An elephant died a tragic death last week. While pregnant. After having been in grave agony for more than a day. A death that you wouldn't wish upon your worst enemies. Social media has been abuzz with anger, resentment, and war cries to inflict the same on the perpetrators. My messenger is flooded by forwards of petitions demanding that the perpetrators be charged to wilful murder and put away. Now if this solved the issue, I would have happily signed the petition and gone on with my life. But sadly, it doesn't and I for one will not be able to forgive myself if I don't pen down these thoughts that have been eating away at my gut.
(Disclaimer: This write up is not me trying to trivialize the incident or defend anyone. Just trying to bring a new perspective to the table.)
Back to the discourse. Who are these perpetrators? They are supposed to be local farmers. Why does that matter? It makes a difference. Now let's go back 2016, to another incident where a group of medical college students who threw a dog from the top of the building just to watch it die. Do you see any difference between the two acts?
Back to the discourse. Who are these perpetrators? They are supposed to be local farmers. Why does that matter? It makes a difference. Now let's go back 2016, to another incident where a group of medical college students who threw a dog from the top of the building just to watch it die. Do you see any difference between the two acts?
One was a group of privileged punks consciously murdering an unsuspecting animal just for the sheer joy of it. To watch it inch towards a slow, painful death. The other was a group of farmers, trying to protect their livelihood, their blood, and sweat of many months, from destruction, by wild boars, which was inadvertently eaten by an elephant. Now, of course, one may argue that it does not matter, whether its a boar or an elephant, that no animal should be harmed as they often do get the short end of the stick in human-wildlife conflict. I believe it is illegal to hunt down wild boars in the state, the farmers should face the charges of having broken the law as well as for the inadvertent murder of the elephant.
But the anger that has been boiling all over social media, who does that help? Not the elephants and other wild animals that will continue to fall prey to such snares. Not the wild boars exercising its right to sustain itself, blissfully unaware of the human laws of the world. Not the farmer, who probably depends on this one crop for him and his family to tide over a few months to come. We owe it to them, as a thinking population with the privilege to not worry about how to make ends meet, to impact any real change.
It was with much awe that I first heard about Beehive fencing during a B-School competition at IRMA, which was implemented by Arun and Arnelit from PRM 39, at the Nilgiris, to keep elephants away from the tribal villages without harming them. The fencing could also double up as a secondary income source to the owners, via apiculture. I was mind blown. So, it is not entirely impossible to be actionable and impactful. But it sure is harder and more painstaking than venting on social media. I am more than happy to be a part of any discussion on how we can sustainably solve this issue. Even an unsuccessful attempt to solve the issue would be more impactful than venting on social media and forgetting about it the very next day. (Side note: I am not judging anyone who vents on social media. I myself do it very often and it works wonderfully in making myself feel instantly better, though often via a false sense of impact creation)
-Ardhra Prakash
June 3rd, 2020