1,706 tigers today, up from 1,411 in 2007

Should the approximately 1,700 tigers left in India be treated as sacrosanct, not to be exploited by India’s tourism industry? Or, should they be looked at as valuable commodities, responsible for filling the coffers of the state? This is the firestorm of a debate that Ajay Dubey sparked off, when he, through a public interest litigation filed in the Madhya Pradesh High Court in September 2010, asked that tourism be banned in ‘core’ tiger areas — zones where tiger density is particularly high — in line with the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, and its 2006 amendment.