Guest guest Posted April 3, 2007 Report Share Posted April 3, 2007 - Poornima Harish Merritt Clifton Monday, April 02, 2007 3:04 PM My Diary of April 1, 2007 April 1, 2007 A post-mortem of what went wrong in Bangalore in the last two months and what do we do differently in future to avoid / face such disasters in future. This is not to please anybody so an honest analysis will have to begin with critical self assessment. My Role In the AfA Chennai seminar I was very impressed with the presentation on Disaster Management by HSUS. In the demo, a lot of white and four orange ping pong balls were randomly distributed to the audience. Orange balls are the critical information balls. Stage I During a disaster, the people in the audience randomly throw balls to the main person standing who manages to catch some balls (some white, some orange) and some balls fall on the ground. Stage II During a disaster, there are four people standing in the four different corners of this group of people. These people collect all the balls neatly from the people and in an orderly fashion pass on only the orange balls to the main person. In the Bangalore disaster zone it became clear at the beginning that we were not equipped to deal with a disaster of this magnitude in a professional way. We had a lot of balls being thrown at us from all directions from - animal haters, politicians, media, volunteers, average public, municipality officials, employees, volunteers, family, etc. We were not geared to respond to all of them. We did not have people who would pick orange balls and pass them to us. We had to make those people ready. And a disaster is the worst time to do that. Initially, it was worst. Later we were able to collect ourselves and followed a better organized system of response. So the first on the chopping block should ideally be myself and Dilip. We are very poor managers. Our HR, PR, networking, mass base, finance management, volunteer management, everything stands exposed. Finance Management We should have had more sense than to continue to work without money from the municipality. We NGOs cannot afford to be in situations where up to Rs 2 million is owed to us. That is a lot of money. These are the perils of working with the municipality. We should have been in control of our funds, rather than spend all on work and then wait to recover. Next time when in a marriage with the municipality we should draw a better pre-nup! And stick to it. We put all our money into work. None was raised and none went into awareness. Big mistake. Media This was our weakest area then. Remains weak even now. The vernacular press which all the politicos read has been worst with us. English press did carry our view points. We did not have any network in the kannada media. Over the years. It showed. We have started addressing the kannada media, but the effort is only beginning. What when the media goes bad in spite of our best efforts. A lot of good positive write ups were purposely scuttled in the newsrooms. I don't know how to handle a biased and orchestrated campaign. The negative campaign of the media backfired on them. Animal people got sufficiently bothered to go and approach media and ask them why they were doing this. Since then there was some positive tilt. For more than a month the media was very bad. Political Networking Ignore them at your own peril. This seems to be the message. We never realized we needed them. Of course we need them. If not to actively help us in good times, but at least not to harm us during crisis. We have to speak to them, find out who they are, find out the equations, castes, dynamics, etc and how they could affect what we do. We cannot afford not to know them. Not to harm us during crisis is a big thing to achieve but it is good to identify potential allies to see that all of them don't fall on us like a ton of bricks at the same time. Role of the Municipality Our relationship with the municipality remains tenuous. It is particularly unfortunate when you realize that municipality officials, some of them very senior doctors and veterinarians, speak the language of illiterate public or rather succeed in spreading misinformation among the public. Examples: · It was most embarrassing when one veterinarian / dog lover from BMP asked WHO representatives why all dogs cannot be picked up and left somewhere in the outskirts of the city. · Senior doctors, veterinarians asking why dogs have " suddenly " become " frustrated " after ABC. · Senior doctors, veterinarians asking why dogs have " suddenly " become " ferocious " when meat shops have always been around. · Senior bureaucrats including commissioner know very well that the dog pound concept is a failure from the start. However they want to appease. It is most embarrassing for us NGOs. It reflects very poorly on the awareness that the NGOs have created in the bureaucracy. Or is it a lesson that the people DON'T WANT to understand. Because it becomes imperative to stand and reply to questions from all quarters that come along the way. It is easy to give up on animals because we cannot deal with cranky humans. Till when will we allow municipalities to resort to knee jerk reactions? There has to be a national take on it. The biggest points about the provocation, the area not being in ABC project area, etc get sidelined most easily. It gets almost drowned in the din. Commissioner Jairaj has evoked mixed response in me. Given the atmosphere which was very political and speciesist, his idea of unleashing 30 dog vans in the city with Malabar killers was, in a perverted way, responsible for creating sympathy for dogs. It is unfortunate but true that he should get the credit for putting the dog issue in public consciousness. He was able to throw the issue on the face of the public, asking " what you want done with dogs I will do openly. Rather than clandestinely killing in pounds, citizens be prepared to see what should be done with dogs when you complain " . The tricky part of the municipality is that because of the Dog Rules they are always found to be saying the right things. But they do the wrong things. They talk ABC but do relocation of dogs. This will be the biggest challenge for all NGOs. Orange ball gatherers In the midst of overlapping work, we AWO had a small team of people who would become specialists. Political networking. Myself and Dilip from ARF, alongwith another trustee. Municipality networking. Myself and Dilip from ARF. Media. Poornima (to write) and Dilip Bafna (to speak) from ARF, Suparna from CUPA. Volunteer networking. Vinay Moray of ARF and Savitha Nagbhushan of CUPA. Legal cell. Brinda Nandakumar of CUPA. Federation networking. Gopi Shankar with Arpan and Erika. Because of this defining of tasks, my interaction with Suparna has reduced to phone calls. Unlike in the past few days where we used to be together a lot. That is why you would find less mention of her. Role of Gen Kharb Gen Kharb was very good. He came to Bangalore and met with the Commissioner as well as held a press conference. He upheld the dignity of his post. He was articulate, succinct and clear. Perhaps all of us had succeeded in confusing him so he was not aware of what was required for the court case. Role of Rahul I feel sad at the way the municipality is treating Rahul. There is a lot of bureaucracy after a grand public announcement of the " expert dog catcher from Ahmedabad " . Between his first visit and now, the municipality has not shown the kind of will required or the speed for this Ahmedabad team the way they did for Malabar team. In fact they should have " unleashed " Ahmedabad team instead of Malabar team. Orally they keep telling him how much they need him, but they have succeeded in diluting his proposal of 5,000 dogs in one area to 5,000 dogs in 5 different CMC areas. This is not a good sign at all. Their statements are also not backed up by financial support. We asked Rahul for his feedback on the situation and he told us that our fatal flaw appears to be lack of a mass base. It is true that as organizations we have not spent the day in the community. Our dog teams have been floating populations. Working in the community would be different. Have to find out in that about what works and what does not. Role of Federation The Federation which is very young will have a larger role to play in the future when such occurrences will be more common and the responses will be the same. Role of Volunteers across India and the world The e-Network played a very dynamic part in the entire exercise. There are two groups of e-Activists. One set of activists is of those who will sit in front of the computer and keep forwarding mails. Such conflagration of an issue is very important. Another smaller set is of people who would actually read the mails and take action, like writing a Letter to the Editor. Taking Stock of Anti-Animal Groups In Bangalore, the anti-animal core group has shrunk from 12 people to 3. The clear winner in this round of battle is the animal lovers who created a national wave. The anti-animal groups are not strong. They are few but vocal. This is a very positive sign. It shows a maturing of movement. It also shows very clearly that there are more people who love animals than those who don't. Where do we go from here The situation today: We have read news reports of Rs 4 crore having been sanctioned for Dog Management programme. We don't know what the allocation is for. There is no official dog policy regarding BMP city areas which NGOs were handling earlier. ARF had written long back about financial crisis. CUPA has pulled out recently. For the CMC areas they have spoken of AHF. 1,000 ABCs in 5 CMC areas. It is expected that they will invite fresh tenders for ABC. CUPA has decided not to apply. Even we have our misgivings because they have not spelt out the long term strategy. If they want us to do ABCs then parallely they should not speak of dog pounds. So we have decided to first find out whether they are serious about dog management in BBMP. Recap Because of (a) illegal killing of dogs (b) vacuum © new, unknown, unvaccinated dogs' entry Consequences will be: (a) higher dog bites (b) chances of recurrence of rabies © more dog-man problems (d) Targeting of AWOs because public, media will say that the problems have started because AWOs are in the picture. Way out: 1.. To make BBMP spell out short term strategy. 2.. Awareness budget with BBMP only handling the same with ads okayed by NGOs. BBMP has to make public accept that dog bites could happen - TV ads, paper ads, etc. 3.. Streamline work, especially payments so that AWOs can focus on job at hand rather than follow ups. No money, no work. 4.. Work out long-term strategy to ensure that knee-jerk reactions are not resorted to. CONCLUSION At the cost of sounding pompous, I would like to agree with Rahul who told us that it was good that the disaster happened in Bangalore. I admit that this disaster has been a very good learning experience for us NGOs though it has been horrible for dogs. ================================================================ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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