Pench (Maharashtra)

THE temperature was above 44 degrees Celsius at 5.30 p.m. as we drove in our Gypsy past Totladoh into the Pench Tiger Reserve (Maharashtra). The heat lent a sharp brevity to the forest. One could cut the air and it could crackle. Most of the vegetation stood a bare brown while the chital, sambhar and gaur rested under the few bright green-leaved trees such as the charoli, jamun and kumkum.

Past Sillari, we sighted six wild dogs (Cuon alpinus) as they made their way to a water hole. They came in a single file, in their red coats with the tail bottoms bearing a black streak. "One can see them regularly at this spot in the evening in search of water," remarked a forest official. In India, the dhole or Indian wild dogs keep strictly to the forests where there is food, shade from the sun, and water to drink or lie in, a thing wild dogs frequently do in hot weather, writes S.H. Prater in The Book of Indian Animals. From the Gypsy, we watched them move away into the forest after a drink. The Pench river cuts the Pench reserve into east and west Pench, and as we moved on, we saw black charred forest floors with the trees burnt up.

Before we started for Pench (Maharashtra) from Pench (Madhya Pradesh) we were told of forest fires started by fishermen prevented from fishing in the Pench reservoir. Since May 12, forest officials of Pench in the two States have been battling dourly the fishermen. Every boat catch leads to lighting a forest fire at any time of the day and night.

As of date, forest officials of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra have captured about 74 fishing boats costing around Rs 10,000 each and 3,080 kg of fishing nets priced at around Rs 500 per kg. The officials are a tired lot as fishing in the waters of the Pench Dam inside the National Park is not permitted. The fishermen are not adivasis and come from villages bordering Pench. Their actions disturb animals visiting the area and one is not sure whether poaching wildlife forms a part of the deal. The disputable right to fishing in a National Park has long been weighing on Pench Maharashtra.

The Pench Tiger Reserve spreads across Seoni and Chindwara districts of Madhya Pradesh and Nagpur district of Maharashtra. In Madhya Pradesh, an area of 757.85 sq. km was declared in 1992 as the 19th Tiger Reserve of India, while the contiguous area of 257.26 sq. km in Maharashtra was notified as the Pench National Park in 1975 and declared as the 25th Tiger Reserve of India in 1998. It is surprising the reserve still exists even after being dug up to set up the Pench hydroelectric dam with an installed capacity of 160 MW at Totladoh, in Maharashtra, following an inter-State agreement between Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra in 1968. In 1986, the project was completed with power fed into the Vidarbha-Marathwada-Khadwa grid. Today, there is no power generation as there is little water in the Pench river.

One morning Kishor Rithe, Ajay Dhyaneshwar Sakure and myself along with a few forest officials spent about four hours travelling in the reservoir. We saw fishing nets strung up across tree trunks submerged in the waters, while a second vessel pulled out a fishing boat hidden in the swampy borders, left probably by a fleeing fisherman. In 1988, the Madhya Pradesh Fisheries Development Corporation (MPFDC) brought fishermen from Madhya Pradesh to start commercial fishing at Totladoh, in Maharashtra, without the permission of the Maharashtra Forest Department. Incidentally, the State Forest department did not allow MPFDC to conduct fishing in its part of the reservoir. That probably was the starting point of the conflict, which has been moving around in various courts.

Behind the poor fishermen are the fishing lords funding the operations living in cities. On May 30, 1996, the Chief Conservator of Forest, Madhya Pradesh, in Bhopal ordered the director of the Pench National Park in Seoni to allow 305 members of 84 families to fish in the Madhya Pradesh part of the Totladoh reservoir. On June 8, 1996, the Nature Conservation Society, Amravati, served legal notice on Madhya Pradesh over illegal fishing. In 1997, the Supreme Court partially upheld the Bhopal order and added more conditions. The Court also directed that the final notification of the Madhya Pradesh area of Pench be expedited under Section 35(4) of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. There is a fear that the dam area may be de-notified explaining the delay in issue of the final notification.

Moving across the waters between 8.30 a.m. and 12.30 in the afternoon, one had a glimpse of the tough terrain with many entry points for fishermen to make it to the dam while making the job of patrolling that much difficult. One saw egrets, an open-billed stork and a painted stork near the water's edge. Inaugurating the Bhakra Nangal dam, Jawaharlal Nehru had described dams as the new temples of India. The Pench dam, created by an uncaring officialdom, stands today with thin tongues of water flowing out of it, spewing a modern clone of an equally querulous and partisan religion. "We will be relieved when and if the rains come on time as then there will be no forest fires though fishing will continue," said an official.