The Indian government faces a tough re-election battle next year, but first it must deal with an opponent as wily as any political rival: troops of monkeys that have become a big threat around its offices in New Delhi.
Red-faced rhesus macaques have spread havoc, snatching food and smartphones, breaking into homes and terrorizing people in and around the Indian capital.
They have colonized areas around parliament and the sites of key ministries, from the prime minister’s office to the finance and defense ministries, frightening both civil servants and the public.
“Very often they snatch food from people as they are walking, and sometimes they even tear files and documents by climbing in through the windows,” Indian Ministry of Home Affairs employee Ragini Sharma said.
Ahead of yesterday’s start of parliament’s winter session, an advisory to lawmakers last month detailed ways they could keep simian attacks at bay. Do not tease or make direct eye contact with a monkey, the advisory said, and definitely do not get between a mother and her infant.
The rapid growth of cities has displaced macaques, geographically the most widely distributed primates in the world after humans, driving them into human habitats to hunt for food.
Many in Hindu-majority India revere and feed the animals they consider to be connected to the demigod Hanuman, who takes the form of a monkey.
“This socio-religious tradition of feeding has created a vicious cycle,” Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment researcher Asmita Sengupta said. “They become used to being fed by humans and lose their sense of fear. They start actively seeking supplementary food and if we don’t feed them, they turn aggressive.”
The monkeys have hardly proved an ally for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Hundreds of macaques feasting on optic fiber cables strung along the banks of the River Ganges derailed his plan to roll out Wi-Fi in his constituency, the crowded 3,000-year-old holy city of Varanasi, in 2015.
Men were hired to swat the monkeys away with broomsticks and slingshots when then-US president Barack Obama toured New Delhi that year, media said.
Some monkey-human encounters have turned tragic.
In 2007, monkeys pushed then-Delhi deputy mayor S.S. Bajwa off his balcony to his death. Last month, one of the animals snatched a 12-day-old boy from his mother and killed him in Agra, home to the famed monument to love, the Taj Mahal.
Monkeys have bred rapidly in Delhi and neighboring states as they have protected status, but there is no official estimate of their numbers.
India has tried several strategies to fight the menace.
Several years ago, it brought in larger, black-faced langurs, feared by the macaques, to patrol key areas, but that stopped after it became illegal to keep langurs in captivity.
Authorities stumbled on a partially successful solution four years ago after hiring 40 men to disguise themselves as langurs and squeal monkey-like to try and terrify the macaques away.
“We call them ‘ape repellers’ and they are contract employees,” said a government official, who asked not to be identified.
The stratagem works temporarily as the monkeys flee on hearing the calls, but they return once the men depart.
Primatologist S.M. Mohnot recommends sterilization and moving the animals to forests, as well as lifting a ban on their capture for biomedical research and resuming exports of the macaques, as components of a solution.
“The monkey menace can be checked only by a multipronged approach,” said Mohnot, the chairman of the Primate Research Centre, a federal institute in the western city of Jodhpur.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not