GM HR of Maruti Suzuki plat at Manesar charred to death. Reason, workers who turned violent and that’s the news version, what has been relayed OFFICIALLY to them. Irrespective of who was responsible, there was violence, heat and a whole lot of outbursts.
April 23, 2007- [India Today] A score of elephants turn violent at a three month long festival
“The rise in elephant attacks is directly related to the cruelty against these animals, which though huge and strong are really gentle creature,” says V. K. Venkitachalam, secretary, All Kerala Elephant Lovers’ Association (AKELA). Almost all recent cases of jumbo fury have been retaliatory in nature: the animals protesting against the long work hours, unbearable workloads and physical torture they are put through without even giving them sufficient rest, food or nourishment.(1)
Asian elephants are migratory animals, forest dwellers that require tremendous space. At the time of the Pharaohs,herds were found from Iraq to China, inhabiting a continuous forest belt that extended over five million square miles. Today, just 5 percent of that habitat remains. As Asia’s skyrocketing human population forces herds from their last forest redoubts, the result isn’t surprising—a brutal death match between man and beast. In India alone, home to three-quarters of the world’s 40,000 Asian elephants, the animals have stomped or gored to death some 4,000 people in the past two decades. Meanwhile, elephant populations have mostly plummeted in the 13 countries where they reside, a result of retaliatory killings, poaching, and accidents involving railroads and highways. Laos was once called “the land of a million elephants,” but now the Southeast Asian country has just 2,500. Vietnam’s population has plunged to 114.
O’Connell-Rodwell, the Stanford biologist, notes that elephant aggression toward humans is unlike the aggression she’s observed in elephant-to-elephant conflicts over many years in Namibia’s Etosha National Park.
“Battles over territories rarely come to extreme violence—nothing like what is happening in India, with elephants killing farmers on a very frequent basis,” she said.
“I have always believed that these are elephants who have suffered some severe trauma at the hands of man,” she said. “An elephant whose family members are killed by people is unlikely to forget it very quickly—just as you or I wouldn’t forget if an elephant killed a member of our family.”
Poole and numerous colleagues have studied the disruption of complex elephant social structures. They have suggested that some animals may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) much like humans. (3)
NCR, houses one of largest densities per sq. km., across the world. People are migrating from all across the country. It is one of the most sought after destinations for workers and executives alike. The late GM Maruti Suzuki hailed from Ranchi. A chunk of the workers might not at all be locals.
Step into Delhi’s belly, a Lajpat Nagar or Sarojini Nagar and you can feel the heat. Try pausing in the middle of the street for a second, ten people will hurl tall abuses at you. A person at this point of time can choose to just let it be and go on, or get back with an assault. What we see as men fighting for who was wrong on the streets or women pulling each others hair at a parking lot. Now that’s how Delhi fights during the day and forgets about it the very next hour, an evolution in terms of abuses under the breath to lose the steam that tends to gather every other moment. Once you settle in Delhi you learn to accept the phenomenon as a migrant. Some modified versions of Delhi are seen in Noida and Gaziabad and a largely metamorphised version in Haryana that brings its own patriarchal dominance on the anvil. A localite from a village in Manesar who is a king at home where his whisper is a command, sees a different culture at the work place which demands order and subservience. However a bigger trait afflicts here that adds up to the flash point NCR floats on, that is PSTD. A superior shouting or demeaning is a stress which goes unanswered in the culture of people that gives it back the very moment, as a culture. Not being able to voice means another stress tablet added to the cabinet. They certainly add up. Despite all the civilization, this is only a man who has tranformed into an elephant that is fighting for territory, freedom, food and survival. He can only take as much…who is to be blamed?
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