From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

If large predators keep eating people in your village, the solution is to build wind turbines and install solar panels?

Climate change adds to woes of ‘tiger widows’ of Sunderbans

As per locals, there are thousands of tiger widows in the expansive Sunderbans region-their lives riddled with social ostracisation, financial instability, and psychological distress

Gosaba (Sundarbans),, Updated At : 06:52 PM Feb 21, 2026 IST

…

Rina, like several of her companions, is a “tiger widow” — a local woman whose husband has been taken by the Bengal tiger.

“In 2022, my husband Sudipto Sarkar went to catch fish and crabs, and never returned. He was killed by a tiger,” Rina says as her voice trails off.

…

The situation has been exacerbated in recent years, amid rising instances of human-tiger conflict, primarily due to the adverse effects of climate change.

…

Umashankar Mandal, founder of PEHS, says, “Since many men enter the forests without official permits, their deaths are often considered illegal, disqualifying their families from receiving government compensation.” This leaves numerous tiger widows vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Several studies have revealed cases of physical abuse, sexual exploitation, and trafficking into sex work.

…Read more: https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/india/climate-change-adds-to-woes-of-tiger-widows-of-sunderbans/

I feel sorry for Rana and all the women who lost their husbands to tiger predation.

But here’s a radical idea. Why not arm the menfolk with guns, so they can go into the Sunderbans and shoot a few tigers?

They don’t have to kill them all. Big predators are smart, they very quickly learn to avoid people with long pointy things, after watching all their friends get shot. They should at least kill the man eaters.

There is something very Indian about bureaucrats just letting people get eaten, without doing anything concrete to stop the carnage, because the victims don’t have the right permit. Or just sitting around blaming externalities like climate change when they should be organising tiger hunts.

I once read a story about the Madras nuclear power plant. The giant Asian Tsunami of 2004 allegedly blocked the cooling water inlet with debris. Thankfully the plant was in a partial shutdown state for maintenance at the time of the disaster. After the Tsunami devastation receded, the plant operators reportedly ran simulations which suggested blocking the cooling water inlet would not have caused a meltdown, cleared away the mud and debris, and restarted the plant.

There were some concerns raised at the time about the realism of the simulations, the possibility the simulations possibly missed a few factors. .

When I told my friend Bhavesh, he laughed and replied “In India, you have to believe in God“.

To be fair, years after the Tsunami, particularly in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, there were renewed efforts to improve flood resilience. Let’s hope those flood resilience upgrade efforts were successful. And let’s hope someone organises a tiger hunt, to try to prevent the tragic deaths of people trying to make a living in the Sunderbans, regardless of whether they have the right permit.