Tracks of Tragedy

The deaths of seven elephants on a railway track in Assam are not just a tragic accident; they are a stark reminder of how India continues to underestimate the cost of development imposed on living landscapes.

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Each such incident is quickly framed as an unfortunate collision between modern transport and wildlife. In reality, it is the outcome of longstanding policy blind spots where infrastructure planning treats forests as obstacles rather than as inhabited, dynamic ecosystems.

Elephants are not strays wandering onto railway lines at random. They follow inherited routes shaped over generations, adjusting constantly to shrinking forests, blocked corridors, and human pressure. When a train hits a herd, it is usually because steel tracks have been laid across paths that existed long before the locomotive. Whether or not a stretch is officially marked as a corridor is often irrelevant to the animals themselves.