Awww. India Has Some New Persons

Can't help but wonder how the street kids rank in the caste system now...

India grants glaciers legal personhood in effort to protect them

Gaumukh - snout of the Gangotri glacier, Himalayas, India. A makeshift temple in the foreground marks where the glacier reached about 20 years ago. (Credit: Niranjan Srinivas / Flickr)

An Indian court granted Himalayan glaciers status as “legal persons” on Friday in a new conservation strategy that seems to be gathering momentum quickly.

Less than three weeks ago, New Zealand granted similar status to a river – the Whanganui. Just days later on March 20, India followed suit for the Ganga and Yamuna rivers. Now the Gangotri and Yamunotri glaciers as well as waterfalls, forests, lake, meadows and other environmental features in the area have all been granted legal rights as “living entities.”

The glaciers are among the largest in the Himalayas and feed into the Ganga and Yamuna rivers. However, they are receding at an “alarming rate,” the judges said according to Press Trust of India, with the Gangotri glacier shrinking more than 2,800 feet in about 25 years.

“The rights of these entities shall be equivalent to the rights of human beings and any injury or harm caused to these bodies shall be treated as injury or harm caused to human beings,” Uttarakhand’s highest court said in its ruling, according to AFP.

The legal rights afforded these natural resources are not the same as human rights. However, it does give them legal standing to sue or be sued. Additionally, the court-assigned “legal guardians,” which represent the new persons, will not need to prove that damage, such as pollution, is harming humans – only that it is harming the river or other legal entity.

How will these legal persons vote? probably Leftist, I'm guessing. Can they run for Prime Minister? Must they show their I.D. on demand? Get fined for unruly melting? They might be better off as designated cows, and treated as holy objects.