The travelling salesmen who weren’t

This picture is from the most ill-planned and foolhardy trip to Tuting. But more about that some other time

When K and me walk around with our backpacks in Yingkiong, people often wonder what products we are selling. We know this because frequently people come up to us and ask us
“What product are you selling?”
Its not as if travelling salesmen are very common, but the rare ones bring the promise of unusual products from far away at a good bargain. In many ways, this ‘good bargain’ is just plain daylight robbery by these salesmen. But people here just lap it up. Transactions are conducted with great determination and resolve by the locals with constant assurances of ‘ho jayega’ to the salesmen. In truth, even after these ‘ho jayega’ bargains, the salesmen are the winners.
On the flip side though, it is probably a good bargain for the locals too who would ordinarily need to spend atleast a week’s travel to and fro to Dibrugarh to be even able to glimpse some of this stuff. K and me once met a determined bunch of Kashmiris with humongous sacks of blankets on their backs near Gelling, the last Indian village barely a half hour walk from the Sino Indian border. Some of the same bunch once joined us in our ‘palatial’ forest barracks in the village. They happily cooked raw papaya curry and played Kashmiri songs on their mobile. Surely, I thought this must be a colossal climb-down for these guys from the land of Rogan Josh and Gushtaba.
But they keep coming. And as long as they keep coming, we’ll have to keep answering that familiar question we hear so often on the streets.

Death in the hills–the tragedy of the mithun deaths

This article, co-written by Karthik and myself appeared in the June issue of Eye magazine brought out by the Indian Express. Among the many things that both of us have written about, this was one of the closest to our hearts. When one stays in a remote village for a large part of the year, one cannot but feel a deep sense of kinship for the fellow inhabitants. They cease to be study subjects and assume the role of friends and family. The least we could have done for them was to present their struggles and difficulties to the rest of the country. We hoped against hope that somewhere in some swanky office room, some IAS or politician would chance upon this article and decide to do something about it. Well, it doesn’t hurt to hope, does it?

 

Click here for the pdf copies of the article. Or just read on below:

THE TWO-month-old mithun calf lay by the side of the road. Its lifeless glassy eyes stared into nothingness, but its feet twitched occasionally in spasms before death finally came. The young mother stood unsurely beside the calf, licking it at intervals. Scenes like this played out virtually every day in the last few months,  reminding us of the epidemic that had besieged this remote corner of Arunachal Pradesh. The killer was a virus (Aphthae epizooticae) belonging to the Picornaviridae family, causing the dreaded Foot-and-mouth disease.

 

Bomdo village in the Upper Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh is peopled by the Adi tribe, the second most numerous tribe in the state. Further towards the north lies Tuting, the last town before the border with Tibet. The mighty Siang River flows below the village, while the snowcapped mountains to the north provide a glimpse of the spectacular beauty of the Siang valley. It's a picturesque agrarian society, except all is not well.

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) had made its way into the mountains from the plains of Pasighat. The worst affected were the semidomesticated mithun (Bos frontalis) that were dying out even as their owners watched helplessly. Each day, as one more animal was found dead in the forest or beside the road, another few were seen salivating profusely from the mouth as the infection spread rapidly.

To a person unfamiliar with this region and the lifestyle of the people, it would seem to be just a minor problem. Surely, livestock die all the time across the country. So what was so different about these deaths?

It is impossible to gauge the scale of the tragedy without an understanding of what mithuns mean to people in these parts. The mithun is an integral part of the cultural and socio-economic life of a majority of the tribes of Arunachal Pradesh. Among the Adis, the number of mithuns owned by a man determines his wealth and prestige. Traditionally, it has been used for barter, paying fines as well as bride price. Even today, mithuns are used as a form of currency in villages across the state. The Adis are primarily animists and major festivals such as Solung, Mopun and Aran are inconceivable without the animal’s sacrifice. When a member of the Adi community dies, he is buried with the skulls of the mithun that he had offered in sacrifice during his lifetime.

An adult mithun weighs about 500 kg and its meat forms one of the most important sources of protein for remote tribal villages like Bomdo, which do not have access to town markets. Incredibly, this animal demands minimal care from their owners. Mithuns are free-ranging and reside in the forests around the village. The only attention they demand are occasional treats of salt that are provided by their owners. The price of an adult mithun in the Upper Siang ranges from Rs 25,000-30,000.

FMD is a highly infectious viral disease that affects both domestic (cattle, pigs, sheep and goats) and wild (buffalo, gaur, deer, wild pigs and many more) even-toed ungulates. Since its first description in 1546 and the discovery of the virus in 1897 by Loeffler and Flosch, it is considered to be one of the greatest threats to animals. The disease gets its name from the advanced pathological symptoms which manifest as lesions in the foot and mouth and excessive drooling of saliva. It spreads through contact. About 5,000 outbreaks of the disease have been recorded from India that have affected about three lakh animals resulting in an economic loss of about Rs 4,300 crore annually. While these figures are startling, it is derived mostly from livestock deaths in mainland India, while much of the mithun and livestock deaths in the hills remain unreported. Sadly, even the most accurate figures would not reflect the cultural and  socioeconomic losses that hill communities such as the Adis are facing.

 

There is also the very real risk of the disease spreading to other wild animals. This area is located very close to the Mouling National Park and the Dihang Dibang Biosphere Reserve. The community lands around the villages too harbour an incredible diversity of wildlife. As mithuns are free-ranging, they can very well spread the disease across the landscape.

The warning signs have been around for almost a year in the form of an outbreak among other districts in Arunachal Pradesh. Occurence of FMD was reported last year in September from Kurung Kumey district in western Arunachal Pradesh, following which it was reported from the east and west Siang districts in January this year. In the last two months, the disease has spread to the mithuns in Upper Siang district and caused the deaths of about 25 mithuns in Bomdo village alone. Several more deaths have occurred in other villages along the Pasighat-Tuting Border Road. These figures, however, are only of those animals which have been found. It is possible that the actual death toll is much higher as several animals could have already died within the forest and remained undiscovered.

This is not the first time that FMD has come to this part of the country or the state. An epidemic of FMD had also occurred earlier in 57 villages in the state between 1994 and 1995, infecting 6,237 mithuns and killing over 800 animals. Even the strain of FMD causing the earlier epidemic in Arunachal Pradesh was identified as the Asia1 virus serotype.

To their credit, the veterinary department is supplying free vaccines and medicines to the villagers. Unfortunately, the onus is on the villagers to come to the nearest town and collect the vaccines or the medicines. In remote areas, this is a major limiting factor as it involves a long unenviable walk in the absence of local transport or motorable roads. FMD can be prevented through vaccination of unaffected animals and enforcement of quarantine to stop carriers from mingling with other animals. Last year, the ‘Mithun Health Camp’ organised by the Krishi Vigyan Kendra in some parts of Papum Pare district, where medicines were distributed and mithuns vaccinated, raised awareness to a large extent. Similar programmes need to be implemented to stop future outbreaks.

It is a bit late to be able to do anything for the people of the Bomdo village and various other affected villages. There have been calls earlier to compensate mithun-owners for their losses, notably from senior politicians within the state. While this would certainly be of great help to people in these remote villages, eliminating FMD and eradicating such epidemics from the hills, would be the best possible compensation.

Meeting Mr. T

A post! A Post! Yup, when nudges become pushes and pushes turn to shoves, and one is forced to write, that is when the words finally tumble out. This is a small piece that got accepted in the Eastern Himalayas Newsletter (published from ATREE) in spite of its highly unconventional style. Since I have hardly posted anything about my work in Arunachal, this is probably just right for an introduction to my field site and work.
Also, I doubt anything longer than this would be able to hold anyone’s attention.
(Full Disclosure: All people, places and statements described below are completely non-fictional). Honest.
Hunting tales
I met Mr. T on the road to Moying. He was in an overloaded Mahindra Pickup that belonged to the JP Group, a company that was building a hydro-electric plant up north towards Tuting, the last ‘town’ before the China border in Upper Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh. Mr. T worked for the JP Group. He was a Telugu from Andhra Pradesh. It is easier and less embarrassing to just call him Mister ‘T’.
I was walking towards Moying village from my study village Bomdo in Upper Siang. My village doesn’t have mobile connectivity, so occasional trips towards a ‘network point’ were necessary to assure people at home that I was still alive and well. Unfortunately, there was absolutely no local transport and the 22 km till the ‘network point’ would have to be covered on foot.
The sound of the vehicle was a welcome noise and I signaled for a lift. Five minutes later I was sitting inside the pickup answering a volley of questions from Mr. T. Predictably, he ranted on about the constant rain, lack of mobile connectivity, remoteness and excess of jungle! So, what was I doing here? He wanted to know. I told him I was studying wildlife in community managed forests among other things.
Mr. T was shocked. “Really? What was there to study? People here kill everything and eat everything. I haven’t seen a single bird here!”
That was my cue. I told him it was surprising he hadn’t seen a single bird while I had recorded more than 200 species in one year within the vicinity of the village. I told him there was evidence of almost 20 species of mammals and although I hadn’t been very fastidious in searching for butterflies, I still managed to record more than 50 species. These people who had supposedly ‘killed and eaten everything’ must surely be doing something right, if such an impressive assortment of wildlife still existed after all their exertions. I also told him that having stayed in the village for extended periods, I now knew that we city dwellers eat a lot more meat than them.
Mr. T’s views were not very different from a vast majority of people. However, the supreme irony lay in the fact that when it came to biodiversity loss, nothing could beat his own company and their mega dams across Arunachal.
As I contemplated how to break the bad news to him, Mr. T asked: “Can you get me two totas (parakeets)? I need some pets.”
Oh well. This was going to be more difficult than I thought.
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The focus of my research is to understand patterns of village hunting in this remote Adi village and how it is affected by cultural, socioeconomic and institutional factors. The hope is that my study, and similar interdisciplinary studies, will begin to change preconceived notions about hunting and introduce greater room for debate on current policies that govern hunting.