DEATH AT IIT-M

Inside one of the country’s most prestigious institutions of technical education – death is not a very uncommon occurrence. The blackbuck population inside the forests of IIT-Madras has come down to almost 12 and the population of spotted deer hovers around 150.

“The spanking new Himalaya mess has come up on Black buck habitation. There was no real need for that. They could’ve just had smaller messes around the different blocks”, says one concerned insider at IIT. Another lady says, “They came up with this crazy idea of making laws with Korean grass. That’s not what deer eat! Also, there is so much construction debris lying around that the animals are getting injured and dying.”

Feral dogs are another menace inside IIT and they have killed quite a few spotted deer. But the wildlife department officials seem unconcerned about this and are cooking up , what to me sound like excuses. Ashish Shrivastava, one of the wildlife officers says, “If we try to remove the feral dogs some people protest saying the dogs are their pets and we should not remove them.” Pursue the point further by suggesting that they are afterall the wildlife department and can’t be held hostage to peoples pet fancies, he has no answers.

Removing these animals to the neighboring Guindy National Park is not a solution because black bucks have such weak hearts and are so timid that they cannot survive such an upheaval.

(I have since updated this blog with a more informed opinion.)

04/03/07

AIADMK's SHAME

Kokilavani would have been the first graduate in her family. But this poor girl from Namakkal was burnt alive by a bunch of AIADMK sycophants when her bus carrying 47 students of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural College was waylaid by them. 18 girls suffered burn injuries and three died – Kokilavani, Gayathri and Hemalatha, when goons from the AIADMK went on a rampage on February 2nd 2000 protesting against a court verdict that sentenced Jayalalithaa to one-years imprisonment for her role in illegally waiving building rules to a hotel in Kodaikanal.

I saw the video footage of the flames engulfing the bus and the screams of the poor girls trapped inside. It was like watching death. The AIADMK men doused the bus in kerosene and then prevented the girls from escaping.

Some justice now after seven years. 28 of those goons from the AIADMK have been convicted. Its death for three and seven years and three months imprisonment for the rest of the mob. But will the images of those flames and their childrens suffering in death ever be erased from the minds of the parents? As a society, it should never be erased from ours.

Jayalalithaa took no disciplinary action against her party workers who killed the women whose cause she claims to espouse. Now her stony silence after the verdict is just as shameful.

WHO ARE WE TO TALK?

On matters of racism and discrimination, India will always speak from a glass house because of this.