Work for jobless jumbos

August 21, 2006

JAGIROAD, Aug 20: Captive elephants in Asom, which literally turned

to begging for a living on the roads, are back at work, with scores

of them engaged in timber transport.

For close to five years, middle-aged Rontu Das forced his two

captive elephants to beg on the highway. Almost every morning, Das

coaxed his two mahouts to take the beasts to the highway that cuts

through this industrial township of Jagiroad, 56 km east of Guwahati.

The elephants would hold up traffic as their keepers sought money

from drivers and passengers.

" We were forced to make the elephants beg or else they would have

died of hunger, " Das told IANS.

A 1996 court ruling banning felling of trees rendered some 2,500

domestic elephants jobless. The sight of the keepers making their

elephants kneel on the roads while they collected money became

common.

" Our elephants used to work in timber transport and earn anything

between Rs.40,000 and Rs.50,000 per month, " said Biren Bora, who

owns three elephants.

" But since the Supreme Court ban on felling trees our elephants

became idle and it was a real burden to maintain them. "

Today, there is a glimmer of hope for the likes of Das and Bora,

with the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) beginning work

on the much-hyped North-South-East-West Corridor, the largest

expressway project in India that proposes to have four to six lanes.

" As part of the four-lane express highway project in Asom, we are

first clearing forests and cutting down trees before actual

construction work begins, " an official of NHAI said.

Along the existing highway, hundreds of big trees were felled each

day with road contractors using dozens of captive elephants to move

the timber so that normal traffic was not hit.

" The elephants do the job of clearing the felled trees really fast.

Manually it would have taken hours and there would have been a

severe traffic jam, " a contractor said.

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