Why can we not have a vigorous group of security guards for our wildlife? Why can they not be equipped with GPS devices (why bother being a pretend IT superpower if we cannot do this), with goggles that can help pick out poachers in the dark (you can buy them in any department store in the US), with telescopic rifles of the automatic or semi-automatic variety (you can order them cheap from the bazaar in Peshawar), with sturdy shoes to trudge in the forest (ordinary tourists seem to be able to afford these), with vehicles that can move fast along jungle tracks (we do have a world class automobile industry, don’t we), with mobile telephony that can help them access each other (we have the fastest growing mobile telephone industry in the world — but I guess we choose not to leverage it)?

The mandarins of Delhi will tell you that they cannot do all these because forests are, constitutionally speaking, a ‘state subject’. This is the ultimate irrelevant red herring. If the Centre can use the power to give or withhold grants to states under its Urban Renewal Mission, why not have a similar forest protection mission and provide incentives to state governments to upgrade their forces of forest guards? Of course, where there is no will to act, it is best to appoint another committee.

I have a suggestion for the readers of this newspaper. Please keep detailed daily, weekly, monthly diaries. Archivists and historians of the future will find these records of the citizens of India of 2008 useful. After all this was the year when we all watched and acquiesced in the extinction of our national animal. Our grandchildren can watch the tiger only on Discovery and National Geographic channels. That must suffice for them.

... contd.