Achi news desk-
Chartered planes flew invited guests to Jamnagar Air Force base from Delhi and Mumbai. The airport was designated as an international airport and detailed instructions were given on what to carry and what to leave behind. A ‘mood board’ was shared for each day’s dress code and make-up artists and hair stylists were provided for each of the approximately 1,000 guests. The media reported that there were 2,500 ‘meals’ to choose from.
The three-day pre-wedding celebrations (the actual wedding is scheduled for June) of Mukesh Ambani’s youngest son, Anant, had people and the media scrambling for details. India’s richest man, who owns many of the television channels, was forced to allow his son to give interviews to tailed TV anchors.
It was, as Pratap Bhanu Mehta put it The Indian Express‘an attractive script’, with the ‘perfect combination of wealth, power, glamour, family values, piety’.
Playing out on the margins of this media extravaganza was a cringeworthy clip of a TV news anchor (who fancies himself an investigative journalist) watching the food being cooked for elephants at the Ambanis’ private zoo in Jamnagar . (The compassionate groom probably took on the task of ‘rescuing’ animals, especially pachyderms, healthy, old, injured or abandoned.)
The TV anchor declared that the khichdi being cooked for the elephants tasted better than his lunch, and since the elephants were also given watermelon juice and a variety of sweet laddoos, it might be tempting to taste and say.
However, pests in the ‘independent’ media were spoiling and raising disturbing questions. Why was a private zoo allowed in the first place, they asked (a silly question, because in Bharat, the rich are above the law). It reminded us a bit of Mohammed Arif in Amethi, Uttar Pradesh, who nursed an injured whooping crane back to good health, only to find that it would not go back to the wild.
The sarus crane accompanied Arif everywhere, often flying behind his motorbike. Wildlife authorities woke up to media reports and took the crane away and confined it to a field. But then Arif was not the richest man in India.
The artificial jungle at Moti Khavdi, 35 kilometers from Jamnagar on the border between India and Pakistan, is a marvel. It is said to have 10 million trees and Asia’s largest mango orchard. The zoo also cares for 181 elephants given to a religious trust by ‘circuses, temples and individuals’.
Protests were reported from Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Tripura and Odisha against alleged illegal transportation of elephants, including tuskers, to Gujarat. The Tripura High Court appointed an eight-member fact-finding committee headed by a former judge, while the Odisha forest department has initiated an investigation into the fake NOCs (no-objection certificates) used to transport elephants out of the state.
Protesters in Guwahati opposed the transfer of protected animals from their government zoo to the world’s largest private zoo in Jamnagar. Citing the Trust’s 2022–23 annual report in its management, s News laundry the report stated that 1,461 of the total of 3,889 animals were endangered and protected.
The CZA (Central Zoo Authority) has allowed the import of 286 animals of 17 species from a zoo in Mexico. This includes 50 hybrid Bengal tigers, 50 hybrid lions and American flamingos, 16 anteaters (eight each of two different species), 12 African cheetahs, 10 jaguars and as many leopards, cougars, ocelots, margays, Mexican hairy dwarf porcupines , jaguarundis, American black bears, bobcats, Linnaeus’ two-toed sloth, and eight brown bears.
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