Life

Monkeys run amok in India's corridors of power

December 11, 2018
A monkey sits on a pavement outside India's Parliament building in New Delhi. — Reuters
A monkey sits on a pavement outside India's Parliament building in New Delhi. — Reuters

NEW DELHI — India's 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 mobile telephones, 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 defence 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," said Ragini Sharma, a home ministry employee.

Ahead of Tuesday's start of parliament's winter session, an advisory to members of parliament last month detailed ways they could keep simian attacks at bay. Don't tease or make direct eye contact with a monkey, the advisory said, and definitely don't 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.

The monkeys have hardly proved an ally for 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 wifi in his constituency, the crowded 3,000-year-old holy city of Varanasi, in 2015.

Some monkey-human encounters have turned tragic.

In 2007, monkeys pushed the deputy mayor of Delhi, 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. — Reuters


December 11, 2018
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