Cattle Corridors

One frequently hears of wild elephants straying into human habitations in search of food and often tranquilized by the Forest department and relocated far away from human habitation. This has become so frequent that in the last few years either due to encroachment of human habitation in forest lands or thoughtless development projects like roads etc along the path of elephant corridors.

However another interesting parallel is taking place in urban areas that are otherwise has little to do with forests. Most of us in this country are familiar with cattle that generally are given liberty to frequent and feast on poster ridden busy thoroughfares and highways by their loving owners. However these gallivanting bovines unintentionally cause serious accidents resulting in loss of limbs and sometime lives of drivers of vehicles especially two wheelers. The hitherto Administration in deep hibernation after much debate and deliberations finally seized the issue with both the hands and has begun to implement, operation to clean up bovine encroachments that otherwise somehow defied a solution so far. In fact the Corporation of Chennai was so serious about the project that the first seizure was led by the Honourable Commissioner, who in a true style of a matador or to use a more highly emotional native expression, a jallikattu hero, secured a reluctant mount road bull and with an expert skill lured it into a truck and carted it away to the nearest pound. It was truly a heroic deed much applauded by terrified road uses.

The rather shocked owners soon made a beeline to release their dear wards and after paying a paltry fine got them back to their familiar terrain, roads, as they claimed that they do not have sufficient space to house their chellams. Now we are back to square one. Soon the owners, ably assisted by friends of bovine(NGOs), may put forth the argument a la the elephants that the Town and Country Planning Act has been enacted thoughtlessly without taking into consideration the cattle corridors that was existing from time immemorial. And who knows they may even succeed in the Courts in case our Honourabe judges happen to seize the issue and after good quarter of  a century of deliberations may proceed to deliver a long winded discourse on the rights of the four legged holy cattle vis a vis two legged homo sapiens. Jai hind!