Capturing currents

  Digital Discourse Foundation  It is too early to applaud the success in relocating the first batch of Namibian cheetahs to the Kuno Palpur National Park in Northwest Madhya Pradesh where it adjoins the buffer zone for the migration of wildlife in nearby Ranthambore Tiger Reserve. Only political green horns, the ecologically illiterate and the eulogizing tribes will commend the relocation of these cheetahs. On paper, all the boxes are ticked favourably for the Namibian cheetah relocation. They will be reintroduced in batches, first enclosed in protected enclosures for acclimatization, introduced to prey, monitored and satellite tracked etc. Those singing eulogies may even cite the precedent of relocation and reintroduction of tigers into Sariska after poachers slaughtered 22 tigers in the premier tiger reserve. Let’s face facts. Sensitive fragile creatures like cheetahs can suffer serious injuries to life and limb when threatened. Namibian cheetahs thrived on grassla...

  Digital Discourse Foundation   When Karnataka Chief Minister Mr. Basavaraj Bommai blamed the previous Congress governments of the State for the state of urban floods currently ravaging the new residential suburbs in Bangalore, it betrayed his complete ignorance, to say the least. The Chief Minister seemed to lack basic comprehension of the issues, to put it mildly.   Urban floods, be it in Mumbai 2005, Jammu in September 2014, Chennai 2015 or Bangalore 2022 they are all because of bad planning and inequitable urban development. Add Climate Change, El Nino Beziehungsweise La Nina, politically illusory cyclone database, and connivance of the corrupted regime, then the complexity escapes the intellectual horizons of the political green horns completely. Undoubtedly the urban floods in Bangalore are a cumulative impact of bad urban planning, unplanned vertical growth, and disdain for environmental laws and civic laws. It reflects poorly on the state of administrat...