Since politicians are supposedly outraged over the Kerala elephant incident, maybe the Union govt. will scrap the proposed laying of a 3rd line on the Ranchi-Delhi line that slices Jharkhand's Palamu tiger reserve & has killed dozens of elephants, including this unborn foetus. + 
Or is this foetus, its mother and other elephants fair game in the name of 'development'? And this brings me to the larger issue at hand. While the horrific heart-rending elephant death in Kerala has generated much outrage, there is poor understanding of the problems at hand.+
First, the elephant wasn't hand fed the firecracker-laden pineapple as a lot of people seem to believe. She consumed a crude edible bomb that some farmers place around their farms to stop crop raiding by wild boars. This elephant was, in all likelihood, an unintended victim. +
This has nothing to do with "culture" or something unique to Kerala either. This brutal method, designed primarily to target crop raiding wild boars, is employed across India by farmers of all ethnicities. Also, the Kerala case is not the first case of such unintended casualty. +
Elephants, deers, bears, hyenas, jackals, foxes, etc. are also killed or maimed when they consume such bombs, and it has happened across India. Ofcourse this method for crop protection, be it against wild boar or any other animal, is both cruel & illegal and those guilty deserve+
punishments as mandated by law. But beyond that, one must realise what pushes some farmers to adopting such means. Only then can one work towards preventing such tragedies rather than acting once the killings have occurred. Those doing this are usually poor marginal farmers for +
whom the loss of their marginal farm to crop raiding is an economic catastrophe. A few boars or even a small Nilgai or elephant herd can easily destroy an entire marginal farm, the farmers entire investment and his primary economic asset, in a single night and send the farmer +
into crushing debt that he may take years to recover from. And when it happens regularly and multiple times every year, his situation (and his family & others dependent on him) gets that much more desperate and precarious. The compensation process against such losses is +
tedious (following up on which often means incurring even more expenditure for the already cash strapped farmer), haphazard, & even if approved almost always a fraction of the actual loss. Hence, to farmers killing the animal doing the damage seems a more efficient and +
cost-effective action. Most humans when in a situation where they must choose between their and theirs family's well being & that of an animal's will choose themselves and their family. That is what most of us outraging would do as well, that is what most farmers choose as well.+
Until the farmer is not assured that a crop loss by wildlife will not mean a economic catastrophe for him & his family, and fair, quick, efficient and simple to follow up compensation mechanisms are not put in place, such methods of of 'dealing' with crop raiding animals will +
continue to be employed by some farmers and that will keep killing and maiming animals, both the intended targets and even unintended ones. On the other hand, as far as threats to elephants are concerned, far more elephant mothers, foetuses, calves, and herd members have been +
killed by linear infrastructure through the forests (railway lines, high tension wires, etc.) & even more have lost their natural homes to mining, dams, infrastructure development & so on in their forest habitats (which then force them to move into farms & human-use landscapes +
bringing them into further conflict). So if you don't speak out against the government model of "development" recommending more railway lines, more dams, more mines and more infrastructure in forest areas, which destroy forest homes of wild animals & displaces forest dependent +
communities (thus throwing both of them into further conflict, misery and tragedy), then all your outrage over this incident will be hollow and useless.
~Fin~
~Fin~
