How Simplistically A President of India Understood Biodiversity

                                          How Simplistically A President of India Understood Biodiversity

When I read the newspaper item reproduced below, I thought, Oh, no! not again about the Great Nicobar Infrastructure Project regarding which news items have been galore. This region is a biodiversity hot spot, I have known for a while. Rather my thoughts ran towards a visit I paid to the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi.

An apparently new species of snake, an elusive bird that has been photographed only a quarter of a dozen times and perhaps such other finds tentatively validates assigning the tag “new species”.

I do not want to name the President of India whose understanding is the subject matter here. When my wife and visited the place, there was an area not necessarily marked off but one knew that it is something special. This was a plot of perhaps 30 m by 30 m, and sub-dividedinto, say, 10 parts. Each part was seeded and tended to by, it looked like, gardeners. Visitors were guided to this plot and were given a choice of a small potted plant that to take home, and do whatever they wished to do with it.

This was supposedly a lesson in biodiversity, I learned. Such nonsense.

When biodiversity is to be studied, the focus must be on how plants, insects and even animals interact with each other to cooperate and compete simultaneously for each to get to breed more and avoid predatorz. This structured dance among living beings, including humans, is what leads to biological diversity.

In the above described limited area in the Rashtrapati Bhavan, each young plant was left to itself with a rare butterfly acting as an agent for the flower of the plant (if it were one such) to let it grow. It is not impossible that in the rest of the vast expanse of the residence of the President of India, there are more varieties of living beings, some of whom are ranked and privileged, like the mega fauna in the forests or in the oceans!    

One more thing before I sign off. I read that it has been suggested to rechristen Raj Bhavans, the residential estates of the Governors of states, to something that tunes better with the nature and the structure of our political system; abjure Raj as we do not live under a king, yet retain the privileges. This is another kind of dance!

Raghuram Ekambaram

P. S. Today’s newspaper brought me the bad news: The Raj Bhavan in Chennai has already been named Lok Bhavan. Governor R. N. Ravi is very busy taking directions from the Union Government and executing them promptly. Good for the state.

Raghuram Ekambaram