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| July 17, 2000 | ||
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| Lucknow's
Cypherabad
By persisting with Gupta, the BJP is sending an alarming message
It's a Zoo Out There Should we have menageries when we can't maintain them?
Nandankanan is a prime example of such mismanagement. It is a menagerie ineptly run in an atmosphere vitiated by rampant politicking. That's one aspect. The other is congenital systematic indifference. In the hierarchy of budgetary allocations, zoos are on the same rung as water harvesting. Nandankanan suffered heavy infrastructural damage during last year's cyclone, but nothing has been allocated for repairs yet. The fact that the zoo housed 55 tigers -- the largest population of captive tigers in one place -- warranted mandatory periodic blood screenings of the animals. But ask the vets there and they'll tell you such screenings could cost more than the annual medical budget allowed. So when one tiger died of a blood infection it didn't matter that the right thing to do was to test the others. The only thing the budget allowed was to shoot antibiotics into 16 others. It is of no use wondering now whether the tigers died due to an epidemic or a vet's incompetence. The question we need to ask is whether we should keep zoos when we can't maintain them. |
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 © Living Media India Ltd |
The
suggestion that the real reason for the BJP's inability to find a
successor to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Ram Prakash Gupta was that there
was no one older on offer may sound unnecessarily cruel, but is an
accurate barometer of the paralysis gripping the ruling party in India's
most populous state. Losing ground steadily, the BJP has been unable to
come to terms with its leadership crisis ever since Kalyan Singh was
dumped after the disastrous showing in the 1999 Lok Sabha election. There
are enough claimants for the top job among the second-rung leaders. But if
all of them were united in opposing Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's
choice of Union Minister Rajnath Singh, it is because a decisive leader
would end their chief ministerial aspirations once and for all. They would
prefer to persist with Gupta rather than allow a new face to build a new
team. That the central leadership went along with this logic is a sure
indication the BJP is mentally reconciled to losing power in next year's
assembly election. It just took no heed of the inconvenient panchayat poll
results.
What should alarm the BJP is not that
provincial leaders are incapable of looking beyond their nose but that the
central leadership should acquiesce in this short-sightedness. Caught up
with the complexities of governance, there is an inclination to allow the
party to play second fiddle and drift aimlessly. This Congress disease is
compounded by a mechanical preference for seniority, the Gupta experiment
in Uttar Pradesh being a mirror image of the journey with Kushabhau Thakre
as national president. Unless new leaders are given opportunities to prove
themselves, the party will remain trapped in the mindset of veterans who
are temperamentally incapable of injecting the party with a fresh and
modern outlook. Uttar Pradesh is a sure sign that the BJP has chosen a
disastrous line of least resistance.
The
death of 11 Royal Bengal tigers at the Nandankanan Zoo in Orissa proved
one thing: all the systemic ills that afflict our institutions afflict our
zoos too -- only more virulently. Death is a common event in Indian zoos,
best described as poorly designed death traps run on tight budgets by
people interested only in gate collections. Though originally meant to
entertain, zoos in most developed nations have been transformed into
expert centres with the objectives of conservation, education and research
on endangered species. But India continues to dwell in the dark ages of
zoo management, even though a Central Zoo Authority was set up in 1991 to
usher in reforms.