V Santharam - Session 01, 2020-05-11

(00:00:00) Early Life and Education V. Santharam was born in Cochin but moved to Chennai at the age of nine, where he spent much of his childhood. He became interested in birds through a relative of his who used to frequently take him bird watching in Chennai. Santharam remembered visiting the Vedanthangal Bird Sanctuary in the 1970s. He continued these bird watching expeditions when he visited Kerala too, he said.

He had never seriously considered pursuing Bird Studies as a career. It was only in the 1970s when he went to college, that he wanted to opt for the Sciences. However, since he did not have a science background, he could not opt for any of his college’s science courses and instead ended up taking Commerce, he said. It was his parents wish that he completed a B.Com from Madras University and get a job at a bank, he said. In his spare time, he enjoyed reading books, watching movies, and bird watching, he mentioned.

(00:04:25) The Madras Naturalist Society He then talked about his experience as a member of the Madras Naturalist Society, which started in 1978 in Chennai. He soon became a regular and active member of the Society and helped edit the Society’s journal, Blackbuck which started in 1985. Joining this Society was like a ‘dream come true,’ for him he said. It gave him the opportunity to meet and interact with people in the field of Natural History.

(0:06:00) Early Days Bird Watching During his spare time in college, Santharam remembered going to the Adyar estuary which was home to many species of birds. It was here that he did most of his early bird watching. He talked about some of the challenges of bird watching during the 1970s. First, there were very few organizations at that time that were studying birds in India, he said. Cameras, binoculars and field guides were not easily accessible at that time either, he said. People mostly took field notes and made sketches of the birds they saw, he explained. It took bird watchers months sometimes, to identify birds, he said. Salim Ali’s The Book of Indian Birds was very popular among bird watchers at that time, Santharam said.

He then moved on to talk about his contributions to Zafar Futehally’s Newsletter for Birdwatchers, which invited write-ups from even the most amateur of bird watchers. Santharam published papers in this periodical. His first paper was published when he was only 17 years old. He wrote extensively about his observations at the Adyar estuary, he said.

(00:11:20) Interactions The Madras Naturalist Society collaborated closely with the British Council, Santharam said. British Council hosted talks and film festivals on their premises, on behalf of the Madras Naturalist Society, Santharam said. These talks attracted many eminent natural historians and environmentalists. For example, Santharam recalled meeting ornithologist Salim Ali and wildlife photographer Madhaviah Krishnan when they attended a talk organized by the Madras Naturalist Society. The subject matters in these talks were very varied. Topics for these talks ranged from birds to mangroves to insects, Santharam said. These talks helped him sustain his interest in natural history, he added.

(00:15:17) In Chennai Since the Adyar estuary was quite close to his house, Santharam remembered visiting the place for most of his birding walks. Not only did he try and study bird biology, but he was also able to study bird behaviour and their nesting habits, he said. He was interested in exploring common species of birds since these were often not documented enough.

He also talked about the rapid urban development that was happening in and around Chennai during the 1970s and 1980s. These developments were greatly altering the city’s natural landscape and consequently many bird species’ natural habitat, Santharam explained. It was during this time that Santharam, along with some other naturalists and the Forest Department, began taking a keen interest in conservation efforts to help preserve Chennai natural environment in the face of rapid urbanization and industrialization in the city.

(00:18:57) First Jobs Santharam found his career options limited, having taken commerce at the undergraduate level. He joined a chartered accountancy firm as an intern first, but not finding this job particularly interesting, he left his position here to take up a job at the sales department of a book distributor.

He had always been interested in books, he said. This distributor often imported books from abroad. They had some of the latest books on natural history, conservation and bird studies, said Santharam. He began taking books from the distributors back home to add to his personal library collection, he said. Among the books he took back home was Madhaviah Krishnan’s book on wildlife photography in India and Salim Ali and S. Dillon Ripley’s Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan. Working at this bookstore kept his interest in birds alive, he said.

(00:24:00) Master’s Degree In Pondicherry University In 1987, Santharam joined Pondicherry University’s Department of Ecology (later renamed as the Salim Ali School of Ecology) for a Master’s in Ecology. Santharam recalled that Salim Ali passed away on the day Santharam went to write Pondicherry University’s entrance exam. He got through both the entrance test and the interview and joined the University in August of 1987.

His program had a very small group of students, he recalled. He maintained a good rapport with his teachers, he said. These two years were critical in his life since through this program Santharam was able to interact with many scientists in the field of ecology and officially get into the wildlife circle. At the end of his two years Master’s program, in 1989, Santharam stood first in his course. After completing his Master’s in Ecology, Santharam wished to work for a little while before pursuing a doctorate degree, he said.

(00:28:04) Working With IISc and the Bombay Natural History Society He learnt of an opening at IISc Bangalore’s Centre for Ecological Sciences. The Centre was doing work on the conservation of Asiatic elephants. Santharam then moved to Bangalore to take up this job. Bangalore was a nice city, then, he remembered. He continued his birding walks in Bangalore, he said. However, his work at IISc was primarily a desk job where he was tasked with managing databases. He did not find this position too exciting so left Bangalore to join the Bombay Natural History Society’s (BNHS) bird migration project at Sriharikota.

At Sriharikota he was able to participate in bird ringing activities, he said. He enjoyed being able to hold the birds in his hands, weigh, measure and ring them, he said. He worked with BNHS for four months, before deciding to pursue a PhD.

(00:32:02) Pursuing a Doctorate Degree Santharam left his project with the BNHS and returned to Pondicherry University in 1990, to pursue his PhD under Priya Davidar. He decided to study woodpeckers for his doctorate research, he said. Woodpeckers require old growth forests, he explained. His research could then have significant implications for wildlife conservation, he added.

Santharam did his fieldwork at the Peechi forest in Kerala. This was a relatively understudied area, he said. However, the forest here had many species of woodpeckers. Plus, the Kerala Forest Research Institute was near the Peechi sanctuary, where Santharam was doing his fieldwork, so he could approach the institute for help with his research, he said. Later, when it came to doing data analysis for his fieldwork, Santharam decided to move to the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON) and get some help doing this analysis from Ajith Kumar, who was working at SACON at the time.

(00:40:25) At SACON and BNHS SACON during this time was looking to hire research associates, Santharam said. SACON was doing a project looking at biodiversity in non-protected forest areas of Kerala. Santharam arrived at Coimbatore in 1994, participated in this project for a while but soon decided to quit SACON and pursue his independent research on the white bellied woodpeckers of the Western Ghats. After completing his independent study, Santharam worked with BNHS on a short project related to wetlands near Kanchipuram.

(00:50:25) Arriving At Rishi Valley In 1998, S. Rangaswamy invited Santharam to come head Rishi Valley’s Institute of Bird Studies. The two had interreacted before in the 1980s when Santharam had come to Rishi Valley to help Rangaswamy carry out a survey of the birds at the Rishi Valley School. Rangaswamy was very invested in nature, Santharam recalled. Rangaswamy used to take his students out frequently for bird watching walks, he added. Rangaswamy had begun a home studies course in ornithology in 1997, said Santharam. The course was designed to introduce birds to lay persons. It was a six month long correspondence course, said Santharam.

Upon receiving an offer from Rishi Valley, Santharam decided to move his family from Chennai to Rishi Valley in 1998. He felt a permanent position at Rishi Valley offered him more job security and also opened up good education opportunities for his two children. Apart from being the Director of the Institute of Bird Studies and Natural History, Santharam also taught at the Rishi Valley School. He also travelled to various Krishnamurthy schools across the country to introduce bird studies to children and staff at these schools, he said.

(00:59:24) Ravi Sankaran When asked to talk about his relationship with ornithologist Ravi Sankaran, Santharam said that Sankaran was a very ‘eccentric,’ and ‘unconventional,’ man. Rangaswamy had known Sankaran when Sankaran attended Rishi Valley as a student, Santharam said. Santharam recalled an interesting anecdote that S. Rangaswamy had told him about Ravi Sankaran. In all of Rishi Valley’s history, Ravi Sankaran was the only person to have gotten bitten by a snake at the school, said Santharam.

Santharam had met Ravi Sankaran personally when the two worked at SACON, too. The two often went bird watching together. Sankaran would often forward Santharam papers for him to look through, too, he said. It was when Santharam was at Rishi Valley that he learnt of Sankaran’s untimely passing. Soon after Sankaran’s death, his wife had joined the Rishi Valley School as a teacher, but both Sankaran’s wife and daughter passed away in a tragic accident soon after, Santharam said.

(01:05:55) Bird Watching At Rishi Valley When asked to comment on the bird watching walks that Santharam conducted at Rishi Valley, Santharam said that his predecessor, S. Rangaswamy, had already begun a culture of bird watching at the school. Santharam merely continued this tradition. Birding walks occurred every Sunday, between 6:30-8:30a.m, he said. He would select a different location each time. His bird watching group comprised of about ten to fifteen students, a couple of faculty members and sometimes, visitors and parents, too, he said.

Apart from these weekly birding walks, Santharam also conducted annual bird races at Rishi Valley, every July, to commemorate Rishi Valley being declared a bird preserve, he said. He would invite wildlife experts to Rishi Valley to participate in these bird races. In these bird races, groups would set out to explore the wilderness in and around the Rishi Valley School to locate as many bird species as they could within one day. Santharam also talked about organizing nature camps for his students at Rishi Valley.

When asked whether he and his students used any special equipment during their bird watching sessions, Santharam said binoculars were essential for bird watching. The school also had books and field guides the students could use as references. Other equipment, such as spotting scopes, were donated to the school, also, he said.

When asked whether technology like various mobile applications (apps), have enabled a better bird watching experience for birders, Santharam said at Rishi Valley there were strict policies against students using electronic devices. As such, his students did not really benefit much from birding apps like E-bird, he said. He himself did use E-birds, he said, but overall these birding apps didn’t have too much of an impact on his students’ bird watching experience at Rishi Valley, Santharam said.

(01:18:03) Environmental Changes on Rishi Valley’s Campus When asked what kind of environmental changes he experienced as a bird watcher at the Rishi Valley campus over the years, Santharam said that when he first joined the school, in 1998, there was a quite a lot of rainfall in that area. As a consequence of this, there was a lot of green vegetation on campus and all the water bodies on campus were filled. This attracted a lot of wetland birds before, he explained. However Rishi Valley was located in a relatively dry area of Andhra Pradesh. There was very little rain post 2000. The number of water birds have dwindled significantly in recent years. Nevertheless, there was a drive to increase green vegetation on campus, he said. Rishi Valley had begun its afforestation program earlier in the 1980s which attracted a lot of newer birds that were previously not seen in the area, he added.

(01:26:14) Santharam’s Work At Rishi Valley When asked to talk about his contributions to Rishi Valley’s Home Studies Course in Ornithology, Santharam said that he continues to update the course, regularly. The course was launched in 1997 and covered all aspects of ornithology, including bird physiology, ecology and even bird photography, he said. The course also covered contemporary concerns like global warming and climate change, he added. The course also drew from Jiddu Krishnamurthy’s philosophy on the interactions between humans and nature, he said.

When asked to comment on pedagogy for this course, Santharam said that since the Home Studies in Ornithology course was a correspondence course, there wasn’t too much lecture-oriented teaching here. Having said that, Santharam was trying to make the course more interactive, he said. Apart from his duties as a Director of the Institute of Bird Studies, Santharam also enjoyed participating in Indian classical music and photography activities at Rishi Valley, he said.

(01:37:13) Conservation Efforts Santharam himself has conducted sessions with NGOs that try to encourage bird watching and nature conservation among the public. Furthermore, Santharam has worked closely with the Kerala Forest Department in its bird surveys, too, he said.

When asked to elaborate on government schemes that sought to promote nature conservation, Santharam mentioned the Gujarat government’s initiative to have a nature education program in many of its schools in the State. Even Kerala was slowly opening up its forest areas to students to encourage interaction between these students and conservation experts, he said. However, such initiatives needed to be uniformly carried out, across India, Santharam added. The government should work not just to promote eco-tourism, but encourage conservation among the lay public, too, he said.

When asked what was the best way to do large scale biodiversity conservation, Santharam said that there needed to be a drive to maintain India’s natural landscape, as far as possible. Given the 2020 nationwide lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, people have become less consumerist, he said. People need to cut down on their consumption, further, he said. That is one way of conserving natural resources. He himself makes it a point to switch off all the lights and fans in his classroom when he teaches environmental education at Rishi Valley, he said.

(01:47:36) Typical Day At The Rishi Valley School When asked to describe a typical day at Rishi Valley, Santharam said that students were required to do a little bit of Physical Education in the mornings, before attending a morning assembly and finally commencing classes. Students were encouraged to be in nature as much as possible. For example, often Biology classes would be held out in the open, in nearby fields and not in the school labs or classrooms, he said. The school also organized excursions for its students quite frequently, Santharam said.

(01:55: 43) India’s Ecological Landscape When asked to comment on the significance of the Western Ghats in India’s larger ecological landscape, Santharam said that the Western Ghats were a biodiversity hotspot. It was very rich in different species of plants, birds and animals. However, development in the area threatened the region’s biodiversity, he said. Hence, there was a need to conserve this area. Similarly, Rishi Valley was located on the Eastern Ghats and despite it not receiving as much attention as the Western Ghats, this area too was rich in biodiversity and was hence worth conserving, Santharam maintained.

(01:59:35) The Indira Gandhi Administration Taking a step back and resuming conversation about his childhood, when asked what it was like to grow up in Chennai during the Indira Gandhi administration, Santharam said that Indira Gandhi did a lot for nature conservation. People were not very aware of conservation efforts in the 1970s. Santharam talked about his participation in the 1970s Silent Valley Movement, that got a lot of media and public attention. He talked about Indira Gandhi’s instrumental role in stopping the building of a dam at Silent Valley, which would have adversely affected the area’s ecological landscape, he said. Today, more people are aware of the importance of nature conservation than they were in the 1970s, Santharam felt.