With the average Indian taking some 11 antibiotic pills a year, the country consumed about 12.9 billion units in 2010. Credit: Bigstock

By Ranjita Biswas
KOLKATA, India, Aug 28 2014 (IPS)

In 2011, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned: “Combat Drug Resistance – No Action Today, No Cure Tomorrow.” The slogan was coined in honour of World Health Day, urging governments to ensure responsible use of antibiotics in order to prevent drug-resistant viruses and bacteria, or ‘super bugs’.

The warning is even more salient in 2014, particularly in India, a country of 1.2 billion people that recently earned the dubious distinction of being the worst country in terms of antibiotic overuse in the world.

With the average Indian taking some 11 antibiotic pills a year, the country consumed about 12.9 billion units in 2010, up from eight billion units in 2001.

"It’s a delicate, personal, ethical, medical issue. We can’t live without antibiotics. What is needed is prudent use." -- Ashok J. Tamhankar, national coordinator for the Indian Initiative for Management of Antibiotic Resistance (IIMAR)
An analysis of national pharmaceutical sales data published in ‘The Lancet Infectious Diseases’ last month found that Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa accounted for 76 percent of the increase in antibiotic use around the world.

Western countries are now waking up to the alarming impact of over-consumption of antibiotics, which results in drug resistance. In Europe alone, drug-resistant strains of bacteria are responsible for 25,000 deaths a year.

In July, British Prime Minister David Cameron warned that the world could be “cast back into the dark ages of medicine” due to deadly bacteria eventually developing resistance to drugs through mutation, and as a result of “market failure” to develop new classes of antibiotics over the last 25 years.

In developing countries like India, changing lifestyles are contributing to the casual and careless use of drugs.

Ramanan Laxminarayan, research scholar and lecturer at Princeton University, told IPS the reason behind the proliferation of antibiotics in this country is “a combination of increasing income and affordability, easy access without a prescription, willingness of physicians to prescribe antibiotics freely, and a high background of infections that should ideally be contained by better sanitation and vaccination.”

People forget, he said, that “antibiotics do have side effects and […] they are less likely to work for you when you really need them.”

According to the Lancet’s report, the largest absolute increases in consumption between 2000 and 2010 were observed for cephalosporins, broad-spectrum penicillins and fluoroquinolones.

The authors cautioned, “Many broad-spectrum antibiotic drugs (cephalosporins, fluoroquinolones, and carbapenems) are sold over the counter without [the] presence of a documented clinical need.”

Moreover, added Kolkata-based physician Surajit Ghosh of the Indian Public Health Association, some patients choose to refill their own prescriptions without consulting a proper physician, in a bid to reduce the burden of doctor’s fees.

For a country like India with limited healthcare facilities and a doctor-patient ratio of one doctor to every 1,700 people, as well as 29 percent of the population languishing below the poverty line, the emergence of super bugs could be disastrous, experts say.

“With our high background rate of infections, we rely on antibiotics more than developed countries do,” stated Laxminarayan.

“Therefore, the impact of super bugs is likely to be much greater for many in our country who cannot afford the newer, more powerful antibiotics. Think of it as the price of fuel or kerosene going up. The rich will manage wherever they are, but the poor will be hit hard.”

He predicts that the most common diseases to be affected by antibiotic overuse will likely be “hospital infections, particularly those causing sepsis, pneumonia and urinary tract infection.”

Wary of this possible development, many are shifting to alternative medicines, via the Indian Systems of Medicine and Homoeopathy (ISM&H), which includes Ayurveda, siddha, unani, homoeopathy and therapies such as yoga and naturopathy.

Currently, there are over 680,000 registered ISM&H practitioners in the country, most of who work in the private sector.

Swati Biswas* tells IPS, “My husband was ailing for sometime and an operation was advised. But he contracted an infection in the nursing home and his operation was postponed.

“He never recovered after coming home and expired after two months. I spent thousands of rupees on medication for him to no avail. Now I go to a doctor of homeopathy for my problems. I’ve had enough of Western doctors and hospitals,” she added.

Meanwhile, a network known as the Indian Initiative for Management of Antibiotic Resistance (IIMAR) has been formed to promote awareness on this issue.

Asked about the need for such an organisation, Ashok J. Tamhankar, IIMAR’s national coordinator, told IPS, “In a scientific meeting in Bangalore in 2008 many of the participants realised that antibiotic resistance is increasing in India. This is happening because there’s no awareness about it among the stakeholders.

“The ignorance and callousness are at every level of the society – from care providers like doctors, to pharmacists, lawmakers, manufacturers and [even] the consumers. So a platform was created to spread awareness through a blog.”

The initial group had only a handful of people, but now, he claims, it has more than 1,000 active members and many more passive ones from different walks of life.

“Only passing laws is not a solution,” Tamhankar stated.

“It’s the people who have to solve their problems with the help of the law. This is particularly important in the case of antibiotics. It’s a delicate, personal, ethical, medical issue. We can’t live without antibiotics. What is needed is prudent use,” he added.

People also hint at an unholy alliance between pharmaceutical companies and doctors that results in over-prescription of antibiotics for ailments that could easily be treated without them.

Back in 2012, IIMAR reported that the Medical Council of India (MCI) had received 702 complaints of such over-prescription in 2011-12, of which 343 were referred to state medical councils.

“In 2010-11, MCI received 824 such complaints, following which it cancelled the registration of 10 doctors and warned four others,” IIMAR reported.

“Chemist and [drug] associations are not interested in curbing their volume of business and the [pharmaceutical] industry is also silent for the sake of their profit,” says Ghosh.

According to the consulting firm Deloitte, pharmaceutical sales in India stood at 22.6 billion dollars in 2012, with a predicted rise to 23.6 billion in 2013. Sales are expected to touch 27 billion by 2016.

Ghosh feels there should be “antibiotic protocols for all hospital, clinics and dispensaries and this should be displayed in each healthcare-providing agency [and] institution. There should be statutory warnings on each pack of antibiotics, highlighting the hazards of misuse.”

“Time has come to raise [our] voices against the irrational use of antibiotics,” he concluded.

*Not her real name

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

A new toilet for girl students at a school in Murshidabad district in the eastern Indian state West Bengal. Credit: Sulabh International/IPS.

By Ranjita Biswas
KOLKATA, Apr 19 2014 (IPS)

In large parts of rural India, the absence of separate toilets for growing girls is taking a toll on their education. Many are unable to attend school during their menstrual cycle.

According to the country’s Annual Status of Education Report in 2011, lack of access to toilets causes girls between 12 and 18 years of age to miss around five days of school every month, or around 50 school days every year.“There is a sharp increase in the dropout rate, mainly among girls, as they move from primary to upper primary, because we cannot till date provide them proper toilets."

The country’s Supreme Court had ruled in 2011 that every public school has to have toilets. But a pan-India study, ‘The Learning Blocks’, conducted by the NGO CRY in 2013, shows that 11 percent of schools do not have toilets and only 18 percent have separate ones for girls. In 34 percent of schools, toilets are in bad condition or simply unusable.

Atindra Nath Das, regional director of CRY East, told IPS, “Children do not have safe drinking water, schools still do not have their own building and toilets are missing. No wonder 8.1 million children in India are still out of school.

“There is a sharp increase in the dropout rate, mainly among girls, as they move from primary to upper primary, because we cannot till date provide them proper toilets,” he said.

A 2010 report by the U.N. University Institute for Water, Environment and Health noted, “Once girls reach puberty, lack of access to sanitation becomes a central cultural and human health issue, contributing to female illiteracy and low levels of education, in turn contributing to a cycle of poor health for pregnant women and their children.”

According to India’s 2011 census data, national sanitation coverage is 49 percent but the rural figure is worse, at 31 percent.  It is even lower for Dalits or socially marginalised communities (23 percent) and tribal people (16 percent).

Lack of sanitation facilities is still a stumbling block for the effective spread of health and education programmes in many parts of rural India.

Mahila Jagriti Samiti (MJS), an NGO working in Jharkhand, an economically backward state in eastern India with a large tribal population, has been conducting awareness programmes on the use of sanitation, but is not very happy with the results.

Mahi Ram Mahto, director of MJS, told IPS: “We have done 300 sanitation programmes, even helping to build toilets in homes with funding from government agencies, but only 15 to 20 percent of the beneficiaries use them.”

Without a cistern for flushing, the toilets pose a problem, he says. “People have to carry water in buckets from a common water source like a hand pump or a pond; most households do not have taps. They say they might as well go to the open field.”

In 1999, India launched the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan or Total Sanitation Campaign, a community-based programme, under which it gives an equivalent of about 80 dollars to a household to set up a toilet. But many poor people say that is not enough and still defecate in the fields or by railway lines.

The campaign has “provisions for toilet facility and hygiene education in all types of government rural schools (up to higher secondary or class 12) with emphasis on toilets for girls.”

But provisions alone do not help, activists say.

Access to water for toilets is a major problem in many rural schools in the eastern state of West Bengal, says Vijay K. Jha, honorary controller at the state branch of Sulabh International. The NGO leads one of the world’s biggest and most successful sanitation programmes.

“We have worked in 50 schools in Murshidabad district of India’s eastern state West Bengal, providing infrastructure and running awareness programmes on hygiene. Plans are afoot to extend the work to 100 more in the near future,” Jha told IPS.

Despite separate toilets for girls, the results are not satisfactory. As in the case of Jharkhand, non-availability of water hinders toilet use. Most schools do not have water pipes running up to the compounds.

Diara Hazi Nasrat Mallick High School in Murshidabad district, where Sulabh has constructed a separate toilet, is a typical example.

Alaul Haque, the school headmaster, told IPS, “We are happy that this facility has been built. But girls still have to bring water from the tubewell because there’s no water pipe connection in the school yet.” Half of about 300 students at the school are girls.

Another institution in the same district, Gayeshpur High School, has the same complaint. “With around 300 girl students in our co-ed school, we need at least two toilets. We were happy that the toilet has been built, but it still lacks flowing water,” headmaster Prasanta Chatterjee told IPS.

The government scheme under which NGOs take up the work of building toilets does not include providing water pipes – a task that depends on local agencies.

Girl students during the menstrual cycle are advised not to carry heavy objects like buckets filled with water; so they avoid school altogether during those days if there is no easy access to water in the toilets.

Under India’s Right to Education Act of 2009, which recognises the right of children to free and compulsory education till the completion of elementary school, provision of proper toilets as part of school infrastructure is mandatory, says S.N. Dave, WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) specialist at Unicef Kolkata.

Dave told IPS: “West Bengal being in a riverine area, water is not much of a problem. But there is scope for improvement in terms of better coordination between agencies.”

Some states like Kerala in the south and Sikkim in the northeast fare better.

According to a Planning Commission study in 2013, Sikkim had the best performing gram panchayats (village councils) and maintenance of sanitation facilities, having achieved 100 percent sanitation.

Human rights have taken a step back in India, activists say after the Supreme Court overturned a ruling of the High Court that had earlier lifted the ban on gay sex.

The Delhi High Court ruling had in effect suspended application of Article 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The article, which criminalises homosexuality, was introduced in India in 1860 under British colonial rule, echoing conservative Victorian values of the age. The 19^th century law indicts homosexuality as going against the law of nature by indulging in “unnatural acts”.

The Delhi High Court ruling was in response to a petition filed in 2001 by the Naz Foundation, an NGO in Delhi, that challenged the constitutional validity of the article on the grounds that it criminalises homosexual acts even between two consenting adults.“The court has overturned a verdict, it hasn’t overturned a movement."

Some religious leaders including Hindus, Muslims and Christians challenged the Delhi High Court ruling before the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court this week upheld their appeal and quashed the verdict of the High Court. The Supreme Court noted that the LGBT community in the country is “miniscule”.

The author of A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth, who is open about his sexual orientation, minced  no words when he said in an interview with news channel NDTV, “I was not a criminal yesterday, but I am today.” He called the Supreme Court ruling “barbaric”.

Many people in India, not necessarily from the LGBT community, believe the upholding of Article 377 is a step to once again criminalise the LGBT community, and is a violation of human rights. “It shows a medieval mindset,” said Indira Jaising, additional solicitor general. She argued that India has lost an opportunity to correct a centuries-old wrong.

The unexpected verdict initially stunned activists, but the impact is sinking in now. Tripti Chandon of the Lawyers’ Collective in Delhi which represented the Naz Foundation told IPS there is a “slim chance” to reverse the judgment by filing a review petition. “We’ll do that,” she said.

Usually the same judges sit to re-examine a petition. But in this case one of the two judges who delivered the ruling retired the day after pronouncing the verdict.

The “unnatural act” stamp can also affect heterosexuals because oral sex is included. “So are we condoning voyeurs in the private domain?” Chandon asks.

She points to the case of Prof. S. Ramchandra Siras of Aligarh Muslim University near Delhi who was filmed by some intruders with a spy camera when he was with his partner. He was suspended by the university on the basis of this ‘evidence’ of his moral turpitude.

“Fortunately, that was in 2010, after the Delhi High Court verdict, and lawyers successfully fought the case in the Allahabad High Court on the premise that he could not be penalised. He was reinstated by the university. The punishment should have been given to those who barged into his private quarters to take photographs illegally.”

Siras, who had expressed  a desire to work for the gay community died soon after, under ‘mysterious’ circumstances.

Malobika, founder member of Sappho for Equality, a lesbian empowerment group in Kolkata, told IPS: “The Supreme Court verdict is a setback not only for the LGBT movement, but for democracy as well. For the last four years we have been slowly building up the trust for inclusiveness, and people were coming out more courageously about their sexuality in our society. But now they will go underground for fear of harassment.”

She fears that without the legal back-up, police harassment as well as societal pressure will rise. Openly gay people will find it difficult to find jobs, she said. Lesbians will find relationships more difficult due to  society’s conservative mindset, she said. “Basically under Article 377 IPC we are criminals.”

Pawan Dhall, a founding member of Varta, a voluntary organisation on gender and sexual education in Kolkata, told IPS: “The  verdict will have a far-reaching and adverse impact on  public healthcare. Today, the thrust of the HIV/AIDS programme worldwide is on the MSM [men having sex with men] community, along with the commercial sex workers. We fear that people from the MSM community who came to take care of healthcare needs may prefer to be invisible again.”

Dr Dilip Mathai, vice-president of the AIDS Society of India, said in an interview in the Times of India, “The homosexual act will not disappear but the community seeking help will reduce drastically.”

The Supreme Court judgment quoted data from 2006 furnished by the ministry of health and family welfare, indicating that of the estimated MSM population of 2.5 million in India, 10 percent are at risk of HIV infection.

The Supreme Court has placed the onus of changing the existing law on parliament. Activists do not hold much hope that parliament will move swiftly when only about five months are left for the next general election. They fear that apprehensions over a conservative backlash may hinder any positive action.

However, several of the ruling Congress party’s representatives have said a review petition should be encouraged with a greater number of judges. Representatives of some other political parties have also expressed outrage at the verdict.

Meanwhile activists vow to continue the struggle for recognition. “The court has overturned a verdict, it hasn’t overturned a movement,” said Malobika. “We’ll overcome the hurdle at one time or another.”

The Supreme Court has extended its ban on clinical trial of 162 new drugs till Dec. 16, 2013. Credit: epSos.de/ CC BY 2.0

By Ranjita Biswas
KOLKATA, Nov 5 2013 (IPS)

More than 2,500 Indians have died in the course of clinical trials in recent years, government figures reveal.

According to an affidavit filed by the health ministry in the Supreme Court in response to a petition by health NGOs, there were 80 deaths due to clinical trials between January 2005 and June 2012. Between July 2012-August 2013 nine more such reported deaths occurred, making this total 89, according to the petitioner Swasthya Adhikar Manch (SAM), a health rights forum. Compensation was paid in 82 cases.

The ministry also admitted that 2,644 people died during clinical trials of 475 new drugs from 2005 to 2012.

SAM challenges this number of 80 deaths said to have been caused by clinical trials – among the rest who are said only to have died during the course of the trials and not as a result of the trials.

“No standard protocol was followed, there were no post-mortems; so how can they arrive at this figure?” Amulya Nidhi of SAM told IPS. Compensation is paid only if a death was said to have been caused by the clinical trial.India has become a hub of clinical trials for drugs over the last few years, mostly by pharmaceutical companies from abroad. Allegations of short-changing participants and of unethical practices have been rampant.

Government documents also say that around 11,972 “serious adverse events” (excluding death) were reported from Jan. 1, 2005 to Jun. 30, 2012, of which 506 were said to have been caused by clinical trials.

These figures have raised new opposition to the prevailing practices for conducting clinical trials.

India has become a hub of clinical trials for drugs over the last few years, mostly by pharmaceutical companies from abroad. Allegations of short-changing participants and of unethical practices have been rampant.

Responding to growing concerns by health activists, the ministry of health and family welfare set up a six-member expert panel under the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CIDSCO) in February this year. The panel has recommended that these trials should only be carried out in accredited centres.

It recommended also that the principal investigator and the ethics committee of the institute where the trial is being carried out should be accredited.

Compensation is another contentious issue that is being dealt with in the new directive. Between 2010-2012, the Drugs Controller General had approved 1,065 clinical trials. Activists say that taking advantage of poverty, illiteracy and lack of awareness, pharmaceutical companies or middlemen, even doctors, often connive to deny compensation to participants when due.

The report clarifies: “Compensation need not be paid for injury or death due to totally proven unrelated causes. In all other cases of death or injury/disability, compensation should be paid to the participant or his legal heirs.” The base amount and other calculations are still being worked out.

“The report deals with the issues we raised,” Chinmoy Mishra, coordinator of SAM, told IPS. “Now we must see these recommendations are properly implemented.”

Public health is in the hands of state governments in India’s federal system. The panel report noted that for implementation all stakeholders must be brought to the table.

SAM, based in Indore in Madhya Pradesh state, is a platform of various agencies working on issues related to health and health rights. It had filed a petition in court in January 2012 on the need for transparency in clinical trials in India.

The Economic Offence Wing of the state government had recorded 36 deaths between 2006-2010 during clinical trials in Madhya Pradesh state alone, SAM noted.

The National Human Rights Commission has pointed out that illegal trials were conducted on women in 2011 for a breast cancer drug.

In 2006, an investigation by health advocacy organisation WEMOS and the research organisation Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), both based in Amsterdam, prepared  an overview of 22 unethical clinical trials around the world; eight of them were in India.

According to the health ministry, more than half the clinical trials are conducted by foreign pharmaceutical companies and the rest by clinical research organisations and domestic companies.

SAM is petitioning for equal compensation across the board throughout the whole country, and according to international standards.

“Informed consent from each participant is a mandatory prerequisite for a clinical trial,” the CIDSCO report emphasises. This is an area that unethical practitioners have been taking advantage of, Mishra said.

“For example, the 16-page directive on this count is translated into local Hindi language that fits into a single page, and that too improperly translated. In Indore, at least 95 percent of participants did not know what it was all about and signed.”

On the other hand, lack of regulation has driven away some pharmaceutical companies from India to other countries such as Malaysia, China and Singapore. Many also hope that the new norms will bring these companies back, because this is a multi-billion dollar industry.

To reduce bureaucratic tangles, the present 12 drug advisory committees will be replaced by a single technical review committee for speedy clearance of applications.

The panel has said that the first phases of all clinical trials of new drugs developed in India, and to be marketed in India, will need to be carried out within India. Drugs undergoing trials outside India can undergo parallel phase II and phase III trials in India after carrying out a safety assessment through phase I trials.

Demands have been raised for greater benefits to those undergoing trials. “Some of the drugs that are clinically tested in India could be so expensive that the average person would not be able to afford it,” Sandhya Srinivasan , health journalist and researcher in Mumbai, told IPS. “So what’s the use of such tests in this country?”

Mishra said that “we are not against clinical trials in the country. But there should not be exploitation of participants. Human life is precious.”

According to documents submitted by the Drugs Controller General of India in the Supreme Court, between January 2005 and June 2012 India approved 475 clinical trials for “new chemical entities” not used as drugs elsewhere in the world.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has extended its ban on clinical trials of 162 new drugs till Dec. 16, 2013, directing the government to ensure a “foolproof” mechanism for regulating the experiments by pharmaceutical companies.

India’s matinee idol Shah Rukh Khan and his wife Gauri Khan announced recently that they had their third child through surrogacy. Gossip columns said that Gauri Khan, a mother of two teenagers, had tried to conceive for the last couple of years and at last resorted to surrogacy.

The announcement, coming after intense speculation by the media, caught fans by surprise; this is something not openly discussed in Indian society, least of all by a celebrity. But the veil of secrecy surrounding surrogacy was lifted earlier by another Bollywood celebrity, Aamir Khan, who with his director wife Kiran Rao went for a surrogate baby in 2011.

Doctors specialising in IVF (In Vitro Fertilisation) say that celebrity endorsement has suddenly made it fashionable among the swish set.

But to many in small towns and slums, surrogacy has become familiar for the possibility of earning money through carrying a child for another couple. The clients are usually non-resident Indians (NRIs) and white couples from western countries where commercial surrogacy is illegal.

The mothers are often ignorant and illiterate, and prone to exploitation in this ‘unorganised sector’. There is no legal framework to protect them.

The 2012 report ‘Surrogacy Motherhood: Ethical or Commercial’ by the Delhi-based Centre for Social Research (CSR), found that about half of the surrogate mothers surveyed were paid between Rs 300,000 (4,900 dollars) and Rs 400,000 (6,500 dollars). Of those interviewed, 68 in the capital, Delhi, and 78 in the financial capital Mumbai said they were working as domestics earning around Rs 3,000 (50 dollars) a month.

“But often that’s half the story,” CSR director Ranjana Kumari told IPS. “The woman gets a small instalment at conception. If she has an abortion, she doesn’t get anything. In case of unhealthy pregnancies, abortion pills are given by doctors to terminate the pregnancy, and surrogates often think it is a miscarriage. In absence of any regulation, poor women often get exploited.”

“Commissioning parents” – as they are known in the business – pay on average a total of Rs 1.2 million (20,000 dollars) for a surrogate baby (more if twins are born). Much of this money goes to the Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) clinic, agents and lawyers. “Most often the woman gets about half of what is promised,” Kumari says.

Another study last year by SAMA – Resource for Women and Health, a Delhi-based NGO – corroborates Kumari’s observation. “The surrogates were not given information regarding the various procedures or tests conducted in the course of the treatment,” said the report conducted in Delhi and Punjab states.

By way of contracts, the report says, surrogates said that “they had `signed papers’… without any negotiation or discussion…the document, in English in all cases, was not read by the surrogate or her husband; nor was it read out to them and they were told only verbally what it states.”

But ART clinics are now mushrooming. According to CSR, the surrogacy business in India is worth more than 500 million dollars a year.

Unemployment or low-paying jobs and the resulting struggle to run households were cited to SAMA as some of the reasons behind ‘renting the womb’. Women felt that “along with their husbands they bore the responsibility of paying off debts, or buying a house,” SAMA found.

“We are not against surrogacy but against the rampant commercialisation of surrogacy which leaves the woman getting the short shrift,” Kumari told IPS.

She added that though doctors warn against it, mothers who already have had two or three children go for more IVFs than recommended, and this affects their health. “Are they just production machines?”

Activists and health professionals have been demanding regularisation of ART clinics to ensure better monitoring. The first draft of an updated bill was drawn up back in 2008, R.S. Sharma, deputy director of the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), told IPS.

A new Assisted Reproductive Technologies Bill 2010 is under the consideration of the health ministry, he said. The bill has to be approved by various ministries before going to the cabinet.

“The bill will oversee the registration of IVF clinics. Clinics operating as banks (which source surrogates) often lead to vested interests. Now one will have to make a choice between a clinic and a bank,” Sharma told IPS.

Among guidelines to safeguard the mother’s health and stop commercialisation is the requirement that “the surrogate mother has to be between 21-35 years and be a mother already of one. Only two deliveries will be allowed through IVF, and that too at two years’ gap between each.”

ICMR is also preparing a national registry with details of the clinics, Sharma said. He has proposed creation of state boards to better monitor functioning of the clinics.

Kumari told IPS that a new study by her centre in collaboration with the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi is in the offing.

“Next, we will launch advocacy campaigns. We need a proper law to stop exploitation of these women by various sections. Sometimes even the family members are involved, coercing them to conceive for monetary benefit.”

An acid survivor in Bangladesh is rebuilding her life with help from the Department for International Development (DFID). Credit: Narayan Nath/FCO/Department for International Development (DFID)/CC-BY-2.0

By Ranjita Biswas
KOLKATA, India, Jul 16 2013 (IPS)

Preeti Rathi was just 25 years old when she passed away in a Mumbai hospital exactly a month after a man threw acid on her while she stood waiting on a railway platform.

Rathi had travelled from India’s capital, New Delhi, to work as a nurse at INHS Ashwini, the naval hospital in south Mumbai. Despite closed-circuit television footage of the railway platform on which the attack took place, and massive protests launched by her family and activists, her assailant still remains at large.

Rathi’s is not an isolated case. The last few years have seen hundreds of Indian women and girls in cities across the country become the victims of acid attacks.

Those who succumb to their injuries invariably die a painful death – acid eats into the skin, resulting in wounds that quickly become infected and cause septicaemia and other fatal conditions.

Survivors, meanwhile, end up with scars that often last a lifetime, and many live out their days hiding what many described to IPS as their “deformed” faces and bodies from horrified gazes.

Though there is a dearth of official data on the issue, reports conducted by independent researchers and rights groups show that acid attacks are a gendered crime, with young women being the primary targets.

The attackers, more often than not, are men whose romantic overtures were spurned.

In India, a largely patriarchal society that is on the cusp between conservatism and modernism – and where the aspirations of young girls and women to secure an education and find employment are supported by national economic development plans – hundreds of men feel slighted by women’s newfound independence.

Unable to bear what they perceive as an insult to their “masculinity”, many seek revenge by physically harming women, in an attempt to reclaim their authority.

Eighteen-year-old Chanchal Paswan, hailing from the central state of Bihar, has a face that resembles nothing but melted flesh, the result of an attack that was supposedly “provoked” by her protesting against sexual harassment by four men.

Up until now, acid attacks have simply fallen under the general rubric of crimes against women, which numbered 244,270 in 2012 and included such atrocities as rape, dowry death (women killed or driven to suicide by in-laws to extort an increased dowry) and trafficking of women and girls, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

The eastern state of West Bengal accounted for 12.67 percent of these crimes, while its capital, Kolkata, ranked the third most dangerous Indian metropolis for women, behind Delhi and Bangalore. As such, the number of acid attacks in Kolkata is estimated to be higher than in many other cities around this country of 1.2 billion people.

Subhas Chakraborty of the Kolkata-based Acid Survivors Foundation India (ASFI), told IPS the organisation recently moved a Right to Information (RTI) petition with the West Bengal government in order to glean the real number of attacks against women in the state.

“There were only 56 recorded cases, and 77 victims, between 2006 and 2011,” Chakraborty said, adding that the actual number of incidents was likely far greater.

In contrast, a study by the Avon Global Center for Women and Justice at the U.S.-based Cornell Law School found 153 cases of acid violence reported in Indian newspapers from January 2002 to October 2010.

The Campaign and Struggle Against Acid Attacks on Women (CSAAAW), meanwhile, compiled a list of 65 cases in the southern state of Karnataka between 1999 and 2008.

CSAAAW is credited with helping a young woman named Hasina Hussain seek justice after her former employer, Joseph Rodrigues, poured sulphuric acid on her when she quit her job in his company in 1999 at the age of 19. Even with the backing of the NGO, it took the Kolkata High Court seven long years to finally sentence Rodrigues to life imprisonment.

Activists demand action

C J Pragya, from the southern city of Bangalore, no longer flinches at the thought of showing her face, once considered beautiful but now covered in scars, in public. Far from hiding from her plight, she launched an organisation known as stopacidattacks.org, a platform from which she is running a major anti-acid attack campaign.

For years, activists have been demanding that existing laws be strengthened and acid attacks given their due attention by government agencies.

Seven years ago, the Supreme Court suggested that the government draft a “complete and comprehensive” law to tackle this menace, according to Chakraborty.

But it took the brutal gang rape of a young medical student on a moving bus in the middle of New Delhi on Dec. 16, 2012, and the ensuing wave of protests, to finally push the government to fast track passage of the Criminal Law Amendment Act in April 2013.

The reform ushered in sweeping changes to laws that claim to protect women against violence, and made provision for harsh punitive measures against those who violate women’s rights.

Acid attacks quickly came under the ambit of the new law, which itself resides under the Indian Penal Code (IPC 326 A&B).

Punishment for acid attacks now includes a minimum of 10 years’ imprisonment, extendable to a life term, while “conviction on voluntarily throwing or attempting to throw acid with the intention of causing damage will incur a penalty of five to seven years,” with a fine that could go up to roughly 16,600 dollars, according to the text of the amended Act.

The fine will be used to pay for the extensive surgical procedures necessary for facial reconstruction. Sonali Mukherjee, a young girl from the eastern Indian city of Dhanbad, for instance, has had to undergo 22 operations since she was attacked in 2003, according to Chakraborty.

Still, money alone will not compensate the families for the long-term trauma of acid attacks. Rehabilitation remains a major problem for survivors, with many poor families unable to afford the extended treatment required for a full psychological recovery.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court recently directed the Punjab government to formulate a policy that would facilitate free treatment, including counselling, for acid attack survivors.

Easy access to acid

While rights activists welcomed the IPC 326 provisions, they are disappointed that the amended law makes no mention of restrictions on acid sales, drawing attention to the fact that a bottle of sulphuric, hydrochloric or nitric acid can be obtained for as little as 30 rupees (half a dollar) from almost any corner store.

Supreme Court Lawyer Kamlesh Jain told IPS that the law would not make a difference until this fundamental problem was addressed.

As early as 2006, rights advocate Aparna Bhat filed public interest litigation (PIL) in federal court demanding a ban on over-the-counter acid sales.

Bhat was representing Laxmi, a victim who ended up scarred for life after a spurned lover flung acid in her face. Bhat contended that the absence of a comprehensive regulatory mechanism made the corrosive substance easily attainable by the assailant, a claim that has found echo among social researchers who blame the large number of attacks on the cheap price of the weapon.

On Jul. 9, the Supreme Court of India warned that it would ban the sale of acid unless the central and state governments immediately regulated its supply.

Women in India are using the Internet to break taboos on female sexuality. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

By Ranjita Biswas
KOLKATA, India, Jun 11 2013 (IPS)

When 30-year-old Rita Datta (not her real name) decided on a whim to take a computer literacy course, she fell through the metaphoric looking glass into a virtual reality where the most taboo subject in India was transformed into the most simple and natural topic of conversation: sex.

A housewife in the eastern Indian state of Kolkata, Datta says the Internet has helped her find answers to questions she never felt comfortable articulating. In the vast and anonymous world of cyberspace, she has interacted with thousands of women who, like herself, are finally overcoming the stigma attached to women’s sexuality.

“Now I can talk about my needs, my body and my feelings, which I have never done before,” she told IPS.

With over 137 million Internet users, India has the third largest number of active users, after China and the United States, although penetration remains low. But that is changing: while urban netizens made up 77 percent of users a decade ago, recent research indicates that 34 percent of those trolling the net today come from towns with fewer than 500,000 people.

But according to Mumbai-based sociologist and feminist activist Manjima Bhattacharjya, women of a certain class are beginning to carve out nooks online where they can safely seek vital information about contraceptives, interact with people of the opposite sex “without the surveillance of society and express their own opinions on a range of issues, including sexual violence and harassment.”

Since sex education is virtually non-existent in Indian schools – with biology teachers skipping past chapters on reproduction, and textbooks prepared by authorised agencies being “recalled” for containing “objectionable content” – these forums are becoming more crucial than ever.

During a two-year research project called EROTICS (Exploratory Research on Sexuality and the Internet) conducted by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), Bhattacharjya found that, compared to other countries studied during the 2008-2010 period – Brazil, Lebanon, South Africa and the United States – the subject was severely under-researched in India.

Still, she and a handful of academics, professors and activists have begun to unearth common trends that suggest the Internet is empowering women.

“I was particularly struck by the number of ‘mommy bloggers’ – middle class women who appeared to be actively and critically thinking about everything from child sexual abuse and reproductive rights to care work and the gendered division of labour,” Bhattacharjya told IPS.

She also pointed out that the Internet has created crucial fora for discussing gender and sexual orientation in a country that only decriminalised homosexuality in 2009, and where 73 percent of the population believes it should still be illegal.

She highlighted the case of a young man who was struggling with depression and the desire to be a female. It was not until he found information about gender dysphoria online that he finally sought professional help, shared it with his family, and underwent sex-change surgery.

“Now she has a blog online to help other people with gender dysphoria,” Bhattacharjya said.

Women activists have been quick to leverage the increasing number of female netizens for online campaigns.

The famous Pink Chaddi Campagin (Pink Underwear Campaign) – a non-violent protest movement spearheaded by the Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women in response to an attack on female patrons in a pub in Mangalore, a city in the southern Indian state of Karnataka – used Facebook to rally some 40,000 female protestors back in 2009.

On Valentines’ Day of that year, the Facebook group called on supporters to send pink underwear to the office of the right-wing Hindu group, the Sri Ram Sena, whose leader had threatened to “take action” against unmarried couples found together that day. As hundreds of pairs of ‘chaddis’ flooded his office on Feb. 14, the politician was forced to enter into talks with the activists.

In the last few years the number of blogs dedicated to queerness, sexuality and gender identity has increased rapidly, with some directories recording over a hundred blogs dedicated to building networks and safe spaces for LGBT rights activists.

Malobika, founder-member of the Kolkata-based lesbian support group Sappho for Equality, says the advent of the Internet has been a salve for the loneliness created by intolerant social attitudes towards sexual identity.

Forced by such attitudes to live ‘underground’ until 2004, Malobika worked with six like-minded women to form the rights group in 1991. Today, she told IPS, Sappho is the only visible lesbian platform in Kolkata, a state of five million people, offering services like a helpline that receives roughly seven calls a day, and a resource centre frequented by academics and researches.

Still, Malobika was quick to point out the disadvantages of operating in cyberspace, where heterosexual men “curious about lesbians, transgenders and bisexuals” use false IDs to penetrate the online community.

Bhattacharjya echoed this warning, stressing that women face harassment, stalking and abuse online, much as they do in the real world. “Women are also acutely aware that every action online could be monitored, and so go out of their way to avoid behaviours that could affect their offline realities.”

Other obstacles impeding women’s access to cyberspace, according to Prabha Nagaraja, director of programmes at the Delhi-based TARSHI (Talking about Reproductive and Sexual Health Issues), include a lack of privacy to engage in sensitive issues, since most families share computers.

Cultural stereotypes also reinforce the false notion that women are somehow “technologically impaired”, resulting in many women, especially middle-aged and older women, shying away from the Internet as an alien or even hostile tool, said Bhattacharjya.

“On the other hand,” Nagaraja told IPS, “more and more smartphones have Internet available on them, making it easier for women to explore the virtual world.”

According to Mary Meeker, a partner at the investment firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), India will have 67 million smartphone subscribers by the end of 2013, recording a 52 percent growth rate from the previous year.

It is as if they have given up hope of ever seeing their girls again. They are an Adivasi family from a remote village in Assam state in India, nestled in the Himalayan foothills. The picturesque surroundings belie the hollowness they feel within.

Three of their four daughters have been missing for the last five years.

“Poor and ignorant, the parents simply don’t know where their girls have gone,” says Sunita Changkakati, executive director of the Assam Centre for Rural Development, an NGO in Guwahati.

The Adivasis, an aboriginal tribal people whose ancestors the British had recruited from central India to work in the tea plantations of Assam, are particularly vulnerable to the menace of human trafficking, though women from tribal areas in lower Assam and others from neighbouring states in the northeast have been falling victim too.

Wily agents stalk the countryside, hunting for gullible prey. The bait most often is the promise of big money, the lure of city life or the prospect of escaping a humdrum existence. Some even dangle the prospect of marriage, hooking impressionable girls under the pretence of having fallen in love with them, ‘marry’ them in secret, and instead of a promised honeymoon, deliver them to prostitution.

Accordingly, in the last couple of years, there have been media reports of girls from the north-east of India and other parts of Assam being rescued from brothels in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and elsewhere in the country."The mother was obviously lying, but what could we do?”

According to the records of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the state government of Assam, the recorded number of girls trafficked for sale outside the state started with a minuscule four in 2005, went up to 37 in 2009, 54 in 2011, and 79 in 2012.

These numbers could be far from the real story, since parents seldom register cases of their missing daughters.

Not all the missing girls end up in the sex trade. Bizarre as it may seem, many of them, some under the age of 18 – the stipulated year of adulthood under the Indian Constitution – find themselves getting married to much older farmers in the faraway Indian states Punjab and Haryana.

Female foeticide and infanticide have skewed the male-female sex ratio in these two north Indian states, leaving men in these villages with no women to marry. Hence, the practice of ‘buying’ consorts from middlemen. Getting a bride from the north-east may have been unheard of earlier. No longer so, never mind if there is little in common between their cultures.

Some of the other abducted girls find themselves in the domestic help circuit in India’s metropolitan cities. Recruited by affluent families, “they are often underpaid, working almost as bonded labour,” says Stephen Ekka of Pajhra (meaning ‘spring of life’), an NGO in Tezpur in the north-eastern state Assam.

“Trafficking doesn’t mean only those sold into the sex trade,” says Ekka, who himself belongs to the Adivasi community. “Anyone who is unwillingly confined to a work-field can be considered as being trafficked.”

Rajeeb Kumar Sharma, general secretary of the Global Organisation for Life Development (GOLD), an NGO in Guwahati, tells IPS about the case of a domestic worker recruited by a Delhi-based agent who complained of stomach pain, and when taken to a hospital was found to have had an organ removed without his knowledge. The hapless man was told that since so much expense had been incurred on his behalf, he had to make good the loss by bringing another able-bodied person from his village.

Poverty and unemployment are the primary factors driving the villagers to desperation; the lack of social mobility and of education and opportunities for young people compounds the problem.

Assam’s famous tea plantations, a major source of employment for the state’s populace and crucial contributor to its revenue, have been facing hard times in recent years. To cut costs, many have started employing only casual labour, especially during the tea plucking season. It wasn’t unusual in this scenario for girls to go out looking for work, even if their parents remained unaware of where the money was actually coming from.

Even in the remotest village, the name ‘Delhi’ now evokes instant recognition and is perceived as the magic word to open a world of untold riches. Often, a girl ‘from Delhi’ comes visiting, attired in ‘fancy’ clothes and heavy make-up, and bragging about how much she earns. It’s often a ruse, the surface glamour a lure to recruit other girls.

Trapped thus, many girls set out to follow a dream, and return after visiting a nightmare, if they return at all. Changkakati of the Assam Centre for Rural Development recently came across a girl in a village who was barely 14 years old and nursing a six-month-old baby. “When we asked her mother about it, she said her daughter was married. The husband (she said) was apparently from Bihar, but since he had a shop in Delhi, he could not be with them. The mother was obviously lying, but what could we do?”

NGOs like the one Changkakati works for or Ekka’s Pajhra, among many others, have been working in the past few years to raise awareness about human trafficking, helping rescue victims and rehabilitating them. Helping them in their efforts are local student bodies as well as organisations such as the All-Adivasi Women’s Association of Assam, headquartered in Majbaat near Udalguri town. Their members have easy access to the local community, making it easier to keep tabs on girls missing in the area.

NGOs in the state have taken to implementing Ujjwala, a scheme to combat human trafficking, particularly of girls sold into prostitution. Vigilance committees look out for possible cases of trafficking, and work in close collaboration with the police to rescue girls. In 2012, 78 girls were admitted to shelter homes.

Rehabilitating the rescued girls, however, is difficult, especially if they have returned after a few years, due to social stigma. “Some girls have come back with really bad health conditions,” says Pajhra’s Ekka. “They look depressed too but do not want to talk much about what may have happened to them.”

The state CID department has set up 14 anti-trafficking units. Special vigil is kept at railway stations.

Kaziranga National Park in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, is home to the largest population of one-horned rhinos in the world. Credit: Ranjita Biswas/IPS

By Ranjita Biswas
GUWAHATI, India, Apr 21 2013 (IPS)

The year 2013 opened on a disastrous note for the one-horned rhinoceros of the northeastern Indian state of Assam. At the beginning of April, officials in the Kaziranga National Park (KNP), one of the last retreats left in South Asia for these endangered creatures, reported that 17 rhinos had been poached.

The ungulate is also found in other protected reserves throughout Assam, namely the Manas National Park in the foothills of the Himalayas on the border of Bhutan, Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary, not far from the Assamese capital Guwahati and Orang National Park, which sits on the northern banks of the Brahmaputra river, one of the largest in Asia.

But most of the killings happen in KNP, home to the largest population of one-horned rhinos in the world. The park’s resident tiger population, along with its tall grasses, marshlands and moist tropical forest areas that support a high density of biodiversity, earned it the title of a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1985.

“We sometimes find a rhino…still breathing, its horn cut and taken away…Once we found a mother killed and the baby helplessly circling around her.”
When the British colonialists declared Kaziranga a game sanctuary in 1916, there were an estimated 20 rhinos left in the park. Large-scale destruction of rhino habitat across the Indo-Gangetic Plain and rampant hunting had all but wiped out the animal, with the few remaining creatures confined to pockets in the northeast.

A period of relative calm between 1983 and 1989 saw the total number of rhinos killed reach 235. From that point onwards, officials reported only sporadic poaching.

Herculean efforts by wildlife conservationists has today brought the number of rhinos up to 2,329 according to the recently concluded wildlife census of India (2013). This number is a slight increase from the recorded population of 2,290 in 2012, Sanjib Kumar Bora, conservator of forests for KNP, told IPS.

Now, poaching seems to be making a comeback, with officials fretting over the number of corpses they find scattered throughout the park.

The word rhinoceros is derived from the Greek “rhinokerōs” meaning “horn-nosed”. This horn, which is a mass of agglutinated hair, is exactly what has marked this creature out as a target, since a single horn weighing 750 grammes fetches as much as six million rupees (111,000 dollars), according to reports last year.

This exorbitant price is justified by the aphrodisiacal properties ascribed to the horn, which is used in traditional Chinese medicine. Many Chinese hold the belief that emperors used powdered rhino horn to great effect in the harems of ancient China, though modern researchers and scientists have debunked this myth, and prescribe the horn only for certain life-threatening fevers and convulsions.

Numerous international campaigns have been unable to put a complete stop to the practice, and this latest killing spree has park officials worried.

As soon as rangers receive word that poachers are on the prowl, they rush to the scene. Often, they are too late. An official speaking under condition of anonymity told IPS, “We sometimes find a rhino…still breathing, its horn cut and taken away…Once we found a mother killed and the baby helplessly circling around her.”

KNP is currently divided into five ranges: Bagori, Kohora, Agoratoli, Burha Pahar and Northern Range. Plans to add two additional protected areas are in the works, making a total of seven. The sprawling layout of the 860-square-kilometre park is perhaps one of the reasons for the rise in poaching.

“We are running short of staff,” D. Mathur, additional principal chief conservator of forests in Assam, told IPS. “With the additional areas added to the original Kaziranga Park and the animal count rising, there are some bottlenecks in keeping vigil.”

Regular and casual forest guards now number roughly 700 in total, but Bora says even these are inadequate to effectively patrol the large reserve.

Poachers have worked out an efficient system that enables them to evade the watered-down park security force.

Locals from the surrounding area known as “spotters” connive with sharpshooters from neighbouring states like Nagaland, Bora said. These are professional snipers, who live in the park for up to three days at a stretch in pursuit of their quarry, striking in the early morning hours or at the onset of dusk, often using guns with silencers so as to remain undetected.

That it is a creature of habit makes the rhino easy prey – the animal always returns to the same spot to defecate, so a spotter simply has to find a pile of dung and lie in wait.

Poachers are emboldened by the “escalation of the price of the horn in the international market, especially in Vietnam”, Suresh Chand, principal chief conservator of forests for Assam, told IPS.

But money is not the primary form of exchange — sources say the horn is frequently bartered for arms and ammunition for separatist rebels in this insurgency-ridden region. Smugglers favour a route through the town of Moreh in Manipur state, or mountain passes in the surrounding hills.

The recent killings have made the central authorities sit up. According to Chand, “We now have a Forest Protection Force deploying a battalion of 535 personnel exclusively… in Kaziranga. They work with Home Guards (an official paramilitary force), who man the 157 outreach camps across the park.”

Home Guards usually carry .303 rifles but since the poachers now have access to weapons like AK-47s, the central government has agreed to provide arms and ammunition in the AK series and park rangers are now awaiting the delivery of the first batch.

In 2010, the Assam government set a trend by giving forest officials the licence to fire on poachers without fear of criminal proceedings.

For the first time, Bora said, sniffer dogs are being used to track down poachers in Kaziranga. Unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) are also being used to track movement of poachers, he added.

Conservationists say that the impending monsoon season (June to September) could spell disaster for the animals, as heavy rains will force rhinos to emerge from the marshlands into the open plains for safety, putting them directly in the poachers’ line of fire.

While shoot-at-sight orders are now effectively keeping rhinoceros poachers at bay, an aggressive weed is threatening the one-horned ungulate in one of its last retreats – the Kaziranga National Park (KNP) in eastern Assam state.

Grazing rhino picks out grass from thorny, pink-flowered mimosa weed. Credit: Ranjita Biswas/IPS

Originally introduced in the tea gardens surrounding the KNP as a nitrogen-fixer, mimosa (Mimosa diplotricha) has spread through the 430 sq km park, edging out the tall grasses on which the rhino and other herbivorous wildlife feed.

“Unless this problem is solved, it’s going to destroy Kaziranga by smothering the grassland. Without the grasses how will these animals survive?” rued Chinmoy Dhar, a deputy ranger.

Mimosa adversely affects grasses and other native plant varieties by drawing on water and other mineral nutrients in the KNP that is rich in biodiversity with its wetlands and mix of tropical evergreen and moist deciduous forests, earning it the status of a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1985.

KNP fauna include elephants, Indian bison, swamp deer, hog deer, sloth bear, leopard cat, jungle cat, wild boar, pythons, monitor lizards and more than 500 species of birds.

Thanks to the abundance of prey, KNP also has the highest density of tigers in the world with 32 of the Bengal tigers species per 100 sq km, according to a study carried out in 2010 by Assam’s forest department.

But, KNP’s most famous resident is the one-horned rhino with a third of the estimated 3,000 individuals found here, most of the remainder being in Nepal. A few pairs survive in the Lal Sunehra Park in Pakistan, indicating the once vast stomping grounds of the lumbering animal.

For long, KNP was in the news for the relentless poaching of the rhino for its horn, used in Chinese traditional medicine and believed to have aphrodisiacal qualities.

Better surveillance and tougher laws have, however, reduced the incidence of poaching over the last decade. Where 48 rhinos were killed by horn hunters in 1992, the number of killings reduced to 14 in 2009 and nine by 2010.

Forest rangers, armed with shoot-at-sight orders and given immunity from prosecution since 2010, shot dead nine poachers in that year and another three in 2011.

But, such is the demand for rhino horns from Chinese buyers that even the take-no-prisoner policy is insufficient deterrence. In January, a rhino was killed on the western range of the KNP, though the poachers could not take away the horn.

“Sometimes we face poachers from (insurgency-hit) neighbouring states like Nagaland or Manipur who work in connivance with local men. They carry sophisticated weapons which we lack,” says Surajit Dutta, KNP director.

“Some of our camps are in far corners of the park and manned by only three to four forest guards. We need groups of at least six to seven guards in each camp to face these criminals,” said Dutta.

Forest guard Kanak Chandra Nath says the rhino’s clean habits contribute to its own undoing. Pointing to a huge pile of rhino dung, he said: “Rhinos don’t soil everywhere. They pick certain places and this makes it easy for the poachers to track them.”

Despite continued poaching attempts, KNP is regarded as a success story for conservation in India, though that record is now under threat by the mimosa weed.

Various safe methods to weed out mimosa are being tried out with scientific support from the Rain Forest Research Institute (RFRI) in Jorhat town.

Director of the RFRI, N.K. Vasu tells IPS: “From my long experience (he was director of the KNP previously) I find that manual eradication is the only way to stop the creeper; other methods might damage the diverse animal species in the park.”

Vasu believes that mimosa spread can be contained “if eradication is done twice a year for two to three consecutive years.”

Dutta says that manual eradication is a good solution but carrying it out through the extensive park would involve a considerable amount of money.

KNP is closed to the public during the monsoon season from April to November, mainly because much of its area along the banks of the Brahmaputra river gets flooded and waterlogged.

The tourist season brings another set of problems, a deluge of noisy visitors who take up residence in the numerous guesthouses that have sprung on the edge of the KNP.

“Tourism entails certain responsibilities, but most people don’t follow the rules of the wild. Often they are noisy, they think it’s a zoo,” Dhar said