Mysuru: One of the highlights of the Mysuru Dasara procession is the march of bejewelled elephants down the Jumboo Savari Route from the Mysore Palace to Bannimantap Torchlight Parade Grounds. The march is not smooth if extra care is not taken as the road is strewn with several stones, nails, glass, metal pieces and sharp plastic objects. Marching on this road is not easy for the elephants because these sharp objects get embedded into the soles of their feet, causing great pain and even lead to infections. For this purpose, there is an automated magnetic nail removal machine that is fixed to a vehicle that moves ahead of the elephants. The machine picks up only iron nails and other sharp objects while small stones glass pieces and other sharp items have to be seen by trained eyes and picked up by hand. While the task of picking non-metal objects from the road is handled by Rangaraju, alias “nail man,” who is doing this task for the last 25 years, the magnetic nail removal device has been developed by Santhosh and Vijay Kumar.
