Operation Cheetah: A self-serving excercise
So we will buy the Cheetah, and introduce it in India. The big cat will be flown to india anytime, no doubt accompanied by a media blitz and lot of fanfare.
Did someone pause to think: are we doing it for the good of the cheetah? Or simply because we want to say, feel good, we got the dead back to life? And bask in the excitement and thrill that it will initially provide, before the crisis of conservation and all that it entails hits here too?
Because it appears to be a conservation success to have this large cat back, after we hunted and drove it to extinction?
We invite it here, even as we, the people, refuse to give sanctuary to other wild cats. If you don’t know what I mean, just think about the leopard, and how we beat, bludgeon and burn it to death.
What home are we going to give our guest, the cheetah? Do we have the grasslands to sustain him?
Will we, the government and people of India commit to its protection…not for three months or an year or till the current government lasts, or till we like this flight of fancy, but for perpetuity?
And give this a thought too: our indigenous wildlife, critically endangered species like the rhino, hangul, elephant, dolphins, bustards have a budget of Rs 80 crore (am not including the budget of Project Tiger) -while we budget Rs 300 crore for the cheetah?