Fearing cruelty, environment ministry says no to dolphin parks

The environment ministry rejected the plan to develop dolphinariums in different locations in India, including Delhi's neighbourhood of Noida, Kochi in Kerala and Mumbai. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: May 8, 2013, 24:34:00 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A dolphin kiss or their playful nature in man-made water holes would remain elusive for the Indian audience.

The environment ministry rejected the plan to develop dolphinariums in different locations in India, including Delhi's neighbourhood of Noida, Kochi in Kerala and Mumbai.

Dolphinarium is an artificial, commercial facility where the aquatic animals are kept in captivity and displayed for amusement of audience at a high price by taking away their right to live in their natural habitat. India's only brush with dolphinarium was in 1990s with a park in Chennai, which closed soon after the death of all captive mammals.

Places such as United States and Dubai have big dolphin parks and are branded as an effort to create awareness about recluse creature. But, Brazil, United Kingdom and Chile have banned dolphins in captivity.

"We will not allow dolphinariums," environment and forest minister Jayanthi Natarajan told Hindustan Times.

The ministry would soon come out with a ban on dolphin parks, some of which were proposed in collaboration with foreign players. The reason is that the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, and the Wildlife Protection Act prohibits display of animals and birds for amusement, a reason for them vanishing from circuses in India.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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