India, Aug. 12 -- World Elephant Day in India must move beyond symbolic reverence to confront how rapid development fragments elephant habitats.

With over 60% of the world's wild Asian elephants, India's new DNA-based count offers a baseline, but numbers alone are meaningless without safe, connected corridors, climate-resilient landscapes and fair systems that prevent conflicts and share conservation costs with local communities.

Every August 12, World Elephant Day invites India to celebrate an animal that occupies an unusual place in the national imagination: revered in mythology, embedded in festivals, art and literature, and yet increasingly displaced by the geography of our own development. The paradox is stark. India holds more tha...