Letters to The EDITOR: Lucky CMs

Going by the present trends, it is very apparent that right now there are two chief ministers in the country who are blessed with the best cabinet ministers, and they are Arvind Kejriwal and Mamata Banerjee, the chief ministers of Delhi and West Bengal, respectively, who are also the bosses of the Aam Aadmi Party and Trinamool Congress and also the sworn enemies of our PM Modi. For everybody’s information, Kejriwal’s most trusted, ablest, and honest cabinet ministers, Manish Sisodia and Satyendra Prasad Jain, are behind bars, and their bail prayers were rejected by the Delhi High Court.

Mamata Banerjee’s one cabinet minister, named Anubrata Mandal, is also languishing in jail for a cattle smuggling offence, which in English is called rustler and in Asomiya and Bengali is called garu chor. Interestingly, both Kejriwal and Mamata are giving sermons about corruption. A comedy show cannot get better than these two.

Lanu Dutt Chowdhury,

Guwahati.

Train-elephant collisions continue unabated

The perennial “train-elephant collision” seems to go on unabated. Another pachyderm death was reported in the Jarapada forest range of Odisha’s Angul last week. A speeding train crushed the elephant that was crossing the track. It is said the forest department officials were trying to drive the elephant away from a village towards a hill when it strayed into the railway tracks. The blame games are on, but half-hearted measures to prevent elephants from being hit by trains have apparently not helped. Proper track signals, locopilot sensitization, periodic review and maintenance of elephant corridors, and a unique elephant detection system should safeguard the lives of elephants. Overpasses and underpasses, solar-powered fences, and elephant-proof trenches are vital to minimize elephant deaths due to any cause.

Shrinking elephant habitats is one of the root causes of the big mammals succumbing to different causes. More and more elephant corridors and enhanced budgetary provisions for ensuring elephants are in the safe confines of their homes, and hence away from human interference, cannot be overstressed.

Some time back, the Ministry of Environment, Forestry, and Climate Change announced it would undertake a sophisticated elephant corridor verification and map land use and land cover in elephant reserves through GIS technology. Fragmentation of existing corridors due to human activities has led to the old ones giving way to the newer corridors. While using modern technologies, it is imperative for the officials to correctly identify the elephant corridors in regions of the country where elephants abound. Land notification of corridors, giving them legal status, is a good step ahead.

Dr Ganapathi Bhat,

(gbhat13@gmail.com.)