Beef Vindaloo

The central government has criticised a proposal by Project Tiger to rescue and save the few remaining tigers in India. The report that India’s tiger population is now hovering around the 1,000 mark has shocked the world. The proposal aims to protect the existing tiger reserves and sanction additional land and resources so that these areas may increase and hopefully alter the declining rate of tigers in India. The central government plans to block this proposal unless a change is made. They want 25% of all new land and resources that are devoted to tigers to be reserved for SCs, STs and OBCs.

Project Tiger feels that an expansion of current reserves and increasing expenditure on these reserves is definitely a foolproof way out. A spokesperson from the government in Delhi said that they “were not against the proposal or the plan in principle because after all, the tiger is our national symbol and we must protect them but what we are only saying is that there are thousands of Indians who have also suffered hardships through the generations and it is only fair that they also benefit from this scheme.” Environmentalists are believed to be reacting violently to the government’s proposal insisting, “if thousands of Indians have faced the same hardships then why have their number increased by 400% in the last 60 years and the tigers are dying out.”

The international community, especially the WWF, plans to increase pressure on the central government to take care of India’s tiger reserves that currently account for 40% of the world’s tiger population. Social analysts believe that the government will definitely insist on SCs, STs and OBCs to be included in the protection plan. A spokesperson from Project Tiger, on the condition of anonymity said that “actually if you think about it, let’s put them in with the tigers, at the very least, the tigers will be well fed and maybe they will have healthier and more numerous cubs.”

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