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P. Jayaram
India Correspondent
A dog's life in Mumbai
January 05, 2009 Monday, 05:23 PM
P. Jayaram explores the debate on how to control Mumbai's dog 'nuisance'.
In Mumbai Mumbai, India's financial hub, has an estimated 70,000 stray dogs and every year, they leave more than 25,000 city dwellers nursing dog bites. The growing problem has left many residents fuming, but not animal lovers. In fact, the issue has gone all the way up to the Bombay High Court, which ruled by a 2-1 majority judgment late last month that dogs which were a “nuisance” can be killed. The court gave the ruling in response to a public interest litigation filed by a Mumbai-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), In Defence of Animals, challenging the validity of certain provisions of a law that permits killing of dogs under certain conditions. It said animals had as much constitutional right to life as humans and had a “right to expect compassion from Indian citizens”. The judges held that apart from putting to sleep stray dogs that are incurably ill, mortally wounded, rabid or perennially violent, the municipal commissioner could use his discretion to order the killing of dogs that are causing “public nuisance”. The court interpreted “nuisance” in this instance as “anything that endangers life or is injurious to the health of the public at large”. While it noted that mere barking could not be cause for killing a dog, “dogs that have the habit of chasing moving vehicles, especially two-wheelers, may be treated as a public nuisance as they could lead to accidents”.
Is canine culling legal? The killing of dogs is not permitted under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act except under certain conditions, and the court’s ruling drew opposition. The NGO, In Defence of Animals, has secured a six-week stay of the court’s order, to appeal to the Supreme Court. In the meantime, other activists have begun a campaign to save the strays. Former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson, a self-avowed animal lover and prominent international animal rights campaigner, may join Bollywood stars at a planned rally to protest against the court’s order. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) said the rally would also include Bollywood actors like John Abraham and Raveena Tandon. Peta’s India head, Anuradha Sahwney, said killing the stray dogs was not a solution. “If you kill a dog, another one will come. You have to encourage people to adopt them and remove their food source from the roads and sterilise them,” she said. “We plan to launch a fully focused attack to raise awareness among the people about the importance of cleaning the garbage (on which the stray dogs feed) and sterilisation of the dogs.” The stray dog problem is not confined to Mumbai. Almost every city has a huge stray canine population, and there have been cases of such dogs attacking children, necessitating, in some cases, hospitalisation. Residents of some parts of Mumbai, angry with the civic authorities’ failure to check the stray dogs menace, have also reportedly poisoned the animals. In 1999, the Bombay High Court had stopped local civic bodies from killing stray dogs and ordered sterilisation drives to control their population after several NGOs petitioned it describing the killings as “barbaric and inhuman”. The latest order reverses that decision. Opinion on dealing with the stray dogs remains divided. “Every night, when I return from work, a pack of dogs come barking and chasing my rickshaw,” Mr Andre D’Souza, a resident of Mumbai’s Bandra area, told the DNA newspaper. He added: “I want a solution to this problem soon because I do deserve to move in my locality freely as and when I wish to.” Faced with protests over the court order, the Mumbai municipal corporation has decided to set up a “euthanasia committee” to recommend a “humane way” to kill the stray dogs. “We will inject them with phenol barbipone which will kill them in a more humane way,” a municipal health officer said. Earlier, the civic body used to kill the animals by putting them in water and electrocuting them. According to some NGOs, some 400,000 stray dogs have been killed in Mumbai since 1994, but that has not brought down their number. Sterilisation may be a more "humane" way to deal with the strays, but the question is how do you round up 70,000 of them?
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I just wonder who will control the field rat population if not for our community dogs?
One entomologist has said that Bangalore's rodent population has noticeably gone up since 2 yrs.(Deccan Herald News Service)
It is after the mass killing of street dogs in Bangalore just 2 yrs back that we find too many rat holes near every other house.
Please demand an answer from any Municipality which decides to kill street dogs,about its plans to control the rodent population .
It s not ideal and possible to clear the street dogs in a country like ours.
It is not right to wipe out one species totally.It may have an adverse effect on us later.
In a repoprt from 27/12/08 in the mumbai marathi newspaper is mentioned that the BMC plan s to kill 49 dogs a day. A committee will be set up to check the dogs. They will issue a certificate for the dogs which are sick and rabbis infected. On the basis of this certificate the dogs will be killed. Dogs which are healthy will be sterilized . About 40 dogs a month will be sterilized.
It seems that the BMC has clairvoyants amongst them, because they know already beforehand how many dogs will be ill, that means 49 dogs per day, that will be 1470 in a month and in a year there won't be any dog anymore - that means they already decided that all dogs are ill... Remarkable is, that it is in the ratio of 1470 dogs killed to 40 sterilized!!! So why making this fuss around it - they should at least stay to it that they just want to kill all dogs ! It is a stupid eyewash !
I am travelling regularly to India and work with an animal welfare organisation together since 9 years. At the begin I was pleased that the Indians were not treating the animals badly with intention - that is what I thought and what I noticed - I even published an article about it. When I see what now is happening in India, I am really shocked that I was so wrong. All this killing last year, like crazy - everybody could do what they wanted with the animals. How can a country be secure also for tourists if people are getting like that out of control and are even protected by the government - that is a shame!! And now, because there have been protests against this barbaric killings, they try to make it legal.
I am absolutely angry when I see people discussing over lifes as if the dogs are something without any value. The ABC programs are mostly done halfhearted, no wonder that it does not take effect - it should be done consequently then it would show effect. I met many dogs in the street and I never had problems with them. 9 years ago I took a streetdog home with me to Germany and I don't regret it for a minute. He is intelligent, loves people above all children. In India I have seen children chasing dogs and throwing stones at them, so what do you expect them to do? I think most important would be that people treat those animals with respect.
Their only crime is that they exist and for that they are sentenced to death ! Is that Indian justice ?
WE SHOULD NOT KILL THE INNOCENT DOGS,BUT CAN CHOOSE TO CUT DOWN THE POPULATION OF DOGS.THEY CAN USE ANOTHER MORE HUMANITY WAYS TO FIX THIS PROBLEM.
Bangalore has had no rabies deaths for nearly over half a decade; I mean the old Bangalore city before the recent expansion. That’s because the city has had a relatively good track of sterilisation and vaccination. If the programme has not been rolled out as fast as we would like it to, its not because of the NGOs not being able to deliver, but because the municipal body hasn’t been prompt in releasing the payments. It’s the bureaucracy and the red-tapism that has dogged the programme. Cannot understand why Mumbai, whose municipal budget is bigger than that of some small countries cannot spend a few millions to sterilise just 70,000 dogs. Killing for over 100 years hasn’t produced any result, lets try the more humane and sustainable method for some years before pronouncing the verdict. The sterilisation programme hasn’t been allowed to succeed in full.
I have to agree with the gentleman who says that it is Humans who are the real plagues of this planet. To point a finger at other and caling them "pests" to be eradicated when it is us who slowly but steadily destroy this world which is not ours alone to do with as we please is grotesque in the extreme. So dogs bark, dogs bite - so what ?
Humans kill one another, sexually abuse their offspring, build nuclear bombs, etc.
If of the many milions of dogs that are abused and killed these days worldwide - gassed in the US; skinned alive in China; hung, poisoned, stabbed to death, buried alive in Eastern and South European countries - a few hundred bite a Human then that is almost a "kiss of protest" from a creature whose faithfulness and good nature are legendary. In stark contrast to man, that is.
I also find it "amusing" that the Indian people who know what is is like to be dominated, oppressed and abused by an Alien force that considered them less than themselves/their (the Indian) interest less than their own (the British in their colonial time) have, for the animals in recent years, become the spitting image of their former scourge.
Have the Indian people learned nothing ?
Is copying an ill deed and applying it to the next available defenseless population (the dogs) all the wisdom gained from this traumatic experience.
India was once famed for her compassion towards all forms of life; for the harmony that existed between man, animal and nature.
What happens now, and increasingly so - with every step taken closer to the Western form of "civilization", the reckless capitalism that destroys all life on this planet - is a wanton destruction of all that made India the flower raising its head above a sea of unfeeling Capitalist concrete.
If the dogs go, the Indian people, and all of us, will follow. Death begets death, and the ignorance and viciousness of the people who, even here in this blog, think and advocate that a barking/biting dog should be dead dog are the same that denounced women as witches in the Middle Ages and stood by while innocents burned at the stake. These people sow death where they walk, and all they need is an ignorant mob they can inflame and use to their end.
Humans come first ?
Why should they ?
But of course it is to be expected of a Dominant species to guard its own interests. Individual Humans can rise above this purest form of selfnishness, and see beyond themselves - realise they are not the centre of creation. Such is true greatness - to humble oneself before all forms of life this world has brought forth.
The lives of all these dogs are as precious as our own - India, you once knew this in your heart. Why do you betray your own nature by slaughtering the innocent ?
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