The Last Straw

THE SUN HAS JUST risen around 7 AM in Khimel, a village in Rajasthan’s Pali district, when Mewari’s daughter anxiously searches for her mother. By 7.20 AM the anxiety has given way to full-blown panic and she begins a plaintive bleating which resonates through the fallow fields of the village. Thirty-eight-year old Madha Ram, who is kneading dough, pauses and reminisces: “This is what I dreamt of every night when I was away. Me, with the herd, in a field, getting ready for the day. I can’t live any other life.” Madha Ram is a Raika, a Rajasthan Tribe which breeds camels. Mewari and her daughter are part of a herd of 150 camels he now tends to with five others. There was a time when each of the six owned herds of more than 100. “The camels are dying, as is the Raika way of life. We are the last generation doing this. All our children are working in restaurants and malls in big cities,” says Gamna Ram, a grizzled 60-year-old co-owner of the herd, as he begins to untether their camels. Mostly, men of his generation too have abandoned this way of life. Some like Madha Ram, who worked at an Ahmedabad eatery for two months, came back. “I dreamt of camels every night. Not my children, my wife or my mother, but camels, so I came back. We will see the end of our days together,” he says.

For centuries now, the one-humped camel has been the unofficial mascot for Rajasthan. A sturdy, no-fuss ungulate mammal that has fought for its kings as part of cavalry brigades, ploughed the field of ordinary people and, according to Raikas, nourished their community with its milk during a particularly bad drought in 1937. And now, it seems, the beast’s watch is ending.

In October 2019, the findings of the 20th livestock census were released. There was no good news expected. But what the report revealed shocked everyone: between 2012 and 2019 the number of camels in the state fell by 34.7 per cent, from 326,000 to 213,000. At its peak in the 80s, camel population in the state was upwards of 700,000. “The official figure is 2.13 lakh but we believe that the actual numbers are lower,” says Hanwant Singh Rathore, Secretary, Lokhit Pashu-Palak Sansthan (LPPS), an NGO that has been working for pastoralists and camels for nearly two decades now. Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh have also seen their camel population drop in the same period.

THE CAMEL POPULATION has been falling in Rajasthan steadily since the late 1990s due to a variety of factors ranging from mechanisation of agriculture to modern forms of transport, shrinking foraging land but the death knell, as it were, was sounded by a Bill that was ironically meant to address the problem. In 2015, the state cabinet passed the Rajasthan Camel (Prohibition of Slaughter and Regulation of Temporary Migration or Export) Bill. The mouthful title notwithstanding, its missive could be distilled into one line: prohibit the sale and export of camels outside the state. “If I can’t sell my camels, then why would I breed them?” asks Varda Ram, a Raika from the Latara village in Pali. The community had only sought a ban on the sale of female camels.

Like most stories, this one too does not have a clear beginning. From modernisation to government policies, all have contributed to eroding the Raika way of life, which like that of all pastoral communities was based on interdependency. Raikas were once camel breeders for royalty. Their origin myth traces their roots to Shiva and his wife Parvati. They believe they were created by Shiva to take care of camels created by Parvati. That is why killing or consuming camels is taboo for them. In fact, any commerce involving camels used to be forbidden among Raikas, be it the sale of its milk or wool. In Camel Karma: Twenty Years Among India’s Camel Nomads, Ilse Köhler-Rollefson, a veterinarian turned anthropologist who has worked with camels and Raikas for nearly 25 years now, writes about her discovery how Raikas could trace a lost camel from its footprint. “The relationship [between camels and Raikas] is built on mutual trust and respect. When you see them with their herd, you realise how deeply their lives and sense of identity is intertwined with the animals,” she says. Raikas sell only the male camels; this was the only source of their income. Be it as draught animals or for transport, male camels were a prized asset. At its peak, a camel could command as much as Rs 50,000 at traditional fairs like Pushkar.

The monsoon-dependent agriculture cycle in Rajasthan leaves the fields lie fallow in winter and summer, making these foraging grounds for a Raika’s herd. Camels are known to eat over 30 kinds of shrubs and plants such as desi babool, uñt-kantala and neem leaves. “The fields are kept clean and the droppings are high-grade manure. Raikas and their herds live on the fields for months. Apart from the use of the land, we give them grains and food products,” explains Prakash Bhumaram, a farmer in Khimel, on whose fields Madha Ram and Varda Ram are staying these days. Their villages as well as other members’ of their herd are quite a few kilometers away. “This too used to be a generational agreement. My father and grandfather have also brought their herd to this field but few people have need of us now,” says Gamna Ram. A typical day in the life of a Raika and his camels while foraging begins at 5 AM and involves covering as much as 40 km daily on a round trip in search of food for the herd. The nights are spent sleeping in the fields, under the stars, for both man and beast. “We stay at the mercy and generosity of farmers. Even if we go hungry, we have to make sure our herd eats,” says Madha Ram. There are nights when the men subsist on camel milk. “If a child were to ever express a wish to follow in our footsteps, I would simply ask them, are you ready to sleep hungry on most days?”

TODAY BECAUSE OF better irrigation, farmers don’t rely on rains alone for a harvest, which means fields don’t remain fallow for foraging. Earlier during monsoons, Raikas would withdraw with their herds to forests and common pasture land for grazing but government regulations over the years have made this impossible now. The ban on foraging in the Kumbhalgarh Wildlife Sanctuary, for example, has hit Pali district’s Raikas hard. “As grazing areas become more and more scarce, it has impacted the health of camels including their fertility,” says Hanwant Singh of LPPS. Raikas now walk even to neighbouring Madhya Pradesh in search of good pastures.

The drop in demand for male camels from farmers as tractors became common only compounded their problems. The camel has steadily been reduced to a showpiece, to be trotted out only for tourists or during weddings. “That is when we started selling our female camels also,” says Jagnath Ram, 70, of Jojawar village. Jojawar and surrounding villages were the heart of camel country. The village, till even a decade ago, boasted of more than 5,000 camels. That figure has today plummeted to less than 300. “If there is no earning left, why should we continue with this way of life? We are expected to uphold a way of life makes some nostalgic but which is heralding death for us. Itna dukh kaun dekhe? (Who will want to deal with such hardships?),” says Rupa Ram who once had a herd of 100 camels. “They are all gone. Some died, some were sold,” he says. What no one in the community openly talks about though is that some of the distress sales, including of female camels, could have been for slaughtering too. It remains a sensitive subject even today for Raikas and bringing it up results in a chorus of angry denials. “Raikas have a saying that doodh becho, poot becho (selling the camel’s milk is akin to selling your son). We overcame that and didn’t ask too many questions when we were selling our camels. We don’t know what happened to them,” says Jagnath. Raikas along with civil society organisations had campaigned for a law that would at least stop the sale of female camels in light of this distress. What they got instead was a complete ban on sale or export. Violation of the law carries a jail term of one to five years and a fine of Rs 20,000.

2019 was the first time in the 150-year-old Jojawar that the village did not participate in the Pushkar fair. With his wizened face, shawl covering his shoulders and a traditional turban which identifies him as a Raika, Gamera Ram could be straight out of a Rajasthan tourism brochure. But he has no incredible tales to share. “Walking to Pushkar takes at least 10 days. After comparing the cost of travelling back and forth with a herd with what camels fetch, we decided that we will not go [last year].” His once-mighty herd of 150 camels has dwindled to eight. “Camels were my life, my identity. Now at this stage of my life, I am asked, who am I? What is my identity?” he says, voice cracking.

In 2018, only a little over 1,000 camels were sold in Pushkar. In 2019, Hanwant Singh staged a sit-in with other Raikas that eventually forced the state animal husbandry department to send a five-member committee to the fair site. The committee agreed to push for amendments to the 2015 Act and a follow-up meeting was arranged recently in Jaipur where Singh and Köhler-Rollefson met the secretary of the department.

Not one Raika Open met had their children following in their footsteps. The younger Raikas study till Class X at the most and leave for bigger cities to work in malls and eateries. Varda Ram says even if he forced his son to spend a night herding with him, the young man would sneak away in the middle of the night.

Hogad, Gamera Ram’s 32-year-old son, started working in an eatery in Bengaluru at the age of 15. Unlike elder Raikas who still wear their traditional outfit of a white angrakha and colourful turbans, the younger men all dress in trousers and sweatshirts. “Ask Madha Ram, why did he go to the big city? Because his wife used to harangue him to wear jeans pant,” jokes Varda Ram. This is wholly a generation shift.

It is increasingly difficult to find brides for young camel herders and breeders. Young Raika women refuse to marry them. “There was a time when we would wed our daughters into homes with big herds and now it is the complete opposite. Anyway, these younger men don’t even know their way around camels,” grunts Hura Ram, 70. The oldest of the herders in Khimel, he has spent the entire morning puffing away on a chillum. He doesn’t walk with the herd anymore but still shows up from time to time.

Köhler-Rollefson is fond of wearing clothes with camel motifs. During our meeting in her office near the Kumbhalgarh Wildlife Sanctuary, she is sporting camel-shaped earrings. “They are curious, they are gentle, they are affectionate and, interestingly, camels are matrilineal.” For her, the preservation of the population is important not just to save the Raika’s way of life but also because camels, as grazing animals, play an important role in maintaining the state’s biodiversity. Köhler-Rollefson believes there is still hope for the revival of the population, especially if the market for camel milk, which has been steadily growing, is tapped well. In 2016 the Food Safety and Standards Authority (FSSAI) operationalised standards for camel milk, giving Raikas a ray of hope. In 2013, Hanwant Singh and Köhler-Rollefson launched Camel Charisma, a social enterprise that, among other things, aims to make camel milk more easily accessible. Low in sugar and cholesterol and high on potassium, sodium and iron, camel milk is recommended for diabetics. Some studies also point out out its benefits for children with autism.

Raikas credit camel milk and its properties, which they believe are enhanced by the more than 30 varieties of shrubs and leaves the animal feeds on, with their good health and sprightliness. “We have a lot of people expressing interest, including global markets, but we don’t have the capacity to scale up as of now,” says Köhler-Rollefson. The kitchen at Camel Charisma is experimenting with various kinds of cheese made from camel milk, like feta and haloumi. Currently, Raikas sell the milk at Rs 60 a litre. Daily output depends on the number of lactating females in a herd. In 2014, Bibek Debroy, Chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, argued that camel husbandry was still unorganised and small-scale and logistical challenges facing milk collection from “widely dispersed” camel populations were immense. The Bharatiya Janata Party government in the state had promised a grant of Rs 5 crore to start a camel dairy but nothing came out of it. However, Aadvik Foods, set up in 2015 to sell camel milk powder, among other things, has been slowly making a name for itself.

As a landless pastoral community with little education, Raikas are quite aware of their political insignificance. They worry that political indifference and inaction may mean that camels will soon just be visible in zoos and are hoping for a solution soon. When a member of the herd is dying, Raikas turn its face towards the desert, for that is where they believe the camel’s eventual destiny lies. On some days now, Raikas talk about how they are all sitting facing the desert. But men like Madha Ram continue indefatigably, leading an astray Mewari back to her mewling calf, before setting off in search of rapidly disappearing foraging land.

camelsfarmerGujaratherdingMadhya PradeshRajasthanrural Indiavanishing