A well-written summary of the current and past AW movmement in india

[Guest guest]

Animal People October 1998

 

Maneka claims cabinet post for animals

 

NEW DELHI, India-- " You will be happy to know that I

have finally gotten

the animal welfare department, which is the first of

its kind anywhere

in the world, " People For Animals founder Maneka

Gandhi e-mailed to

ANIMAL PEOPLE on September 8.

 

" It is now a part of my ministry, " Maneka said, as

welfare minister for

the government of India, " and I would like to make it

into a

full-fledged department. " A senior independent member

of the Indian parliament,

representing her New Delhi district since 1989, Maneka

is among the

power brokers in the coalition government of the Hindu

nationalist

Bharatiya Janata party. She may actually have more

clout now than she did

during two appointments as environment minister while

a member of the Janata

Dal party, from which she was ousted in 1996 for

denouncing alleged

corruption among fellow ministers.

 

To create an independent animal welfare department has

been Maneka's

first ambition since she entered politics, she told

ANIMAL PEOPLE over

lunch during the 1997 national conference of the

Animal Welfare Board of

India.

 

The Animal Welfare Board has advisory authority, a

small budget, some

deputized inspectors, and a constitutional mandate to

prevent animal

suffering, but it cannot actually make and enforce

policy. The chief

inspection powers pertaining to animals in India, as

in the U.S., are split

among departments with other mandates--and often,

inherent conflicts of

interest.

 

Maneka explained to ANIMAL PEOPLE that she would like

to bring all of

the animal-related inspection services together in one

branch of

government which would answer to no other, would

vigorously implement the

recommendations of the Animal Welfare Board, and would

uphold the unique

provision in Article 51-A of the Indian constitution

that the people of

India have a moral obligation to prevent animal

suffering.

 

As ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press, no further information

about whatever

Maneka has accomplished was available. Daily searches

of major Indian

newspapers produced no menton of it.

 

Help In Suffering president Christine Townend,

director of two animal

sanctuary/hospitals in India and a longtime personal

friend of Maneka,

was in Concord, California, on September 11 to address

a plenary session

of the fourth annual No-Kill Conference. Traveling

when Maneka

contacted ANIMAL PEOPLE, Townend hadn't heard a word

about it.

 

Nor had conference participants Bonny and Ratilal

Shah, who head both

the Ahimsa charity of Texas and the animal welfare

committee of JAINA,

the American Jain religious and cultural organization.

 

 

Whatever Maneka is up to, though, the timing for

animals couldn't be

better. Noting the success of the Animal Birth Control

program pioneered

30 years ago by the Blue Cross of India in Chennai

(Madras), and

actively encouraging it through most of the years

since, the Animal Welfare

Board in December 1997 recommended that India should

pursue achieving

no-kill animal control nationwide by 2005. No-kill

policies were already

in effect in Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Jaipur, and

several other major

cities.

 

The recommendation was ratified by the government in

power then--but

that government was toppled by the Bharatiya Janata

coalition in March

1998. Animal Welfare Board president Lieutenant

General (retired) Ashoke

Kumar Chaterjee, a staunch ally of Maneka's, retired

and was replaced

by Guman Mal Lodha, a longtime back-bencher in

Parliament whom Maneka

vigorously denounced from the floor at the 1997 Animal

Welfare Board

meeting for his role in decertifying a wildlife

sanctuary to encourage

nearby industrial development.

 

In Mumbai, Bombay SPCA president Ratan N. Tata retired

after four years

as president and was replaced Sir Dinshaw Manockjee

Petit, 4th Baronet,

a 15-year member of the board--who died suddenly on

March 30, at age

64, on a trip to Amsterdam. Townend, badly mauled in

April by a street

dog, spent the summer recovering in her native

Australia.

 

Dogs vs. cows

 

 

With much of the Indian humane leadership temporarily

distracted, and

the Indian economy stagnant, though resisting the

collapse afflicting

much of the rest of Asia, populists in Mumbai and

elsewhere seized upon

still abundant homeless dogs as an easy problem to

" solve " by creating

patronage jobs--in this case, to kill dogs. (See this

month's letters to

the editor)

 

There was a cultural undercurrent to the anti-dog

backlash. Many

Indians, like other Asians, perceive dogs as

unclean--a belief associated

with fear of rabies, and also associated, among many

Hindus and some

Jains, with the carnivorous nature of dogs. Strict

Hindus of the educated

classes, and all Jains, are supposed to be

lacto-vegetarian. Though

Mohandas Gandhi made a public point of petting dogs,

humane work centering

on dogs tends to be regarded by some nationalists and

fundamentalists as

a presumptuous British imposition on a nation whose

Lord Krishna

reputedly founded cattle sanctuaries, called gaushalas

or pinjrapols, 5,000

years ago.

 

Dog rescue is urban-oriented; cattle rescue is rural.

Cows are holy;

dogs are profane. Maneka, a feminist radical as well

as a nationalist, is

satirized for her love of dogs, while Guman Mal Lodha,

a conservative,

defended himself against her charge of improperly

delisting the

sanctuary by proclaiming, " I would give my life for a

cow. "

 

Fundamentalists may have seen the rise of the

Bharatiya Janata party as

a sign that cow rescue would regain primacy in the

perennial pursuit of

government funding. But the gaushala faction was

almost immediately

embarrased when incoming Rajasthan governor Darbara

Singh ordered an

investigation of the deaths of more than 3,000 cattle

at gaushalas in Jaipur

and Dausa.

 

" A state-appointed commission on cow conservation

found that a large

number of deaths were due to poor health or

starvation, " The Times of

India reported. " The state gives the gaushalas a

subsidy of three rupees a

day for each cow, but the funds are not being used

properly, it is

alleged. "

 

That's just what Maneka charged, years earlier. She

and allies, all

derided as dog-lovers, had complained for years about

unscrupulous

gaushala managers allegedly allowing cattle to starve,

in order to sell their

hides for leather. Slaughtering cattle is legally

difficult in India,

but selling leather goods made from cattle who

supposedly died naturally

is so ubiquitous that it is almost impossible even to

find a nonleather

belt for sale.

 

Bullock carts

 

 

Apart from defending and expanding humane dog care and

control

policies, and policing gaushalas, Maneka's animal

welfare department will have

no lack of other work.

 

But she also still has strong colleagues in humane

work, including Blue

Cross of India vice president S. Chinny Krishna, who

recently denounced

Indian film makers in The Hindu for not at least

equaling Hollywood in

setting good examples of how animals should be

treated.

 

Before the Bharatiya Janata government demonstrated

Indian nuclear

might with a series of underground test blasts in the

Rajasthan desert,

near Pakistan, such complaints were typically

dismissed with the excuse

that India can't match western standards due to

poverty. Now that India

claims to be part of the First World elite, crying

poor no longer seems

to satisfy much of the media.

 

On September 18 The Times of India covered an address

to Bangalore

bullock cart drivers by Chamrajpet legislator Premila

Nesargi. Organized by

Compassion Unlimited Plus Action, the Animal Welfare

Board, the city

police, and the Bangalore department of animal

husbandry, the

presentation " aimed to educate the cartmen of the city

market and surrounding

areas on the laws regarding permissible loads for

animal-drawn vehicles, "

the article explained.

 

" Premila told the surprised cartmen how there are

special parlors

abroad for dogs and shoes for horses. 'You will not

believe, the dogs also

have their own tailors who stitch the correct size of

clothes for them,'

she said. The lawyer-cum-politician, who is just back

from a trip to

Britain, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Switzerland,

Italy, and the United

Arab Emirates, advised the cart owners to take good

care of their

animals, like their counterparts in foreign

countries. "

 

Anyone familiar with any of those nations must have

wondered just where

she went, to encounter both dog-tailors and

bullock-carts. But

evidently no one inquired. Premila reportedly went on

to ask the Bangalore

police to set up scales at various checkpoints to see

if carts are

overloaded.

 

Wildlife

 

 

Among her other crusades, Maneka has demanded higher

standards of

Indian wildlife viewing sites for more than 20 years.

She has pointed out

that while building cages may cost more money than the

operators of most

zoos are willing or able to spend, India still has

abundant animals in

the wild, who can be readily observed, are already a

major source of

tourist revenue, and could generate far more revenue

both from visitors

and from Indians themselves, if properly protected and

appreciated. This

includes developing ways of watching the animals

without stressing

them.

 

Having seen for herself several of the leading zoos

and aquariums in

the U.S., Maneka argues that India should build

facilities of at least

equal quality near each big city, both improving

conditions for captive

widlife and creating countless jobs in construction,

maintenance, and

animal care.

 

These sites should be stocked, she contends, with

animals rescued from

the many substandard roadside zoos around the country,

if the rescued

animals are not suitable for return to the wild. Then,

the relatively

few top-quality zoos should be managed as educational

institutions, to

teach Indian children the importance of protecting and

expanding the many

sanctuaries and national parks which in recent years

have been poached

and plundered as quasi-commons, under a " sustainable

use " policy which

proclaims lip service to the management paradigm of

the World Wildlife

Fund.

 

Unlike WWF, which advocates trophy hunting, most

Indian states

discourage or forbid sport hunting in any form, but

allow just about any other

use of wildlife reserves. Thus villagers fearlessly

herd cattle through

some " tiger sanctuaries " which now contain fewer

tigers than tourist

jeeps. Where the tigers are may perhaps be

identified--if they descend

into the grasslands--from the incessant honking of

jeeps racing toward

them.

 

Named for Maneka's late husband, who was killed in a

1981 airplane

crash, the Sanjay Gandhi National Wildlife Park near

Mumbai proposed to

introduce jeep tours beginning on October 1. Ahimsa in

September filed

suit seeking to halt the plan, arguing that the 40

resident panthers and

leopards, 21 lions, and four tigers need fewer people

in their habitat,

not more.

 

Sanjay Gandhi park conservator A.R. Bharti claims the

purpose of the

tours will be public education. Ahimsa counters that

they will amount to

commercial exploitation, in violation of the 1980

Forest Conservation

Act. This could put Maneka right in the middle, since

she favors

improving public education about wildlife, especially

at parks and reserves,

but as environment minister ran into political trouble

time and again

for fighting commercial exploitation of protected

habitat.

 

Ahimsa won a late August verdict from the Bombay High

Court that the

Sanjay Gandhi National Park wildlife rehabilitation

center at Borivili

does not constitute adequate provision for sick and

injured wildlife as

required by the 1960 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

Act. Reinforcing

an opinion issued on March 16, the court directed

Maharashtra state to

create at least one more wildlife rehabilitation

center and several

infirmaries for domesticated animals before November

9.

 

Maharashtra state attorney R.V. Govilkar had argued

that the 2,073

veterinary clinics in the state were adequate to treat

the number of

animals in need. The ratio of vets to humans in

Maharashtra is about

1-to-50,000, a tenth of the U.S. ratio.

 

Zoo reform

 

 

The Central Zoo Authority of India and the Union

Ministry of

Environment and Forests, under former environment and

forests minister Saifuddin

Soz, in October 1997 moved to close 66 roadside zoos

and seven larger

facilities for not meeting care standards. Soz urged

even the National

Zoo in Delhi to add more staff scientists, improve

veterinary care, and

do better longterm planning.

 

To hold all the animals from the zoos which were to be

closed, the CZA

proposed to add five regional rescue centers to the

best existing zoos,

promising that " The entire cost of developing these

centers and

maintenance costs would be borne by the CZA. "

 

On December 8, 1997, after the CZA motion was ratified

by the Animal

Welfare Board, the CZA directed the Children's Park at

Guindy, near

Chennai, to manage itself " exclusively for domestic

biodiversity, " to

conserve rare indigenous breeds of livestock, such as

cattle, goats, camels,

peacocks, and jungle fowl, and to transfer an

estimated 800

representatives of wild species to the Arignar Anna

Zoological Park, in the

Vandalur forest.

 

This would reportedly make the 22-acre Children's Park

Zoo, founded in

1959, the first zoo in India to focus on domestic

animals. Black buck,

elephants, panthers, barking deer, sloth bears,

slender lorises,

crocodiles, pythons, and erns would all go to the

vastly larger Arignar Anna

facility.

 

Objected P. Oppili of The Hindu, " The park is an

important revenue

earner for the State Department of Forests, and once

the animals are

shifted to Vandular, it stands to lose its charm and

revenue. "

 

Not surprisingly, the transfer has not actually been

scheduled.

 

The Arignar Anna zoo is already implementing some of

Maneka's other

ideas. Many of the animals are former " nuisance

wildlife, " including 500

spotted deer who were removed from the adjacent

Tambaram Air Force

Station in a series of five drives commenced in August

1997, and an Indian

bison who was captured in a sugar cane field near

Thirukkazhukkundram on

March 24, at least 100 miles from the nearest wild

bison herd. The deer

and bison are to enjoy a new 2,500-acre safari-style

habitat among

former eucalyptus and cashew plantations.

 

The Arignar Ann zoo is also cleaning up Otteri Lake,

located on the

grounds, where naturalists counted 70 migratory bird

species during the

winter of 1996-1997. The zoo hopes to attract more by

removing silt and

rubbish, restoring fish, and planting shrubbery

appropriate for perching

and nesting along the banks. The birds are to be

discreetly viewed from

walk-in platforms.

 

Three days after taking in a pair of female sloth

bears who were

rescued from a traveling show, Arignar Ann zoo

director N. Krishna Kumar and

assistant conservator of forests P. Krishnan on

September 19 jointly

introduced a Zoo Club similar to youth docent programs

at U.S. zoos. The

club grew out of a series of four one-day " zoo

classes " held for school

children last May.

 

The initial group of 40 participants, one from each

local school, were

required to pass an entrance examination, and will

attend 20 special

classes during the next six months. Another 110

participants are to be

enrolled before the end of the year. Each youth is to

work at the zoo for

two years, with care responsibilities for a particular

animal.

 

Their chief duties, Kumar told The Hindu, will be to

educate visitors

about the animals, prevent visitors from teasing

animals, and prevent

littering.

 

The importance of those chores was emphasized on

September 14 by Mohit

Dubey of The Times of India, who reported from Lucknow

that " as many as

65 animals have lost their lives due to carelessness

and vandalism by

visitors to the Prince of Wales Zoo this year. "

Persons convicted of

abusing zoo animals may be fined about $50, but

unarmed zoo guards are

ineffective in apprehending the guilty parties, Dubey

wrote.

 

" Laws are meaningless, " zoo director G.P. Sharma told

Dubey. " until

proper efforts are made to make people understand that

callousness and

adventurism costs the poor speechless animals a lot. "

 

In Delhi for the World Hindu Council, Swami

Vasudevanand Saraswati did

his part, more or less, by demanding a ban on plastic

bags--to protect

cows, however, not zoo animals. Necropsies of street

cows, Saraswati

claimed, had found their stomachs stuffed with up to

110 pounds of

plastic, causing them painful convulsive deaths.

s

 

 

The directors of some of India's other major zoos need

educating too,

recent reports from the Calcutta Zoo suggest.

Observing rats nibbling

the tail and shrivelled limbs of a 24-year-old

terminally ill liger, an

artificially bred tiger/lion hybrid, who has lost most

of her hair and

developed body sores, Purnima Toolsidas of

Compassionate Crusaders Trust

in June begged the Central Zoo Authority in New Delhi

to order

euthanasia.

 

" It will be worthwhile to see how long the liger can

survive, "

responded Calcutta Zoo director Adhir B. Das.

 

The Central Zoo Authority of India appointed a

committee to study the

case. Three months later, the liger is still alive and

suffering. Das

and news media frequently refer to her as the

purported last of a rare

species, ignoring that ligers are not actually a

species, and apparently

unaware that the Wildlife Waystation sanctuary, of

Angeles National

Forest, California, has 27 ligers. The Shambala

Preserve, 20 miles north,

has another liger who may be the biggest on record.

Ligers are in fact

common in U.S. sanctuaries, since private collectors

continue to breed

them for sale to the gullible, who dump them when they

become hard to

handle.

 

Founded in 1875, the Calcutta Zoo is among the oldest

continuously

operating zoos in the world. The Arignar Anna zoo is

among the newest in

India--but it also promotes animal novelties. In

April, for instance, the

Arignar Anna zoo bought a male Bengal tiger with the

recessive gene for

white stripes. The object is to mate him to a female

already at the zoo

who also has the recessive gene, to produce

zebra-striped cubs--the

opposite of what would happen if the animals were bred

to maximize genetic

diversity. If that were done, there might never be

white-striped

tigers.

 

Competition to breed white-striped tigers, in

fairness, is not unique

to India. To the quiet annoyance of the American Zoo

Association, the

Philadelphia Zoo, Marine World Africa USA, and the

Siegfried & Roy Circus

(not in the AZA) have also recently bred and promoted

white-striped

cubs.

 

A 5,000-acre lion safari park to be situated east of

the Taj Mahal may

help introduce the new age of wildlife exhibition that

Maneka has in

mind. Uttar Pradesh state forest minister R.D. Varma

told media last

spring that the park is to be be developed in

conjunction with a Taj Nature

Walk trail. Initially it is to contain eight " surplus "

Asiatic lions

obtained from zoos in Kanpur and Lucknow. Varna said

the state government

of Gujarat had agreed to send more lions from the Gir

forest, their

crowded last major wild habitat, where about 300 lions

share 180,000

acres.

 

The Gujarat government recently authorized the Usha

Bresco Company to

build a ropeway through the Gir forest, discussed

since 1958, to deliver

visitors to 19 temples in the Girnar hills. The Jain

group Mahajanam,

the Viniyog Parivar Trust, and the Bombay Natural

History Society have

all objected.

 

" The ropeway will increase the risk of poaching, "

charged BNHS director

Asad Rehamni.

 

Poaching rings were reportedly broken in the Beed area

during late

August and in New Delhi circa mid-September, but

confidence that India can

stop poaching isn't likely to develop until and unless

the notorious

Koose Munuswamy Veerappan can be brought to justice.

Boasting of having

gotten away with 34 years of illegally killing

wildlife and stealing

logs, Veerappan, 48, is believed to have murdered at

least 100 people to

cover his crimes, including 27 law officers.

 

Authorities in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu states hoped

in May that

Veerappan was cornered and might surrender. But

instead, taunting his

pursuers with tape recorded messages, Veerappan

kidnapped a lawyer and two

journalists in late May. The hostages were rescued in

June, and seven

Veerappan associates were arrested after a series of

shoot-outs, but

Veerappan himself remained at large.

 

Cyclones

 

 

Summer cyclones and late moonsoons added natural

disaster to many

nature reserves' problems. As many as 20,000 flamingos

normally nest near

Surajbari, in Kutch, especially at the Wild Ass

Sanctuary of Little Rann,

but only about 150 lesser flamingos and 350 greater

flamingos survived

a July 9 storm. Birdwatchers told Shyam Parekh of The

Times of India

that most of the flamingos' nesting islands were

submerged, and that

windblown flamingo carcasses were snagged in

electrical wires by the

thousand.

 

In mid-September, tigers, wild pigs, monkeys, and

hooved animals

reportedly fled into Nepal from four flooded

sanctuaries in northern Uttar

Pradesh.

 

At least 544 animals including 45 Asian rhinos, 429

hog deer, 20

buffalo, 17 boar, 10 sambar, nine porcupines, eight

swamp deer, six

elephants, two civets, a fishing cat, and three snakes

died during floods that

inundated the Kaziranga National Park in Assam. Of the

rhinos, 31

drowned while poachers shot nine, taking advantage of

the inability of

rangers to give pursuit. The park management built

more than 100 berms for

animals to stand on while the water was high, but 68

of the berms

subsequently washed out.

 

The flooding hit just after Kaziranga field director

Bishan Singh Bonai

announced that the resident tiger population was up

from 29 in 1972 to

80. The initial increase in tiger numbers roughly

paralleled a rise in

the swamp deer population, from 213 in 1966 to a high

of 756 by 1984.

But the tigers have continued to increase; the deer

have not. Severe

floods in 1988, 1990, 1991, and 1992 as well as

grassfires had cut the

herd back to circa 500. Hemendra De, superintendent of

the Sarthana Zoo,

in the Varachha area of Ahmedabad, near Surat,

struggled in September to

keep a pregnant four-horned antelope and about 50

other animals above

the Tapi river. An aviary at Chowk Bazar was

reportedly also

jeopardized.

 

With 50,000 human lives at risk, and 2,000 already

known dead from the

monsoon disaster, saving wildlife was a low priority

for most public

officials.

 

Going to the rats

 

 

Surat was on edge about a different sort of animal

problem, as an

outbreak of bubonic plague transmitted by rats hit the

region after similar

flooding in 1994, and hordes of rats, fleeing the

rising waters, were

again in evidence. Maneka warned Surat officials in

1994 that their

practice of killing stray dogs had allowed rats to

proliferate unchecked,

and recently issued reminders.

 

Public health authorities in several parts of India

earlier this year

tried--as they often have before--to banish dogs from

charity hospitals.

Alleged consequences included a case of a newborn girl

being chewed to

death by rats at a hospital nursery in Jaipur, and a

reported

catastrophic failure of federally sponsored birth

control programs.

 

According to S.N.M. Abdi, Calcutta correspondent for

the South China

Morning Post, health officials in New Delhi

" approached the United

Nations and a Danish aid agency to fund warehouses " to

hold birth control

devices because " rats have chewed holes in millions of

condoms stored in

the open at primary health centers in villages and

small towns. Rodents

and the weather, " Abdi continued, " have also damaged

bulk consignments

of the contraceptive pill and intra-uterine devices.

The government was

alerted by the poor results of family planning

measures. " About 25% of

the condoms inspected, Abdi indicated, had been

rat-chewed.

 

--M.C.

 

 

GREATNESS OF NATION AND ITS MORAL PROGRESS

CAN BE JUDGED BY THE WAY ITS ANIMALS ARE TREATED- M.K GANDHI.

STOP HUMAN AND ANIMAL SUFFERING - GO VEGAN

I am only one but still I am one. I cannot do everything but still I can do

something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do.

Helen Keller 1880 - 1968

 

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