A mobile phone app aimed at reducing fatalities caused by wild elephants rampaging across populated areas in their search for food and sanctuary in a rapidly shrinking habitat has been launched in India’s northeastern Assam state.
Instigated over the weekend by Aaranyak, a biodiversity non-governmental organisation in Assam – which has the largest elephant population in India, numbering more than 5,700 – the Haatiapp (Elephantapp) warns people of approaching pachyderm herds. The app also includes a facility for elephant attack victims to seek government compensation.
Elephants killed 1,701 people across India and injured hundreds of others in 2020-2024; a significantly large number of the incidents were in Assam. The families of those killed by elephants receive ,000 rupees (€3,270) in compensation, while those injured receive lesser amounts.
“We have to make people aware of the elephant problem,” Bibhuti Lahkar of the Elephant Research and Conservation Division, which developed the app, told the Hindustan Times. Installing the app on mobile phones would make people aware of elephant herds in their vicinity and help them take evasive action, he said.
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Environmental activists say more than half a million families are adversely affected by elephants rampaging over their agricultural fields each year, not only in Assam, but also in neighbouring Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand states, and several places in southern India. Similar destruction occurs in the contiguous northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
Some years ago, elephant herds were known to plunder rum, sugar and flour from an army supply base in north Bengal, adjoining Assam, after breaking through electrified fencing by dumping uprooted trees upon it and dousing fires lit to scare them away, with water stored in their trunks.
Elephant herds are also known to block highways across Assam and nearby Nagaland state, forcing truckers and motorists to “bribe” them with bananas to get past.
India is home to about 60 per cent of all Asian elephants, who are also cultural and holy symbols for the country’s majority Hindu community.
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Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, is one of the most worshipped of Hindu deities, revered for his intellect and wisdom, as a patron of arts and science and widely considered a good luck omen.
Furthermore, possessing a stable of elephants is a symbol of prestige and standing for many temples across southern India, where scores of them, duly caparisoned, are paraded during festivals.
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But the ongoing conflict between elephants and humans has proven unfavourable to the former. According to the NGO Wildlife SOS, elephant numbers across India dropped from 29,391 in 2012 to 27,312 five years later, and the entire elephant population is under “serious threat” due to the steady fragmentation of their habitat.
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