Human-Animal Conflicts Rising In India And It's Not Even A Poll Issue Nor Part Of Manifesto

One of the biggest problems facing the ever-growing population is food - with the existing agricultural land becoming increasingly unable to produce enough for the ballooning population, more often than not forestlands adjacent to human settlements are being cleaned up to make way for agriculture.

This expansion has resulted in wild animals losing their natural habitat and often straying into human settlements in search of easy prey like domestic animals.

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From Assam to West Bengal, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala the past few years have seen an increase in the number of human-animal conflicts, often with deadly consequences.

People living in the periphery of the forests often complain about the threat they and their properties face from 'invading' elephant herds to leopards and tigers. Environmentalists and wildlife activist point out the increasing number of animal kills due to the increasing conflicts.

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Here are some figures to show how bad the situation is getting - between 2015-2018, 1,713 people and 373 elephants were killed in conflicts.

In Karnataka, 45 people are getting killed in human-animal conflicts, every year - four deaths per month.

Since 2010, 761 people and 249 jumbos have lost their lives in conflicts in Assam.

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Despite being an issue that spans across geography and affecting millions, human-animal conflicts rarely make it to political discourse or election campaign.

In fact, in the 16th Lok Sabha, as per parliamentary records, only seven questions related to human-animal conflict were asked, the majority of them were regarding the amount of compensation for those killed in man-animal conflicts.

In October last year, a Supreme Court bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta had asked the Centre to set up a task force to take steps to reduce human-animal conflict, especially involving elephants.

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"There is a problem (human-animal conflict) and at some point in time, you have to solve that problem. There are problems related to elephants, rhinos, lions, tigers. Either you can have some kind of a multi-purpose body or have specific bodies to deal with them," the bench said.

So far only in a few constituencies like Wayanad, from where Rahul Gandhi is contesting the issue has even come for discussion. In other places like Banipure in Karnataka residents and activists have tried raising it, but found them buried under other 'important topics'.

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