Half of India's Dolphin population found in Bihar

It was not known to me but half of India's dolphins are found in the water of Ganges (Ganga) river in Bihar. However, this population of dolphins will start facing extinction if their killing is not stopped immediately.

There are two reasons for extinction.
1. Contaminated wastes released by industries into Ganga
2. Fishermen killing the dolphin's to use their oil for making fishing bates.

Dolphin's have been declared national indian aquatic animal recently. But even besides that it would be lovely to have dolphins around and can become a source of dolphin tourism in Bihar.

Alternatives have to be found for the fishermen folk so that they can switch over to other materials for fishing bates. Secondly, the pollution control mechanism has to kick in to quickly stop industries from releasing contaminated wastes into Ganga across the various states Ganga flows in. While efforts have been going on, on this front from quite sometime, the efforts have to be increased and the industrialists have to realize that it is important to save the Ganga from any further contamination. They might incurr a small cost to find out alternate ways of waste disposal but the benefit of this act on humanity will be tremendous.

Since a lot of rivers feed into Ganga, dolphin's are found in other rivers , like Gandak , etc too. Hence it is equally important to protect the dolphin population there.

I appreciate PU zoology department Professor R K Sinha, who has single-handedly led a struggle to save the Ganga dolphins. Let us support him and his efforts in anyway possible which includes even just spreading the words on saving the dolphin population.

Tourism: Dolphin keep changing habitats with the changing seasons and right now good numbers are found in the Ganga in Patna and Vikramshila Gangetic Dolphin Sanctuary in Bhagalpur. Last month, Prof. Sinha sailed 200 kms in the Gandak in a boat and spotted a dolphin every km. So the tourism enthusiats planning on a holiday might consider going on a dolphin tourism in Bihar.

An interesting article to save the dolphin's can be found here "Enforce ban on killing of dolphins, DMs told". More details on Prof. Sinha can be found at http://dolphinsinha.com

Self Employment opportunities for Agricultural Graduates in Bihar

Bihar's biggest advantage today is vast tracts of agriculturally fertile land and Bihar can accelerate its speed of growth and prosperity by investing more into agricultural businesses. Realizing this potential the government is putting focus and emphasis on agriculture and this can be evidenced from the first set of training provided for agriculture schemes available with the government.

In this series the government has decided to give a loan of Rs. 5 lakhs to each agriculture graduate without margin or security requirement for setting up agriclinics and agribusiness centres.

This is a central government initiative under the Agriclinic & Agribusiness Centre Scheme, sponsored by the Central government to tackle unemployment among these graduates. It is a good opportunity for unemployed graduates to not only get work but create work for other people around them.

This is a good scheme and everyone of us should inform people we might know who need such opportunities. If each one of us informs atleast 2 people about this scheme and ask each person to inform another 2 people, we can soon have a snow ball effect and a lot of unemployed graduates would soon become owners of their one ventures. Hence please do inform more and more people about it.

Further details can be read in the Times of India article Graduates to be given loan for setting up agriclinics dated 18 Feb 2009