West Bengal assembly elections | Poll promises mean little to 'tiger widows' of Sundarban

Amlamethi (Gosaba): Rita Mandal spent 72 anxious hours, hoping against hope that her husband Srinath would return from the fishing trip in Sundarban.

Srinath along with a few others went to Pirkhali forest to catch fish and prawns when a tiger killed him. No body parts were recovered. His companions returned with torn pieces of bloodied cloth and a harrowing tale.

Rita’s story is not an isolated one. Jamuna Mandal went to the jungle along with her husband Kalipada and sister. The trio was capturing crabs and fish lowering their heads in the water, when the predator struck Kalipada. As the tiger vanished into the jungle, the two women fled for their lives.

The Vidhyadhari river in Sundarban.

In this village in Gosaba across the fearsome Vidyadhari river, there are many such stories. As many as eighty families lost someone to the Royal Bengal tiger. Exposed to the elements most of the time, they struggle to make ends meet.

Life in Sundarban is hard. With limited livelihood options, many are forced to go to the creeks next to the tiger territory without any permit and get killed. Consequently, the families don’t get any compensation or other benefits.

“I didn’t get any money because my husband went to the core area. Now I go to Andhra Pradesh and Kolkata for work,” said Rita, sitting in her mud-hut.

Amlamethi village across the Pirkhali forest within the Sundarban tiger reserve is not the only such village. There are several such villages in Kultali, Pathar Pratima and Basanti blocks.

Because many tiger attacks occur in restricted core areas where fishing and honey collection are illegal, official records reflect only a few deaths per year, while local NGOs and unions report far more with some estimates showing 3,000-4,000 tiger widows across the delta.

The world’s largest mangrove delta spans across India and Bangladesh. The Indian Sundarban is spread over a core area of 1,700 sq km whereas the buffer zone is 885 sq. km. The official permit, known as a boat license certificate, is issued only to a few hundred fishermen and honey collectors.

But out of economic desperation and lack of alternate livelihood, thousands venture into the core areas where human entry is illegal. “Some of them are attacked by the tigers. Having lost their earning husbands, the widow mothers lead a miserable life with their children,” Amal Nayek, a retired school teacher who runs Champa Mahila Society, an NGO, told DH.

In January 2024, the Calcutta High Court ruled that the families of tiger attack victims in the Sundarbans couldn’t be denied compensation, even if the victims entered restricted core areas illegally. Since then a few have received an ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh, but many others are struggling with the paperwork.

Unfortunately, these are not among the election issues at Gosaba constituency which Trinamool Congress won in 2016 and 2021 with more than 50 per cent vote share.

The story is the same in other assembly segments in Sundarban such as Basanti, Pathar Pratima, Kakdwip, Sagar, Canning Paschim and Canning Purba. CPM won Kultali in 2016 but AITC snatched it back in 2021. This time, there has been an undercurrent of BJP in all these segments.

“But our lives won’t change. All the promises before polls barely mean anything to us,” noted Banita Mandal, another tiger widow.