Why The Caged Bird Sings

Zoos are facile and deplorable avenues for corporate irresponsibility, then why is India getting another one?

- Bijoy Venugopal

JUST WHEN we thought the Indian political circus had frothed to saturation comes the sobering news that a zoo is coming up over 280 acres in Jamnagar, Gujarat. Promoted as a conservation venture and touted as the CSR initiative of India’s wealthiest industrialist family, it is a pet project of its youngest scion. Exotic species like Komodo Dragons, giraffes and cheetahs are said to be part of the dream menagerie. Securing permissions were a mere formality, and the promoters are now cherry-picking from government zoo collections to bulk up their inventory. Recently, a duo of prize melanistic leopards — exoticised as black panthers — were spirited away from a zoo in Guwahati, setting off whispers about the pliability of the law in the hands of crony capitalists.

A tourist attraction much like a colossal statue in the same state, this for-profit zoo comes across as another way to feed off perverse consumerist curiosity. It is also a sharp U-turn as far as actual conservation is concerned, considering that relatively far-thinking corporate citizens are not spending their spare change on perpetuating the imprisonment of wild animals but on climate action, cleaning up ocean plastic, and restoring degraded habitats. A zoo, on the other hand, is the most facile and deplorable avenue for corporate irresponsibility.