{"id":14185,"date":"2013-10-04T11:31:56","date_gmt":"2013-10-04T06:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.entecity.com\/?p=14185"},"modified":"2013-10-04T11:32:57","modified_gmt":"2013-10-04T06:02:57","slug":"hire-forest-department-elephants-for-rs-12000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/hire-forest-department-elephants-for-rs-12000\/","title":{"rendered":"Hire forest department elephants for Rs 12,000"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Now you can hire forest department elephants for <strong>Rs 12,000 a day<\/strong>. Kerala Government has given nod to the controversial proposal mooted by the forest department to hire captive elephants held by the department for commercial purpose.<\/p>\n<p>With the government sanctioning the proposal, public can hire elephants living in forest camps in Konni, Arienkavu, Kottur and Mutthanga at a cost of Rs12,000 per day. According to the government order, those hiring the elephants will have to observe all conditions stipulated under the <strong>Kerala captive elephants and management rules (2012)<\/strong> during off seasons only.<\/p>\n<p>In Kerala, there is a huge demand for elephants for temple festivals, parades and tourism-related functions and bringing new elephants from other states are banned. Many elephant owners exploit this shortage by making the elephants work for over 12-13 hours a day for over 8-10 months a year.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;An elephant owner on average earns around <strong>Rs 50,000-1 lakh<\/strong> a day, while a healthy adult elephant takes part on an average in 200 temple parades a year. The owners are killing the animal by making them overwork day and night&#8221; said V K Venkatachalam, secretary, Elephant Lovers&#8217; Association to TOI.<\/p>\n<p>According to Kerala captive elephants and management rules, elephants can be taken for processions for not more than 3 hours a day and they should not be made to work in the night if they had worked during the day. But elephant owners often violate these rules. It was in this context that the government decided to allow hiring of the elephants.<\/p>\n<p>During the last 3 years, <strong>269 elephants<\/strong> lost their lives and a majority of them were below the age of 40. This year the death figure has already crossed 20.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Now you can hire forest department elephants for Rs 12,000 a day. Kerala Government has given nod to the controversial proposal mooted by the forest department to hire captive elephants held by the department for commercial purpose. With the government sanctioning the proposal, public can hire elephants living in forest camps in Konni, Arienkavu, Kottur [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":14187,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-14185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-kerala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14185"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}