Families sleep on machaans to escape elephant attack

RANCHI: The fear of elephants is forcing a few families of a Jharkhand village to leave their houses and spend the cold November nights atop machaans.
A few families of Lohra Toli in Gitildih village in Bundu, roughly 30 km from Ranchi, are abandoning their huts after sunset and seeking refuge on makeshift wooden platforms on tree branches. The machaans, originally set up by Janki Munda, Parikshit Lohra and two other families to keep track of the elephants looking to feast on crops, are now serving as their beds from 6 pm to 3 am after the jumbos razed their houses multiple times in the last three years.
"Four families live and farm next to a dense forest patch. The patch is used by the elephants to move across Bundu and Tamar blocks," said Fekla Ganju, mukhiya of the Humta Gram Panchayat. "The families had come to us many times in the past few months, asking for help. We requested the forest department to set up watch towers and provide us with fire-crackers to chase the elephants away. But nothing happened," Ganju added.
According to Ganju, the families finish their work in the fields before sundown and climb the machaans. They brave "winter nights with a tarpaulin overhead and a bed made of hay and climb down for daily chores at 3 am". Often, the children are intimidated by the trumpets of elephant herds in the night.
Jharkhand, which has a resident elephant population of 800, is steadily becoming a conflict-zone between the humans and jumbos. The frequent run-ins, which are leading to casualties, damage to property and crops, are being caused by the rapid afforestation along the traditional elephant corridors that lead into West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. A herd of eight elephants ransacked the neighbouring hamlets of Dalkidih and Bhorgadih and damaged two houses in the wee hours of Wednesday.