The Better India · 7 hours ago

Meet the Odisha Man Training 50 Volunteers to Rescue Snakes and Save Lives

When a python wrapped itself around Biplab Mahapatra's arm at the bottom of a 30-foot well, deep in a forest 80 kilometers from home, he was already years into understanding something most people never consider: that fear, left uneducated, kills more animals than malice ever could. A former journalist, Biplab left his career to build Rangers in Angul, Odisha, training around 50 volunteers not just to rescue snakes but to dismantle the myths that make killing them feel like common sense. "The rescue is not the solution," he says -- and that insight reshaped everything, sending his team into schools and villages with a program called Save Snakes, Save Humans, until snakebite deaths in Angul fell from over 100 annually to double digits. What Biplab has built is less an organization than a new way of seeing: one where a snake in the house is not a death sentence for the snake, and where enough knowledge can hold fear steady long enough for someone to make a better choice. His largest ambition now is simply to make himself unnecessary -- to grow a community of people who will answer the call when he cannot.