22 Asia The EconomistFebruary 29th 2020
2Banyan The trumpets sound
A
s tropical duskturns to night
outside Galgamuwa, fireflies are not
the only points of light around Lalith’s
little rice paddy, the last field in the valley
waiting to be harvested. On one side,
bonfires are blazing in neighbours’
fields. On the other, Lalith’s nephew is
shining a torch out of one of the impres-
sive tree houses that dot this part of the
country. And in the middle of his paddy,
seated around embers that are boiling a
kettle, Lalith and friends are playing a
furious card game that resembles whist.
Two dozen men are helping in all: this
is Lalith’s watch against elephants
emerging from the forest at night. Grow-
ing rice is like laying out dinner. A herd
of cows and their calves can snaffle a
year’s livelihood in a matter of minutes.
Sri Lankans’ relationship with wild
elephants is as ancient as it is complex.
Curiously biddable and formidable in
war, the animals were of great value to
Sinhalese kings, who used them to build
imposing monuments. The Portuguese
brought the first Sri Lankan elephant to
Europe: fed on cake, it died of dyspepsia
and lies buried in the Vatican Gardens.
British settlers used elephants to clear
forest for their tea plantations.
As John Gimlette, a writer on Sri
Lanka, puts it, elephants have served as
tractor, limousine, warhorse and execu-
tioner. Today very few remain enslaved,
but 6,000-plus wild animals roam the
countryside. There, “human-elephant
conflict” has always been an issue. Hu-
mans have been chasing away elephants
for as long they have been growing crops;
elephants have long flattened both. So
how to explain an alarming increase in
human-elephant collisions in just the
past couple of years? Until recently 200-
250 elephants died at human hands
every year. But in 2018 the toll climbed to319, and to 386 last year. Over the same
period, human fatalities have risen sharp-
ly, to 114 last year.
Prithiviraj Fernando, who runs the
Centre for Conservation and Research
(ccr), says it is the baneful consequence of
a kind of arms race. Finding that increas-
ingly fearless elephants could not be
chased away with shouts or stones, villag-
ers in recent years have used huge fire-
crackers, subsidised by the government,
which sound like bombs going off. The
elephants have learned to ignore them.
They deal with electric fences by, for in-
stance, uprooting trees and dropping them
on the wires. Some law-breaking villagers
pepper animals with shot, set snares to
catch trunks or legs, or plant explosives in
pumpkins that mangle animals’ mouths
and lead to horrific deaths by starvation.
Only last week, in another area near
Galgamuwa, a villager rigged a fence to
mains electricity, killing a bull. Mean-
while, under a recent minister, Sarath
Fonseka, the Department of Wildlife Con-
servation began calling for more guns to
drive away elephants. Field Marshal Fon-seka found a similar approach effective
against humans when he commanded
the Sri Lankan army during the brutal
civil war that ended in 2009.
Peppered, taunted and maimed,
elephants have unsurprisingly grown
more aggressive, readier to charge when
threatened than to run away. Relocating
peccant pachyderms to national parks,
another strategy popular with poli-
ticians, is also ineffective. Elephants, as
Mr Fernando puts it, do not recognise
park boundaries. They will sometimes
travel hundreds of kilometres to return
to their home range.
Persecution has proven disastrous for
both species. Clearly, something needs to
be done. In just under half of Sri Lanka,
elephants and people live near each
other. Meanwhile, fragmentation of
forests and development stand in the
way of the alimankada, the elephantine
pathways that criss-cross the island and
that the animals insist on following.
Permanent electric fences around
national parks and fields are of no help to
man or beast. ccr’s solution is to protect
settlements but fence fields only during
the growing season. After the harvest,
the land is for the elephants. Around
Galgamuwa, villagers have long been
receptive to a more flexible approach,
even if politicians do not see what is in it
for them.
The animals seem to appreciate a
kindly touch. In the middle of his paddy,
Lalith and his neighbours demonstrate
their technique, passed down for gener-
ations. They sing to the animals: “Go
away, little babies, go away. But once
we’ve gathered the harvest, anything we
leave is yours.” How on earth, Banyan
asks, can that work? It just does, Lalith
replies. After all, he adds, “We’re still
here, and so are the elephants.”Of all Sri Lanka’s conflicts, the one with elephants is the oldestbetween stints in prison.
That experience led Mr Anwar to change
his ideological stance as well as his party.
About 69% of Malaysia’s 32m people are bu-
miputras: Malays and other indigenous
groups. A further 24% are ethnic Chinese
and 7% are Indian. Bumiputras have tended
to support umno because it champions
and defends policies to boost them eco-
nomically. Bersatu does too. Much of the
rest of the population resents the privi-
leges accorded to Malays. The Democratic
Action Party (dap), another component of
Pakatan Harapan, represents Chinese in-terests. pkr, although led by Mr Anwar, a
Malay, has members from all of Malaysia’s
biggest ethnic groups and makes noises
about multiculturalism and meritocracy.
The ideological tensions among the
parties in Pakatan Harapan worsened as
Malay voters turned away from the govern-
ment. That is probably a function of the
struggling economy, which grew by only
3.6% year-on-year in the last quarter of
2019, its slowest pace in a decade. Shortly
after the coalition won power, 63% of Ma-
lays thought the country was “going in the
right direction”, according to the MerdekaCenter, a pollster. Within a year that had
plummeted to 24%. The coalition has lost
five by-elections to opposition candidates.
Claims from umno and the other big oppo-
sition party, pas, that Pakatan Harapan was
neglecting Malay voters clearly resonated
with the electorate. That, in turn, seems to
have alarmed Bersatu and the defecting
members of pkr.
Dr Mahathir is presenting himself as a
unifying figure again, who could rise above
all this infighting. “If I am allowed, I will try
to form an administration that doesn’t side
with any party. Only national interests will