Aheli Moitra
It is a common sight—people selling exotic wild animals on the highway between Kohima and Dimapur. Everyone drools at them, and those who can afford to, buy them. There is always more to feed more; Nagaland’s forests somehow replenish themselves. This Saturday, a man held out something uncommon by its tail—a 3 to 4 foot long lizard like creature. Still alive and swaying for dear life, it was probably sold before the sun set.
Wild meat has high status on the food menu given its ‘medicinal properties,’ as a colleague pointed out. Porcupine, wild rat, wild cat, wild boar, jungle fowl, snake, deer, bear; every animal has a ‘medicinal property’ and a special recipe to go with. In traditional lore, their hunting patterns came with norms that saved a total wipeout of all things wild.
People like me do not have access to this ancestral knowledge. But we do have access to contemporary knowledge, particularly of how some villages have adapted to changing circumstances. With growing human population, technology, and unsustainable development practices, natural biodiversity is being pulled down at an alarming rate. Several villages in Nagaland have put local policies in place to curb hunting in order to conserve biological diversity for future generations.
As local practices get streamlined, development has had its share of the biodiversity. Unlike local hunting, unrestrained development destroys wildlife habitat itself. This week saw the discussion on sustainable development and biodiversity conservation gain spotlight. May 22 was the International Day for Biological Diversity—government and non government entities spoke out in unison for taking up development processes in a way that respects Nagaland’s ecosystem and biological diversity. This is key to sustenance of indigenous communities.
While individual commitment will be essential, local governance units pledging to stand by their natural heritage (connected to socio-cultural heritage) is an important step in a climate of destruction of local environment under the shadow of centrally sponsored ‘development’. Specific community rules should be made to reverse the process of environment degradation, perhaps even by Nagaland State through Article 371-A.
Development in the Indian Union wears a securitizing lens today, not a reconciling or harmonious one. The NITI Aayog CEO said on Tuesday that the police will now become the major “agent of social change” to facilitate “rapid growth.” Violence in the name of state growth is being justified through the neo planning commission. Elsewhere, the Army has suggested digging up tunnels under rivers of the North East region. Imagine the cost of this on the ecology, and the people who share it.
It is easy to make such remarks when your previous or future generations have no relationship with the land. For the people who inhabit this ecosystem though, it is a matter of life and death—of culture and identity. Such agendas should push us to wonder if State sponsored ‘development’ has become the new war alongside other means. War is, after all, continuation of politics (policy) with other means (Carl von Clausewitz).
Other feral ideas may be sent to moitramail@yahoo.com
