control wild elephants by talking to them, but
not everyone is convinced. Nevertheless,
Nirmala Toppo, a 14-year-old Catholic girl, has
become a celebrity in
Odisha after she used her skills to lead a herd of 11
elephants back to jungle after forest department
officials failed to chase them out of Rourkela town.
This happened in June. Panic gripped the industrial
city one night when the elephants entered
residential areas from nearly dense forests.
In June, panic gripped the industrial city of Rourkela
one night when a herd of wild elephants, including
two calves, entered residential areas from dense
forests nearby.
When the forest department officials failed to get
the elephants to leave the city, they sought help
from Nirmala, native of Jharkhand, Odisha's
northern neighbor.
"When the herd entered the city, we tried our best
to contain its movement. We managed to make the
herd go into the local football stadium, but we were
not sure how we could drive them back to the
forest. It was a difficult task," admitted forest
official P K Dhola.
As a last resort they turned to Nirmala.
"We knew of a tribal girl who lived in Jharkhand,
who talked to elephants and was able to drive them
back. We called up her father and she arrived along
with some other tribal people from her village,"
Dhola said.
Nirmala acted as a real-life "pied-piper" when she
managed to drive the herd back to the forest, much
to the relief of the residents.
She walked many miles with the herd, guiding it out
of town, in the process getting blisters on her legs
which later turned septic.
"The infection is now gone and my wound has
almost dried up," she told BBC Hindi from her
hospital bed where her treatment was organized by
the local Red Cross Society.
The Odisha government paid the girl for her
services, Dhola said.
Nirmala says she talks to the herd in her local tribal
dialect – Mundaari – and persuades the animals to
"return to where they belong."
"First I pray and then talk to the herd. They
understand what I say. I tell them this is not your
home. You should return where you belong,"
Nirmala says.
It all started after wild elephants killed her mother.
"I then decided to learn the techniques to drive
them away," she explained.
Her father and a group of boys from her village help
in her work.
"We surround the herd. Then I go near them and
pray and talk to them."
However, some are skeptical about Nirmala's
methods.
Rabi Pradhan, an Odisha-based social activist, says
there is no scientific evidence that wild elephants
can understand what a human says. Pradhan says
the girl claims to talk to the herd in her own tribal
language, but there is no basis for the elephants to
follow what she says.
However, others explain such behavior by saying
that tribal people and wild animals have been
cohabiting in the forests for ages. "In Jharkhand, we
call Nirmala a lady Tarzan. Whenever marauding
elephants enter a village or destroys crops, the local
forest department officials never turn up. It is then
that the villagers approach Nirmala for help. And
she is able to successfully drive away the herd after
talking to them," said Niel Justin Beck, a member of
the district council in Jharkhand's Simdega district,
Nirmala's native place.
According to him, tribal people in Jharkhand know
how to deal with wild animals with whom they have
coexisted for centuries.
More than 3,000 elephants roam the forests of the
Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh states,
stretching, but over the past decade the region has
become the epicenter of man-animal conflict.
According to the ministry of environment and
forests, more than 200 elephants and some 800
people have been killed in the last 10 years.
The region is rich in mineral resources and
encroachment of their habitat due to increased
mining and industrial activity have caused problems
for the movement of wild elephants.
A violent Maoist insurgency in the region has also
added to the problem, say experts.
Forests provide easy shelter for the armed
insurgents and large parts of the forests are heavily
mined – frequent encounters between the security
forces and rebels have also disturbed the wildlife
habitat, they say.
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