In 1979, a royal hunting party from Saudi Arabia cooly passed a sign on their way to the Thar Desert in Rajasthan. It stated, in capital letters, that the hunting of the Great Indian Bustard, among other animals, was banned. The Arabs, accustomed to power, drove past it in their jeeps, carrying falcons, rifles and Persian carpets.
It didn’t help that they had crossed over from Pakistan, or that they carried long-range binoculars in a region near the Pokhran nuclear testing site. A public outcry was raised, and the Indian Foreign Office served an injunction against the Arab hunters. But weeks later, journalists found that the hunt was still on. The power of Arab oil was evidently greater than that of Indian conservationists. Soon, the Arabs were requesting permission to land their Boeing 727 jets in the desert.
The Great Indian Bustard has long been a victim of its times. Once touted to become India’s national bird, it now numbers fewer than 200 in the subcontinent. Where in the past, the state could not protect it against Arab hunters for fear of the clout of oil money, today, the bustard is caught up in the messy debate between ecology and development.
At the same desert the Arabs hunted in, the bird now faces a form of security check as it travels between India and Pakistan. Great Indian Bustards, which fly a migratory route between the two nations, are now fitted with radio-tracking backpacks in India before they take the flight to Pakistan.
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