Officials take inspiration from literary giant Lakshminath Bezbaroa’s characters to motivate voters
Mandate 2021 has made the swamp deer steal the one-horned rhino’s thunder in eastern Assam’s Golaghat district.
The swamp deer is the most unobtrusive of the Kaziranga National Park’s big five animals, the others being the rhino, Bengal tiger, elephant and Asiatic water buffalo in that order of prominence. The headquarters of the park is in Golaghat district.
On March 11, the district administration launched ‘Tikhor’, the swamp deer as the male mascot for the systematic voters’ education and electoral participation (SVEEP) programme. ‘Sutibai’, the butterfly, has been made the female mascot.
“The mascots have been inspired by two characters that Lakhminath Bezbaroa, the tallest Assamese writer, created,” said Oprah Baglary, District Development Commissioner and SVEEP cell in-charge.
Tikhor and Sutibai are characters from one of the stories in ‘Burhi Aair Sadhu (Grandma’s Tales)” that Bezbaroa, revered as ‘King of Humour’, wrote more than a century ago.
“The swamp deer and butterfly were chosen because they are adorable, agile and energetic. While the park has more than 1,000 swamp deer, the Nambor-Doigrung Wildlife Sanctuary in our district has 224 species of butterflies,” Golaghat’s Deputy Commissioner Bibhash Chandra Modi said.
District election officials said the rhino was thought of initially for the male mascot but was voted out in favour of the swamp deer. This was because the district wanted to make a conservation statement by focusing on an animal that gets into wildlife discussion as an “afterthought”.
The swamp deer was also perceived to be representative of people slotted in the ‘backward’ bracket.
Also found in western Assam’s Manas National Park, the swamp deer is said to have become extinct in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
