Ronojit Haldar who was killed by a tiger in 2016

PHOTO • URVASHI SARKAR

PHOTO • URVASHI SARKAR

Left: A cross netted fence, beyond which lie the Marichjhapi forests in South 24 Parganas district. Right: Parul (background) learned fishing from her mother and Lokhi (yellow sari foreground) learned it from her father

“Many accidents are happening,” Parul says, referring to attacks by the Bengal tigers in the Sundarbans, the only mangrove forest in the world inhabited by tigers. “Too many people are entering the forest and accidents are increasing. This is another reason why forest authorities are not allowing us to enter the forest.”

Tiger-related deaths are not uncommon in the Sundarbans, especially during the fishing season. The government reported only 12 deaths in the Sundarbans Tiger Reserve Between 2018 and January 2023, but actual numbers may be higher, with local residents reporting more instances of attacks.

According to the government’s Status of Tigers Report, the Sundarbans was home to 100 tigers in 2022 , compared to 88 in 2018.

*****

Parul has been fishing since she was 23 years old, having learnt how to fish from her mother.

Lokhi started fishing when she was only seven years old, accompanying her father to the forest. Her husband Santosh Mondal, 64 fought off a tiger in 2016 and managed to return home alive.

“He had a knife in his hand and fought the tiger. But after that incident, his courage broke, and he refused to go to the forest any more,” says Lokhi. She, however, did not stop. Once her husband stopped going, she began to make the journey into the forest with Parul and her son-in-law, Ishar, who later died.

“I don’t have the courage to go to the jungle with anyone else. Nor do I allow Parul to go alone. As long as I am alive, I will accompany her,” she says. “Only your own blood can protect you in the jungle.”

PHOTO • URVASHI SARKAR

As the number of crabs decrease, Parul and Lokhi have to venture deeper into the mangrove forests to find them

PHOTO • URVASHI SARKAR

Parul and Lokhi rowing across the River Garal

The two women row in tandem, without needing to converse. Once the crab hunting season starts, they will need to obtain passes from the forest department and rent a boat to take to the forest.

Parul pays Rs. 50 per day in rent. Usually, they are joined by a third woman. The three women must stay in the forest for at least 10 days. “We sleep and eat in the boat and cook our meals on it. We carry rice and dal, drinking water in drums and a small stove. We do not leave the boat under any circumstances, not even to go to the toilet,” Parul says. The rising incidence of tiger attacks, she says, are the main reason.

“Tigers now even climb on to the boats and take human beings away. My own husband was attacked in a boat.”

For the ten days that they are out fishing, the women live on the boats even in the rain. “The crabs are in one corner of the boat, the humans in another, and the cooking in a third corner,” Lokhi adds.

PHOTO • URVASHI SARKAR

“We do not leave the boat under any circumstances, not even to go to the toilet,” says Parul

PHOTO • URVASHI SARKAR

Lokhi Mondal demonstrating how to unfurl fishing nets to catch crabs

Like their male counterparts who frequent the jungles, women are also vulnerable to attacks by tigers while out fishing. However, there are no estimates of how many women have been killed in the Sundarbans, considered a hotspot for man-animal conflict.

“Most of the recorded deaths are of men. Women too are attacked by tigers but the data hasn’t been collected. Women go to the forests, of course, but in fewer numbers compared to men,” says Pradeep Chatterjee, convenor of the National Platform For Small-Scale Fish Workers. Proximity to the forest is an important factor. Women whose villages are located a good distance away from the forest tend not to go. They also undertake the journey only when enough other women are making the trip too.

In Parul and Lokhi’s village of Luxbagan, whose population was 4,504 according to the Census 2011 including approximately 48 percent women, nearly every household has women who go to the Marichjhapi forest, just 5 km from the village.

The good prices that crabs fetch are also a major draw for this high-risk work. “Selling fish doesn’t earn me much. Crabs fetch the main income. I can earn anything between Rs. 300-500 daily when I go to the forest,” Parul says. The bigger crabs fetch Rs. 400-600 a kg while the smaller ones go for Rs. 60-80 per kg. The combined catch of three women on a trip can be anything between 20-40 kg.

*****

Apart from the risk posed by tigers, the other big challenge faced by crab-catchers in the Sunderbans is the dwindling catch. “More people are coming to the jungle to catch crabs. Earlier crabs would be in plenty, now we have to work harder to find them,” says Parul.

As the number of crabs shrink, fisherwomen are forced to go deeper into the forests where the risk of being attacked by a tiger increases.

Chatterjee said the fisher-people of the region have begun to venture deep into the mangrove forests to find an adequate quantity of fish or crabs and there they are coming into confrontations with tigers. “Forest authorities only focus on tiger conservation. But if the fish don’t survive, tigers won’t survive either,” Chatterjee says. “Human-wildlife conflict can reduce if the fish in the rivers increases.”

After returning from the river, Parul busies herself in making lunch. She cooks fish that she has caught from her pond, boils the rice and stirs sugar into a mango chutney.

She doesn’t like eating crabs, she says. Her mother Lokhi joins the conversation. “Neither me nor my daughter eat crabs,” she says. Asked why, she doesn’t provide details, but mentions “accidents”, a reference to her son-in-law Ishar’s death.

PHOTO • URVASHI SARKAR

PHOTO • URVASHI SARKAR

Parul at home in her village Luxbagan, South 24 Parganas. None of her daughters work in the forest

None of Parul’s four daughters, Pushpita, Paromita, Papiya, and Papri, works in the forest. Pushpita and Papiya work at people’s houses in other districts of West Bengal while Paromita works for a private company in Bengaluru. The youngest, Papri, 13, stays in a hostel near Luxbagan but is sickly. “Papri had typhoid and malaria, so I had to spend Rs. 13,000 on her treatment. I also pay for her hostel fees of Rs. 2,000 each month,” Parul says.

Parul herself is unwell. She has chest pains and cannot go fishing or crab hunting this year. She now lives with her daughter Paromita Mistry, in Bengaluru.

“A doctor in Kolkata asked me to do MRI scans that cost Rs. 40,000. I do not have so much money,” she says. She decided to travel to the southern city and live with her daughter and son-in-law, who both work for private companies. Parul also consulted a doctor in Bengaluru, who prescribed rest and medicines for six months.

“I think the pains in my chest started due to the fear I constantly feel, especially when I go to the forest. My husband was killed by a tiger, and my father too was attacked. That is what caused the chest pains,” she says.

June 17, 2023
Widowed by tigers, abandoned by the state

Published in People’s Archive of Rural India. 12 October 2017

Shikha Mondal lost her husband Asit in November 2015. “He went with two other men to the Garal river in the Baganbari forest to catch crabs. The other two returned and told me that a tiger carried my husband away,” she says. Asit Mondal was 32 when he died, the family’s sole earning member, and the father of two school-going sons.

Determined to claim compensation, Shikha, a resident of Jahar Colony village in West Bengal’s Gosaba block, paid a lawyer Rs. 10,000 to help her. “There were many documents to gather – no objection certificates (NOCs) from the police and Forest Department, insurance card, a letter from the village pradhan, and a death certificate.”

The lawyer managed to get the insurance company to pay Rs. 1 lakh in compensation. But Shikha was denied an NOC from the Forest Department because her husband died in the core area. The insurance company has not yet returned her documents.

Shikha now catches crabs and prawns, does odd jobs and agricultural labour, and somehow manages to send her sons to school. Unable to afford an independent household, she and her children live at an uncle’s house.

Thousands of women in the Sunderbans have similarly lost their husbands to tiger attacks. This delta region, spread over around 4,200 square kilometres in eastern India and home to the world’s largest mangrove forests, is synonymous with tigers.

Watch video: Shikha Mondal describes her ordeal of trying to get compensation after her husband died in 2015

The tigers in the forests of Hingalganj, Gosaba, Kultali, Pathar Pratima and Basanti blocks are a threat to the villagers who depend on the forests for their daily needs and livelihoods. These blocks are close to the Sundarbans National Park (and tiger reserve), which includes a core area of around 1,700 square kilometres and a buffer area of around 900 square kilometres, where some livelihood activities are allowed. Usually, it is the men in the villages here who venture into the forests to catch fish and crabs, or to gather honey and wood. In a face-off with a tiger, most often the man dies.

The exact number of women widowed in this manner in the Sundarbans is unknown, but locals, non-governmental organisations and others estimate the number is at least 3,000 over three decades – or around a 100 a year.

“Since 2011, nearly 250 women have lost their husbands to tiger attacks in Gosaba’s Lahiripur gram panchayat area [consisting of 22 villages],” says Arjun Mondal, who manages the Sundarbans Rural Development Society, an NGO that works for the welfare of the ‘tiger widows’. “Not a single one has received compensation,” he adds.

The women are entitled to total compensation of roughly Rs. 4-5 lakhs from the West Bengal government’s Forest Department, Fisheries Department and the state’s Group Personal Accident Insurance Scheme. However, there are many conditions; Arjun lists a few: “The husband should not have died in the core area, he should have had a boat licence certificate (BLC) and a permit from the Forest Department. Additionally, the wife is required to submit several documents to the different departments to get the compensation.”

Invariably, people from the villages do wander into the core area. Arjun, a fisherman himself, says, “We don’t realise where the buffer zone ends and the core area begins. The government issues very few BLCs, and not everyone can afford one. Getting permits also depends on the will of the Forest Department.”

Therefore, the odds are stacked against the wives of men who do not have BLCs or permits. The situation worsens when the men die in the core areas, which the villagers here are not allowed to enter at all, with or without permits.

As it did for Namita Biswas, 40, from Patharpara village in Gosaba block. Her husband Manoranjan, a fisherman, was attacked by a tiger in the core area in February 2015. He survived and was admitted to a hospital, but died a few days after he was discharged. “The infection from his head injury had not healed,” Namita explains. “My husband had a BLC, but the police refused to take my statement. We gave all our documents and medical bills to the Forest Department for reimbursement. The money is yet to come. There are so many widows like me. The government should at least give us a monthly pension.”

Purmila Burman was duped by an ‘agent’ claiming he could get compensation for her husband’s death

While Shikha and Namita still await compensation, Purmila Burman, 55, of Patharpara, has no such hope. In March 2016, her fisherman husband Shubhendu was killed by a tiger in the core area. “A middleman promised to help me when Shubhendu died. I gathered all my documents and gave them to him, believing he would help,” Purmila says. The agent has since disappeared with her documents, and she has received no compensation.

The Sundarbans are full of stories like these. In some families, consecutive generations of families have lost their men to tiger attacks. Most of the villages where this has happened have bidhoba paras or ‘widow localities’. In most households, the women’s lives are marked by distress and penury. It is difficult for them to re-marry since remarriage is frowned upon.

In July 2016, this writer filed three separate Right to Information (RTI) petitions enquiring about compensation for tiger widows with the West Bengal government’s Fisheries Department, Forest Department and Department of Sundarban Affairs.

Only the Fisheries Department responded: in the last six years, only five women – a tiny portion of the estimated 100 women whose husbands are killed by tigers every year – have filed for compensation with the department. Of them, only three received Rs. 1 lakh each. The other two were denied compensation since the postmortem reports for their husbands were not available.

But contrary to the Fisheries Department data, most of the women I talked to said that they had applied for compensation – so it is likely that their claims are not being accepted due to incomplete documents or other conditions they fail to meet.

“The entire process is daunting, with many documents to submit and a lot of running around. The woman may even be misled or might be unaware of the process,” says Pradip Chatterjee of the Dakshinbanga Matsyajibi Forum. (The Fishworkers Forum of South Bengal, which is trying to help ‘tiger widows’ claim compensation and find work). “Meanwhile, fresh killings by tigers are reported every year, adding to the numbers of widowed women,” he says.

And some women, Chatterjee adds, fearful of the questioning by the Forest Department, ‘suppress’ the death of their husband, especially if he has been killed in the core area – they don’t even register it with the authorities, and nor do they claim compensation.

But Ranbibala Mondal of Patharpara village did try to claim the compensation. Her husband was attacked by a tiger many years ago. “After all these years, the government has given me nothing,” she says. “Can you do something?”

Photos: Urvashi Sarkar

Read the original article: https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/widowed-by-tigers-abandoned-by-the-state/

October 12, 2017
The sting of bees and the tyranny of tigers

Published in People’s Archive of Rural India. 23 September 2016

“I grabbed the kamot with my arms. You can see its teeth marks even now.” Nitai Joddar, a mouley (honey collector), remembers exactly when a kamot (crocodile) bit him, from hip to leg. It was on March 23 in 1980, and he had gone to the Raimangal river to catch fish.

Nitai, of Hemnagar village in the North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, is 41 now. His father, a honey collector, started taking him along on his work trips to the jungle when he was 10. After the kamot incident, Nitai began wearing an amulet as a safeguard. Encounters with crocodiles are common on the riverbanks of many parts of the Sundarbans. People, especially fish workers, have been injured or have even been killed.

Nitai Joddar wore this armlet after being bitten by a crocodile, and has placed his complete trust in it to protect him in the jungles of the Sundarbans

Collecting honey for sale is a common occupation in the Sundarbans – and it can be very hazardous. For Nitai and others, just as real as the possibility of being attacked by a crocodile, is the threat of tigers while fishing or collecting honey from the dense jungles. According to the website of the Department of Sundarbans Affairs, “…men in the Sundarbans are attacked by wild animals – sharks, crocodiles, or tigers… especially when fishermen or honey collectors enter the dense mangrove forests…” Women, of course, are equally at risk of such attacks, though usually the community does not allow them to go on the extended honey gathering trips.

Honey is collected in the Sundarbans mainly from April to June. During these months, the state government bans the catching of fish, so that the fish can replenish themselves. This is when many fishermen become honey collectors and make two trips to the jungle, each lasting 15 days or longer. West Bengal is a major honey-producing state and exports a large part of its production.

Collecting honey requires advance preparations. The honey gatherers inform the Forest Department, rent a boat whose owner has a BLC (boat licence certificate) and borrow from the money lender or mahajan . Nitai’s son Sanjit Joddar, 23, explains: “If five or six people go together to collect honey, we take a combined loan of Rs. 10,000-15,000. The interest is 2-3 per cent, which we repay along with principle in 30-45 days. The loan is taken once a year.”

Mouleys of the Sundarbans’ (right to left): Nitai Joddar, Binay Mondal and Haripada Joddar

The loan is required to buy provisions for the 15-day journey. Renting the boat costs Rs. 2,800-3,000 for the season [a little over 60 days between April to June] of honey collecting. The boat owner is also paid in kind – with a few kilos of honey. Another Rs. 120 is paid annually to the Forest Department as insurance in case of an accident in the jungle. After clearing all debts and payments, each mouley gets Rs. 15,000-25,000 [for the entire season].

At times, the mouleys incur another expense: dacoits in the jungles steal from them or even kidnap them. Nitai recalls an instance when a few men were kidnapped last year and their families had to put together Rs. 2-3 lakhs for their release.

“We set off on when the sky is clear and the river is at low tide,” Nitai says. “It takes several hours to reach our location, depending on the tide. We leave the boat and enter the jungle. One person stays behind to row the boat along the bank. When some honey is gathered, it is deposited in the boat. We eat and sleep in the boat itself.”

The direction in which the bees fly guides the mouleys to the trees with hives. “We prepare bundles, layered with dry leaves and green hetal leaves, which are attached to sticks,” Nitai says. “We burn the bundles and the ensuing smoke curls up to the hives, driving away the bees. A sharp curved instrument is used to break the hive. We do not break the entire hive, since it needs to regrow.”

A beehive on a tree in Hemnagar village / The sharp and curved instrument used to break the bee hives

Sometimes the bees sense the threat and sting even before the smoke rises. But Nitai and his co-workers have no use for ointments or protective clothing. “We only pluck out the sting with our fingers. Once a man was stung by 300-400 bees. He could not get up or eat for weeks!”

Nitai expresses faith in two things: his amulet and Bonbibi, protector of the forests and people, a highly revered deity in the Sundarbans. “There are different chants to the goddess according to the difficulty of the situation,” he says. We ask him to recite a chant; he breathlessly rattles off one in Bengali that the honey gatherers use when leaving home for the jungle.

As often happens when in the Sundarbans, the conversation turns to tigers. And everyone has a story or two to tell. “Once a tiger confronted my friend and he froze with terror,” Nitai recalls. “I chanted some mantras to Bonbibi – but could not rescue him and the tiger killed him. I found the body and took it to his home. Many years ago, about 150-200 men surrounded a tiger in the jungle. Even then it carried away 1-2 people.”

There was a time, he says, when the government rewarded villagers for killing tigers. “But now, one cannot touch them, because of laws.” Nitai, like others living in the Sundarbans, sometimes feels that the state protects the tiger more than the people. “We cannot even go to the forest in case we disturb the tiger’s sleep,” he jokes. But he knows that tigers are important and is a member of the local Forest Protection Committee, a part of the government’s forest management strategy. “If the tiger goes, Sundarbans goes. Nothing will stop people from entering and destroying the forests.”

We go to Nitai’s small and cramped house, where he stores honey in aluminium containers and cans on the floor. “Depending on which trees and flowers – kewra, goran, khols i – you extract it from and the season, the colour and taste varies. But your commercial honey looks and tastes exactly the same through the year.”

The honey is stored in an aluminium container. Its colour and taste vary according to the trees, flowers and seasons, unlike commercial honey which tastes and looks the same throughout the year

Usually, 6-7 individuals participate in a single 15-day trip and gather roughly 1-1.5 quintals of honey each. The mouleys are compelled to sell most of the collected honey to the Forest Department at a price fixed by the government. The price this year, Sanjit says, was Rs. 115 for a kilo – and in August 2016 the price at which the department sold the honey in the market was Rs. 300 a kilo. The West Bengal Forest Development Cooperation Limited refines and markets it as the Mouban brand of honey.

This year, instead of all the collected honey, the Forest Department specified a quota that the mouleys were required to deposit. “They did not buy honey from our family because the department met its quota early,” Sanjit says. He and his family plan to sell the surplus themselves. “We collected 80-90 kilos and have priced it at Rs. 200-250 per kilo for the neighbouring village areas. In Kolkata, we can get a higher rate.”

In previous years, Sanjit says, “We could take home only five kilos. We had to deposit the rest with the Forest Department. They searched our boats for hidden honey. If caught selling in the market, our boats could be seized.”

Although Sanjit, like his father, is a fisherman and honey collector, he migrates for 2-3 months every year to Bangalore and Chennai to work on construction sites where he earns Rs. 350-400 per day. “My father and his friends have worked only in the Sundarbans. They have fallen in love with the forest and say there cannot be peace without it. My generation goes to bidesh [outside] to work. How do we feed our family just by catching fish and collecting honey?”

Sanjit had to drop out before completing his BA degree to help with his family’s earnings. He now has an 18-month-old son who he wants to educate. “My son should not go to the jungles. Too dangerous.”

But Nitai believes that those who migrate are not happy, since there are more chances of getting cheated or murdered in the big cities. To him, the dangers of working in the Sundarbans seem preferable.

Nitai Joddar, 41, started going to the jungles with his father, also a honey collector, three decades ago

In 2015, a Trinamool Congress member of Parliament, Pratima Mandal, highlighted these dangers in the Lok Sabha when she spoke of the issues faced by the honey collectors of the Sundarbans. She asked the central government to take safety measures and allot funds.

It may be too early to know if this has had an impact, but over the years a few measures have indeed been taken. Pradip Chatterjee, president of the Dakshinbanga Matsyajibi Forum (Fishworkers Forum of South Bengal), says, “There have been some improvements. Four years ago, the Forest Department would pay the mouleys only Rs. 42 per kilo of honey; now the rate is more than Rs. 100 for a kilo, and they are free to sell extra honey in the market. The department would earlier give only one pass of 15 days for honey collection, now they give two such passes.”

However, he says, nothing has been done to protect the men at work. “There is no provision for their individual safety or safety as a group.” And so, men like Nitai continue working in the dense and dangerous jungles without any safeguards.

Photos: Urvashi Sarkar

Read the original article: https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/the-sting-of-bees-and-the-tyranny-of-tigers/

September 23, 2016

Urvashi Sarkar

Urvashi Sarkar – 2026 – All rights reserved.

web things by Studio Goncharov