Li-sense to kill

The prolific Amit Varma remarks in his latest post:

Why, it may be asked, should a licence to kill a particular elephant ever lapse?

And while he may be somewhat justified in attributing this to just another Government vagary, I was rather surprised to see that he so quickly dismissed corruption and inefficiency.

Were this license not allowed to lapse after a period of time, then the Indian elephant population would probably have been extinct by now.

No doubt, some would argue that the period of the validity of the license be changed or reviewed, and others could examine a number of other ways to amend the grant of this license - including perhaps, a local authority that could renew the license for an additional period of time.

But, I argue, it is precisely this combination of corruption and inefficiency that has led to this method of regulation of licenses. I'm quite confident that if the license were allowed to remain valid until the hunter had actually gotten rid of the elephant (a conservationist friend of mine would quake at the thought of any elephant being eliminated, no matter for what reason!!), then we would discover that there was significant "collateral" damage. More dead elephants, certainly. Erroneously killed. Or quite simply, "mysterious deaths".

Of course, I'm also suggesting that by having to send paperwork all the way to the relevant ministry in New Delhi, all that's happening is that the chain of corruption is just growing longer, and reaching into the highest echelons of power, where the most incompetent and morally depraved section of Indian society thrives. Corruption just spreads to a level where it's easier to obfuscate and obscure reality. The poor elephants will probably never know what hit them.