For ten years I worked on one of the most challenging yet rewarding
projects of my life. I first visited the snake charmers village in
Badarpur on the edge of Delhi and thus started my long term
engagement with this community that today symbolizes the tension
between wildlife conservation and livelhioods. The snake charmers,
for generations have used snakes to earn a living. The snake
charmers are cruel to the snakes, quite often resorting to techniques
such as defanging the snake or blocking the venom ducts, which
causes pain to the snake and also affects its ability to survive in the
wild. Their occupation is banned because the use of wild animals
is prohibited under the Indian Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.

Winning the trust of a community that is engaged in an occupation
seen as illegal is not easy. On my first few visits the charmers kept
putting snakes in my bag to shoo my away. Little did I know then
that I had just started a lifelong engagement with this community
and their problems.

For two years , I travelled to different snake charmer villages
across the states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. We
then undertook a comprehensive research project and conducted
a survey with 500 families to understand how charmers live
today, the snake species they used and the levels of traditional
knowledge of the community ( more on that in the Reports section).
We approached the government , helped the community get
loans, so they could set up shops. I enlisted the help of a theatre
director, Roysten Abel, and thus was born a musical band known
as ‘ A Hundred Charmers’ . The band has performed in India and
abroad and given a sense of self respect to a community that was
hounded by enforcement agencies. The snake charmers today are
open to change, but the government needs to offer them alternate
livelihoods if it wants them to abide by the law.

I enlisted the help of a theatre director, Roysten Abel, and thus was
born a musical band known as ‘ A Hundred Charmers’ . The band
has performed in India and abroad and given a sense of self respect
to a community that was hounded by enforcement agencies. The
snake charmers today are open to change, but the government
needs to offer them alternate livelihoods if it wants them to abide by
the law.