Capturing currents

By Malini Shankar Digital Discourse Foundation Here’s another Earth Day. Another day to pay lip service to the environmental cause. But the real issues stare at us without recourse to solutions. Human wildlife conflict remains at the centre of environmental challenges facing conservation administrative challenges and politically expedient indecisiveness sustains the conflict instead of solving it. Meet Bobby Chand alias Bobby Bhai of Nainital district in Uttarakhand a survivor of a Conflict Tiger attack; Bobby survived a tiger attack in Panod Nalla range (29°30'27.22"N, 79° 6'48.59"E) of Corbett Tiger Reserve on 17 th June 2022 at around noon. He barely survived the attack. As Bobby sat in front of the (under-construction) bridge he was not aware of the nursing tigress who was possibly shifting her cubs behind the half constructed bridge in the thick tropical evergreen forests just beyond. Forest officials at that time said Bobby was in drunken stupor at that p...

  POTUS is yet to learn in his second term that statecraft is not a business transaction. By Malini Shankar Digital Discourse Foundation There is fiendish delight in seeing a far right politician climb down on his far-fetched xenophobic war mongering rhetoric. US President Donald Trump fell prey to his own political fantasies of plundering Iranian oil reserves by proclaiming that Iran was ready to fire nukes at US interests and war was inevitable. Turns out that Iran has plenty of ammunition but does not have enough fuel to power them to land anywhere across the Atlantic. Obviously no lessons have been learnt from history. His Republican predecessor President George Bush II nd proclaimed Iraq was  under  threat under Saddam Hussain because he was developing Weapons of Mass Destruction and triggered the 2 nd Gulf War needlessly. WMDs were never found. Bush Junior never admitted to his failure. That accrues to a severe loss of face because of lack of credibility. ...