Corporate Citizen claps for the villagers of Ranmala in Khed Taluka, Pune district who despite attacks on their cattle, pets and even fellow villagers have worked out an innovative solution to enable their own safety and also keep leopards lurking in the area hydrated!
The innovation stems from past attacks, at least seven times within a year, before they decided to do something about the leopard menace. The apprehensions over the ever-ensuing man-animal conflicts took a new turn when the Ranmala farmers were quick to realize that one of the main reasons that brought the leopards into the villages was their need for water. This set Baban Khadke, Genubhau Bhujbal and Rajaram Shinde, to build and repair three water tanks for the benefit of leopards. These cubical 5-feet-deep and 5-feet-wide tanks work like artificial wells-when the water is let out in a wide basin-like structure; the leopards can drink from it. They placed these tanks away from human settlements and farms which minimized the frequency of leopards entering into the villages. “One tank was built 20 years back. We thought the solution to leopard attacks was to build a water facility for wild animals. The tanks are filled by water from our wells every two days,” said Khadke. This simple method was taken a step further by another farmer Nilesh Shinde, who designed temporary, mobile water tanks for the wild animals. He utilized iron barrels and placed artificial tanks in strategic locations for wild animals and birds to access drinking water easily. Shinde’s effective techniques have won him support from the joint forest management committee comprising forest department officials and locals, who have also decided to build such tanks in the area. “I built six water ponds in the area to prevent the attacks. I slice the iron barrels into two halves to create the tanks. And this small gesture has been effective as since a month, barely one wild animal has entered the village. These tanks are filled every two days from our wells.” A win-win indeed for a locality that already plants a sapling on special occasions like birth of a child or death of an individual-has set a model for the state!
Corporate Citizen slaps the merry go-round being played around bank officials, the RBI’s governance and mishandling of Aadhar data-in a case where an NRI found that Rs.1.33 crore had fraudulently vanished from his Bank of India (BOI) account!
More harassing was the fact that despite the rules governing digital fraud which require the money to be credited instantly, the US NRI, Ajay Sood is still waiting for his Rs.1.33 crore to be remitted. Repeated campaigning by Money life Foundation’s counselling cell to the RBI governor’s office, the deputy governor, the chief general manager (Customer services) and a persistent follow-up has not seen any bank credits for Sood. Other than emails and assurances from BOI that money will be credited to his account, Sood’s anticipation to get back his own money remains in a limbo. He claims that two individuals-one Sachin Yadav (Rs.98 lakh) from Gurugram and another Mukesh Thakur (Rs.35 lakh) from Ujjain, allegedly siphoned off his funds, but are not being questioned by the police or the Bank. He said that a bank official kept insisting that someone known to him would have transacted and strongly denied any involvement of Bank employee/s. While reportedly the duo has been arrested, the Chandigarh police uncovered their alleged connections with members of an interstate gang. While BOI’s Chandigarh branch did assure that Sood’s payment was under process; he has yet to see the money in his account. “I have sent the cheques to my attorney in Chandigarh to share them with the bank without handing them over as I do not feel safe giving them the original cheques,” he said. Also, no Aadhaar card is linked to his bank account since NRO accounts do not have such a requirement. “I do not know if they used a PAN card, and whether that corresponds to the one in my bank records. There was a fraudulent communication with the bank in my name via a non-registered email before a bank official approved transfer my funds. Someone was aware of my account balance since almost the entire amount was transferred.” Hope Sood gets respite from this carousel of ‘unintended’ conspiracy!
by Sangeeta Ghosh Dastidar
