Fly The Rapids

‘Narmada Parikrama’—an arduous 1,300-km-long journey on foot from the holy river’s origin in Amarkantak in MP to the point where it joins the ocean in Gujarat—acquired a whole new meaning when BJP state general secretary Anil Dave decided to do it by air. An amateur pilot and RSS man in the state BJP, he’ll be flying a Cessna in a four-day ‘parikrama’ with stopovers at Indore, Bhopal, Jabalpur and Vadodara. The objective: to study the Narmada’s catchment areas and the impact of deforestation on its flow. CM Shivraj Chauhan has already promised that the report would be taken "very seriously". It matters little that Dave has no expertise in river-related sciences or that he himself calls it a scientific-cum-religious adventure.