The Padma Awards 2024 were announced on Republic Day eve, Thursday. For this year, the President has approved the conferment of 132 Padma Awards, including 2 duo cases (in a duo case, the Award is counted as one).
The list also comprises 5 Padma Vibhushan, 17 Padma Bhushan and 110 Padma Shri Awards. 30 of the awardees are women and the list also includes 8 honorees from the category of Foreigners/ NRI/ PIO/ OCI and 9 Posthumous awardees.
The list includes several unsung heroes who have made a remarkable impact on society. Parbati Baruah also known as ‘Hasti Kanya’ was named among the several recipients. She is an Assamese native who is currently 67 years old. She gained fame as the first female elephant mahout in India. She received the Padma Shri award in recognition of her work in animal conservation and dispelling preconceptions to make a name for woman in a field that has historically been dominated by men.
She is from Gauripur. Elephants are nothing new to her. She was raised by Assamese zamindars who have a centuries-old bond with elephants, and she played with them as a little girl. Her father Prakritesh Barua is a highly recognised authority on elephants throughout the world.
Her family had been involved in the capture and sale of elephants until the government outlawed the practice. It is reported that the royal families of Bhutan, Cooch Behar, and Jaipur were among her family’s clients.
Assamese royalty was Parbati Baruah’s birth family. In the past, wealthy households used to display their status by owning an elephant. Beyond that, though, Parbati spent much of her time domesticating and teaching elephants because she had a strong bond with them. Her late father Prakritish Chandra Barua introduced her to the area of elephant care when she was fourteen years old. Forty elephants belonged to the royal family.
Baruah participated in numerous initiatives that enhanced the living circumstances for elephants. At the age of 14, she successfully tamed her first elephant in the Kochugaon forest in Assam. Between 1975 and 1978, she independently tamed fourteen wild elephants in the woods of North Bengal (Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling) and Assam (Darrang and Kochugaon). She even assisted in tending to and nursing the recently tamed elephants on behalf of the forest officers.
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Meet India’s first woman elephant mahout honoured with Padma Shri, also known as..
