Blind men ignorant about the ways of the elephant

An old Indian parable describes the experience of blind men who touched an elephant for the first time.

- Neha Sinha, Aritra Kshettry

One man caught the trunk and described a snake, the second touched the ears and described a fan, another touched the legs and described a tree trunk, the one who touched a body described a wall and the tail was described as a rope by the last man. The adage holds true even today as we are still perceiving elephants in parts but not the whole.

As some communities see elephants as living Gods, farmers who lose their year's crop overnight to elephants see elephants as pests. While protected area managers take pride in growing elephant populations, managers of reserve forests or revenue land see them as a problem that needs to be driven from one area to the other. Ecologists see their vital role in the ecosystem but fail to understand the complex relationships that elephants have with human society and the increasingly changing landscape. To secure the future of this iconic species—less than 50,000 of which remain in the wild today—the world looks up to India, home to more than 60% of the species sharing space with 17% of the world's population in less than 3% of the global land area.