Do Tigers like Politics?
Aishwarya Maheshwari1* and Rajeev
Maheshwari2
1Department of Wildlife Sciences, College of Forestry,
Banda University of Agriculture and Technology, Banda-210001, Uttar
Pradesh, India (ORCID: 0000-0002-6338-4254).
*Corresponding author:
aishwaryamaheshwari@icloud.com
2Independent Political Analyst, India.
In the geopolitically globalised world, political decisions and
anthropogenic activities have a direct influence on the survival of
wildlife and their interactions with human (1, 2 ). In such
scenario, continuous decline in wildlife has generally been as
“non-political” amongst political parties (2, 3 ). In the
disastrous deterioration of wildlife, increase in number of a globally
threatened flagship species (such as tiger Panthera tigris )
appears a rare phenomenon in India (4 ). Moreover, such recovery
of a large predator entails with healthier natural ecosystems, as a
whole and indicates sensible and timely political decisions.
Wildlife conservation is a global environmental concern and inherently
politically complex in most parts of the world (5, 6 ). Political
parties are the key actors shaping wildlife policies both at national
and international level (2, 7 ). As relation between wildlife and
politics has for long been a close one in India (3, 8 ). The
pre-historic Hindu mythological beliefs are evident with association of
the Gods and Goddesses with different vahanas (animal vehicles)
in antiquity and epics such as Ramayana and Mahabharata gave protection
to wild species (8 ). In recent decades, world has come to
recognize the central importance of wildlife to humanity in terms of the
crucial contribution it makes to the cultural, economic, spiritual and
social well-being of communities worldwide (9 ). For example,
recent recognition of India’s tiger census in 2018 has earned the
Guinness Book of World Records for being the world’s largest camera-trap
wildlife survey and based on the recent knowledge accumulated over the
years, India has over 80% of world’s tiger population (4, 10 ).
Tiger population in India has remarkably increased over the previous
decade, with over 110% since 2006, systematic all India tiger
estimation exercise revealed recent numbers ranging around 2603 to 3346
(4 ). The knowledge that such nationwide exercises acquire is made
available to policy makers so that accountable decisions can be made
through integrated approach of the politics, science and society.
The purpose of this article is to assess the relationship between ruling
political party and estimated tiger population in India. In particular,
we seek to determine if and how tiger numbers vary in terms of the
ruling political party in the tigers occupying states in India. In
addition, Jhala et al. (2019) stated, “Sustained conservation efforts
through continued “political will” have resulted in an increase in
tiger numbers”, and we attempted to assess ruling parties and tiger
population dynamics with this article.
We compiled data on tiger population and the ruling political party in
20 states of the respective year, in which the tiger population report
was released. We considered the ruling party, whose Chief Minister is in
the office, in case of a coalition government is formed. Furthermore, if
elections were taken place in the same year when tiger population repot
was released, two parties were considered for that particular year.
There have been four cycles of all India tiger estimation project since
2006, estimated tiger populations 1411, 1706, 2226 and 2967 in 2006,
2010, 2014 and 2018 respectively. If there are elections or any change
of the ruling party government, we credited both the parties in that
particular year except the President’s rule (as it doesn’t belong to any
political party).
In 2006, of 20 ruling political parties, the Indian National Congress
(INC) was leading with 6.5 tiger occupied states (comprising total tiger
population 630) followed by the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) (four states
with 356 tigers) and the CPI (1.5 states and 33 tigers). Similarly, in
2010 the INC was leading with five tiger occupied states with 424
tigers, closely followed by the BJP ruling 4.5 states with almost
doubling the tiger numbers (815) in comparison with the INC ruling
states (adding two prominent BJP ruling states Uttarakhand and
Karnataka) and the Communist Party of India (CPI) (2 states with 141
tigers). Once again, in 2014, the INC was leading with 6.5 tiger
occupied states (1175 tigers), closely followed by the BJP’s five ruling
states (500.5 tigers). In contrast, in 2018, the BJP taken over with
huge victory with 8.5 tiger occupied states (1688.5 tigers) and the INC
trailed in three states with 603.5 tigers (Table 1).
We acknowledge that our approach has possible short-comings such as
selection of the ruling political party for the same year in which the
tiger numbers were released, whereas the tiger estimation exercise might
have been taken under the political regime of previous another party.
This problem is difficult to avoid in assessing party specific political
agenda would be focusing on a broad policy dimension. Our results
suggest that there is no relationship between major ruling political
party and tiger population in any of the 20 states in India. Tiger
appears to be apolitical, as this study did not approach identity in any
instance. Perhaps our most important implication pertains to the
ideological foundation of each apolitical party in periodically
monitoring tiger population.
This brief study contributes to the nascent literature on bringing
together both tiger numbers and ruling political parties by presenting a
new approach that we applied to 20 tiger harbouring states in India.
Unlike Western political system, green parties are lacking in India and
wildlife has difficulties with getting involved in political discourse.
However, India has achieved its target of doubling the tiger count four
years ahead of 2022 (4 ) which reflects favourable conservation
policy and “political will” for tigers in India.
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Table 1. Tiger harbouring states and their numbers during four phases of
All India Tiger Monitoring exercise.