Close Watch: Experts check birds at a poultry farm in Navapur prior to culling; (above) culled fowl

PUNE, NASHIK, NAVAPUR
March 2 and 3

National highway 6 connects Surat to Kolkata; around 140 kms from the first, just after you cross the state border into Maharashtra, you pass the sleepy and dusty town of Navapur. Like thousands of other mid-sized towns on India's National Highway network, there is nothing particularly memorable about Navapur other than the fact that its railway station straddles two states and that it is the closest major town to the Gir Forest, an adivasi (tribal) dominated thick teak-wood forest (home to the highly endangered Asiatic Lion). It has a population of approximately 50,000, and most people who use this highway simply drive past the town. Whether you stop or drive by, it is difficult to miss the not so pleasant smell of chicken droppings. Navapur, like many other small towns in Maharashtra's Nashik district, has a vibrant poultry farming business. Actually, that sentence should be in the past tense now.

On February 18, 2006, this town entered the national consciousness when results from the Bhopal-based High-Security Animal Disease Laboratory indicated that poultry from this town had been infected with the deadly Avian Influenza (AI) virus, technically called the h5n1 strain, and popularly known as 'bird flu'. Hundreds of men dressed in safari suits and wearing expensive masks descended on the town from all over the country, as did tens of television crews. The next day's newspapers-it was a Sunday-splashed the news across their front pages; articles on the inside pages suggested that people avoid eating chicken and eggs, albeit temporarily.

The poultry industry was livid; accusations started flying thick and fast against the government, a 'Dutch pharmaceutical company' and the media. The National Egg Co-ordination Committee (NECC) even went to the extent of issuing an advertisement pointing fingers all over the place. The motive for that reaction (and its intensity) becomes very clear when OP Singh, CEO, VH Group (which includes Venkateshwara Hatcheries, one of the world's largest hatchery operations), mentions that the Indian poultry industry is worth an estimated Rs 34,000 crore (over a percentage point of the country's GDP). "In the past two weeks alone, we estimate the industry has lost some Rs 2,200 crore."

Navapur's poultry farms are deserted. A small 'bio-security' sign is the only sign that something went wrong here. Inside, piles of freshly moved mud are a sign that one is stepping on buried chickens or eggs. Some farms have no watchmen, even the tractors lie unguarded and all the workers are in the town-hall under quarantine and observation. Navapur's poultry industry employed thousands of local adivasi labourers. As this correspondent walks out of one farm, a utility vehicle full of safari suits pulls up. They are from the local health department. One of them, Sanjeev Parve, explains that they have come to burn any trace of the birds away. "We culled six-lakh birds and destroyed three-lakh eggs in a 10-km radius. This is a serious disease and we must not take it lightly."

A local cyclist, Anil Gamit, seems bemused; he explains that on the 18th it was like a scene out of a movie when people in bio-security suits descended on his village of Ucchar and destroyed all birds, most of which were wild free-range chickens. He explains that they paid him Rs 40 a bird for his flock of 140 birds.

Back in Pune, Singh goes on to question whether there was bird-flu at all in the first place. He questions the credentials of the Bhopal lab. He wants to know why so many tests needed to be conducted before the government could confirm that it was indeed bird flu. And he shrugs away the rash of chickens that have been dying here since early this year. "Birds die all the time of various complications and around this time due to the whether change mortality tends to be high and there is historical data to prove that". Then, not sure whether he has said enough, he adds, "We believe that there was an outbreak of Ranikhet Disease (called Newcastle Disease in the West) which was particularly virulent this time; the symptoms of the two diseases are very similar; I think the government declared India as an AI positive country without doing proper scientific analysis of the situation". And finally, he inserts the conspiracy angle. "In the past 20 years that the virus has been known of, only 20 people have died from infection, yet millions of people have been in close and constant touch with the virus; this is all a scheme to sell medicines."

A bird-in-hand: A Chicken festival underway in Nashik (left); and Dr Lino Camponovo (above)

At a time when eggs that sold at Rs 1.15-1.25 a few weeks ago sell for 42 paise and chickens which were sold to wholesalers at between Rs 40-50 now go for Rs 3-5 a bird (prices have since increased to around Rs 10), the reason for the industry's resentment is obvious. But the 'Holland-based' pharmaceutical company, which was accused of promoting a vaccine that is purportedly banned across Europe, (so go allegations) is amused. A few kilometres from Singh's office, in Pune itself, Lino Camponovo, Managing Director, InterVet India, makes an attempt to clear the air. "We are part of the Akzo Nobel Group, a m13-billion Fortune 500 company, and if our products were really banned across the EU as certain people claim, it would not explain why the French just bought 30 million doses of AI vaccinations from us last week."

"I believe what has happened is that the industry has been hit extremely hard economically, and wants people to blame", explains Camponovo. "This virus is spreading across the world and it poses a clear health danger to human beings. What people seem to forget is that, in 1917, the Spanish Flu also jumped from animals to humans and killed hundreds of millions of people, and that is the scare with this virus." Camponovo also believes that the decision to declare India an 'AI positive' country was not done in haste. "Why would the Indian government take such a decision in a hurry?" he asks. "It is a big step to take. India is a responsible country." Yet, the government's announcement means that people have stopped eating the bird and its eggs. No matter where they came from.

Still, things are beginning to change in some parts, aided by a healthy dose of free food. What's on the menu? Chicken, of course. At Splendour Halls on the outskirts of Nashik, more than 2,000 people are digging into Chicken Biryani like there is no tomorrow. The floor is strewn with chicken bones and some people are busy filling plastic bags with food. "We have prepared food for 10,000 people", says Uddhav Aher, one of the regions' biggest poultry farmers. "People must know that chicken is safe to eat. Bird Flu if at all, infected only Navapur. That is why 40 farmers like me are organising this event." When queried about reports that birds have died across the entire belt since November, he points me in the direction of a local vet, Mohandas, who is standing close-by. "Chicken are not strong creatures," says the man. "A temperature change of a few degrees might kill many birds. It is not always disease. And even now we don't know if Navapur had AI."

However, as Prakash Bijlani, another poultry farmer (one who is proud of never having lost a bird) tells this correspondent, "Most of the people in the industry are here to make a fast buck and they don't care about the birds at all. I don't know if there was bird-flu or not, but all I do know is that the government should make an attempt to regulate this industry." Bijlani believes the flu or the scare (whichever one it turns out to be) should help restore some sanity to the wild-west that is India's poultry industry.

More conspiracy theories: the mutton and fish industry is behind it all. "They have people in the media," one poultry farmer tells me.

This reporter doesn't much care for the biryani or the smell of bird-droppings. All he wants is a glass of Nashik's other, and possible more famous produce, good wine.