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Audio file details
Camel Crisis
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Creators
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WRENmedia - Producer
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Subject
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Agriculture, Development
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Description
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Suggested introduction
The camel is an incredible animal. It is able to survive on poor grazing in dry places where cattle and goats would die of hunger. Not only that but the camel is productive. Its milk, meat, its hide and hair, not to mention its pulling or carrying power are important sources of income to those who keep them. In areas of the world - such as Kenya - where there’s frequent drought, camel keeping is on the increase.
So it’s amazing to find that camels are excluded from agricultural policy. Why don’t planners and politicians see the potential of camels? This is the question being asked in Africa and Asia. In India, which once had a third of the world’s camels, the camel population is crashing and hundreds of thousands of camel breeders, farmers and camel cart owners could lose their livelihoods as a result.
Susie Emmett reports from Pushkar in northern India, the biggest camel market in the world on what camel breeders and keepers are doing to save the camel before it’s too late.
TAPE IN “SFX (Camels on sale at Pushkar, Rajasthan) No livestock market …
TAPE OUT… the camel will not be there.”
Closing announcement: Camel breeder Raji Vishnai ending that report on the poor recognition given to working camels in India.
For further information:
Lokhit Pashu-Palak Sansthan
P.O. Box 1
Sadri 306702
District Pali
Rajasthan
INDIA
Fax: +91 02934-285086
Email: lpps@sify.com
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Contributors
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Feature - Other
LPPS - Funder / Sponsor
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Date created
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29 / 03 / 2005
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Date available
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Start 29 / 03 / 2005
End 29 / 03 / 2006
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Type
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Feature
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File details
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Format audio/mpeg
Extent 456 secs
3567 bytes
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Language the audio is in
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English
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Country
Region
City
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India
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Rights
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Agfax interviews are provided free of charge on the condition that WRENmedia is credited as the source of the material. If you have any queries please contact - post@wrenmedia.co.uk
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Script
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SFX: Camels on sale in Pushkar.
Emmett: No livestock market anywhere in the world prepares you for Pushkar. The desert hills just outside the town are covered in camels. It’s estimated that at the market this year there are more than 60,000 camels for sale, brought here across the deserts of northern India by the camel breeding tribe, the Raika. One customer Lalu Ram from the city of Jaipur knows what he is looking for in a camel.
Ram: (Vernacular) He is looking for colour, for build and stature, the body structure.
Emmett: The body, the structure of the camel.
SFX: Camels grunting.
Emmett: There are may be some people who feel that the time of the camel is nearly finished, what do you say to that, what do you believe?
Ram: (Vernacular) The prices for diesel and petrol are going up and the small farmers have to rely on camel only.
Emmett: But this traditional trade in working camels is under threat. A ruling by the Supreme Court of India means that grazing animals including camels, are no longer allowed to graze in the forest reserves. Suddenly an important source of wet season food for camels has disappeared. And against all their tradition the Raika camel breeders are selling female camels at Pushkar not for work but for slaughter.
SFX: Street noises, temple bell rings.
Emmett: There’s the temple bell. I’ve come here this evening because this is the Raika Temple and a meeting is being held of the camel breeders in which they want to explain to me some of the difficulties that they are facing. So away from the busy street now and up inside the temple.
SFX: Bell rings.
Jamalpara: (vernacular) I am very sad that I have to sell my camels to slaughterhouses. I have no problem with camels, I can keep it, I am still making profit. But there is no place for me to go, there is no place for me to take my camel for grazing. Most of the areas are now closed, be it a reserved forest or a wildlife sanctuary.
Emmett: This is camel breeder Sanwal Jamalpara.
Jamalpara: Even then if I go there and pay the forestry department they never give us or issue us any receipt. Every month a new officer comes, he asks for 100 rupees, then he is gone or transferred. The next officer comes and he asks for it again and so the cycle goes on and on and every time we pay more and more money and all money goes to the corruption. We never get any kind of receipt or any kind of confirmation. We remain the thief.
SFX: Rajasthani music.
Emmett: Access to forests is not the only problem. Camel milk is not mentioned in India’s Dairy Act so trading it is illegal. And in urban areas camel carts are often seen as a nuisance rather than a key part in trade between farmers and people buying their produce. It seems that camels and camel-keeping are largely ignored by policymakers. Ilse Koehler-Rollefson of the NGO, LPPS has been working with the Raika for the last 10 years. She believes that for the rural economy, the role of camels needs to be recognised. The question is - how?
Rollefson: We all know that politicians need votes and there are too few people I think involved in camel breeding to really get the politicians excited over it. Unless that situation changes and there is really an outcry from the Rajasthani people as a whole, politicians are not going to move.
Emmett: Perhaps farmers can help. For, as Hanwant Singh Rathore of LPPS tells me, settled farmers need camels, or rather they need the fertiliser, the manure, that the camels leave behind when they graze on the leftovers from harvest.
Rathore: They said you bring your herd to our field.
Emmett: So they invite them?
Rathore: They invite them.
Emmett: So they invite the camels to come?
Rathore: Yes invite them. They said if you sit here we provide you with food, tea and also sometimes opium and sometimes they give 100kg per day of salt to the camel.
Emmett: Salt?
Rathore: Yes salt.
Emmett: Because the camels like to lick salt. And in return the farmers, they get fertiliser?
Rathore: Fertiliser. Camel dung is useful for 3-4 years they use on field and also camel urine is good for fertilisers. Like most of camel breeders they have system, migration system, they are not staying more than 2 or 3 days in one place. So after 3 days they change to another place. So every day farmers make contact with them. So they provide them with fertiliser.
Emmett: So it’s a good relationship?
Rathore: Yes a good relationship.
Emmett: Policymakers need to see this link between pastoralism and agriculture. But camel-keepers are also realising that to influence policymakers they have to raise their voice. Something that is difficult for pastoralists or isolated rural communities to do, as Bagduram Raika explains.
Raika: (Vernacular) It is also a pity that even if we try to form a society, if we try to form a forum so that we can raise our political voice, it is not practically possible. We cannot leave our animals in the field because we always move around. And this is one thing that the political parties and the government is taking advantage of.
Emmett: You could be forgiven for thinking that what’s happening with camels in India is not very relevant to other farming people in other places, but it is. It is all about how well policymakers see and understand the rural economy. It is about how good we are at using natural resources wisely and sustainably. And in India, as elsewhere, time is running out to get the balance right. A last word to camel breeder Raji Vishnai but first Ilse Koehler-Rollefson.
Rollefson: I think the situation might get worse first and then it will improve again. But I hope it’s not going to be too late then, because the young generation is rapidly losing interest and if you have a break, you know, in the continuity of camel breeding a lot of indigenous knowledge is going to be lost. So if the knowledge is lost then it is going to be very difficult to revive the camel.
Vishnai: (Vernacular) The time will come that petrol, diesel and all other means will disappear and at that time we will need the camel and the camel will not be there. End of track
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