Now, life will be good for jumbos in captivity

The Environment ministry has set up a new set of guidelines for the safety and care of captive elephants, which includes daily bath, lots of rest and retirement at 65, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: May 27, 2008, 01:03:48 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Environment ministry has set up a new set of guidelines for the safety and care of captive elephants. A bath every day, rest for 12 hours after travelling for the same period of time, medical check-up twice a year, proper housing and retirement at the age of 65 years.

The state governments have been asked to conduct fresh survey of all captive elephants in six months and install microchips on them. Only elephants with microchips would be allowed in captivity. The rest would be taken over by the state forest departments. The guidelines give six months to the elephant owners to get the animals registered with the forest department.

The guidelines also stipulate the care that needs to be taken in case of illness or injury to elephants.

For healthy elephants, the government has detailed the work depending on their height and area where they are working. Elephants less than 1.50 metre high cannot be engaged for carrying load. For others, load has been specified as per their height.

Violation of the guidelines would amount to cruelty to animals. Keeping an elephant chained for long hours, keeping a calf away from the mother would amount to cruelty. And, the owner can be punished under wildlife laws for it.

But then, these guidelines are a cause for a lot of discomfort for the animal lovers. If there are guidelines for elephants, why not such regulations for horses, buffaloes or other animal engaged in work, they wonder.

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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