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The Cheetah in the Forest: A Tribute to MK Ranjitsinh

The arrival of the Cheetah on the Indian soil after seven decades is a major landmark in the conservation story of India. The very same forest which saw the complete decimation of this species, and the near extinction of many others is now witness to a new kind of revival. It required political statesmanship, judicial scrutiny and oversight, diplomatic initiative, administrative acumen, and last but not the least the professional expertise of dedicated foresters and conservationists to get the Cheetah back to the national park. It bears mention that postindependence, the first genuine effort towards wildlife conservation was made in 1952 with the establishment of the Indian Wildlife Board, which was constituted to centralize all the rules and regulations pertinent to wildlife conservation in India, which until then differed from state to state. In 1956, this Board passed a landmark decree that accorded all existing Game Parks the status of a Sanctuary or a National Park. However, it was not until the passage of Wildlife Protection Act in 1972, followed by the and Project Tiger in 1973 - the largest wildlife conservation project of its timethat India’s commitment to wildlife protection received the legal, administrative, and financial backing from the Union government. This has been covered extensively in Jairam Ramesh’s book: Indira Gandhi ~A Life in Nature. The Act is being amended to make it even more effective.

But the introduction of the Cheetah by Prime Minister Modi in the seventy fifth year of India’s independence is like breaking the gravity’s rainbow. It heralds new opportunities and possibilities. Unless the forest service, and its wildlife wing was professionally trained and committed to manage this transcontinental relocation action, the Cheetah project may not have seen the light of the day for the Supreme Court was quite clear protocols must be followed. While Project Tiger would be identified with the then PM Indira Gandhi, and the relocation of Cheetah with Prime Minister Modi, let us take a moment to pay our tribute to the officer who made this possible. The one person who thought about it, worked on it, drafted legislation, and moved the Supreme Court was Dr. MK Ranjitsinh Jhala of the 1961 batch of the IAS in the MP cadre. A scion of the erstwhile royal family of Wankaner. As collector of Mandla, he helped save the central Indian Barasingha from extinction. As secretary, forests, and tourism, in MP, he established fourteen new sanctuaries, eight new national parks and more than doubled the area of three existing national parks, a total addition of over 9,000 sq. km. to the protected areas of the nation. He was the prime architect of the Wildlife (Protection) Act; was director of wildlife preservation twice and additional secretary in the Ministry of Environment and Forests. He has been an integral part of several landmark projects including translocation of Asiatic Lions from Gujarat, protection of habitats of Great Indian Bustard and reintroduction of Cheetah in India.

The Cheetah was officially declared extinct in India in 1952. Thereafter, in 2009, the ‘African Cheetah Introduction Project in India’ was conceived. However, it is only after a decade of deliberation that further developments have occurred on this front. The Supreme Court set up a three-member committee to guide the reintroduction plan and to guide the reintroduction plan and gave its final approval in January 2020. Subsequently, after a delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the ‘Action Plan for Introduction of Cheetah in India’ was released in 2022. Incidentally, it may not be out of place to mention that the FRI was also the host institution for the training of four batches of the ICS – from 1940~1943). Among those trained with the ICS were the Maharaj Kumar of Sikkim who was a close friend of Nari Rustomji who, along with Verrier Elwin was a key adviser to the then Prime Minister Nehru on India’s frontier policy, especially with respect to tribes and forests.

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY THE AUTHOR ARE PERSONAL

SANJEEV CHOPRA  The writer superannuated as the Director of the LBS National Academy of Administration, India’s apex training institution, and curates Valley of Words: An annual Literature and Arts festival at Dehradun, where he currently resides

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