Personal Diary of Poornima from Bangalore. Not so personal any more !

[Guest guest]

Double Whammy

 

 

 

Yes. That is the word I was looking for. Dilip mentioned it in passing. And a

lot of ideas, things fell into place.

 

 

 

Double Whammy says it all.

 

 

 

Those AWOs with whom we had the good fortune of interacting in Chennai will

understand more easily than others.

 

 

 

For the benefit of those not in the know………….

 

 

 

Bangalore had a history of killing dogs by gory electrocution till 1999 when the

municipality decided to follow the Animal Birth Control programme for street

dogs, albeit in a very small way.

 

 

 

It took a concerted attack on the street dogs / AWOs by anti-dog group in 2002,

complete with court case, complaint to lokayukta for corruption, etc that made

the municipality decide to go in for 3000 ABCs per month from June 2003. This is

a puzzle we have been unable to crack. In peace times we keep giving

constructive proposals, but they come to life only in times of crisis. This is a

very good lesson for all NGOs – to keep giving solid proposals and wait. The

time will come.

 

 

 

This is the definite advantage AWOs have. The anti-animal groups are always ONLY

destructive. They only sit and complain. Municipalities look for partners who

will take responsibility and action. They don’t like people who only complain

and do nothing else. These anti-animal people, though they behave very nasty,

have a critical role to play in strengthening the movement. Without the racket

they create, AWOs in their neat, nice ways can never get a lethargic

municipality to implement good AW projects. It is akin to volcanic eruptions.

After the dust settles, precious minerals emerge.

 

 

 

Till December 2006, if somebody had asked the Bangalore municipality officials

what they thought of the Dog Management exercise, they would have probably said

“ABC is the best in the world”. We were also flush with the success of Hubli

Animal Hospital inauguration with land purchased with own funds and constructed

with own funds too. We were on a high.

 

 

 

The year 2007 has been different. Jan 5th saw the Chandra Layout dog attack on

girl. We faced a hostile media, politicos, extortionists, public and the

municipality. Knee-jerk reaction of killing dogs of Chandra Layout area. We were

swamped. We were beginning the process of reconstruction of the image of dogs in

the media by some prominent vets, etc, when there was a second explosion.

 

 

 

But before that, a slight deviation. We had discussed Bangalore situation in AfA

Chennai meeting with everybody we knew of. However, we / situation was not taken

seriously. Maybe we were not able to market our crisis correctly. After coming

back from the seminar, I had contacted various people and asked them to share

their ABC experience, but except for Christine of HIS, nobody else bothered to

reply. HIS report also was not published, though. Maybe media would have been

different. Don’t know.

 

 

 

March 1, 2007. 7 a.m. Dilip called me and said “Our worst fears have come true”.

A second dog bite in BEML Layout the previous night. This BEML layout lies

beyond Indiranagar, CUPA area. This time the political and media reaction was

worst.

 

 

 

Were it not at the cost of so many innocent lives, the political drama would

have provided some definite comic relief. Till now I have not understood who was

using this issue as a political tool:

 

 

 

1) Congress I wanting to discredit the JD-BJP coalition govt

 

2) JD not wanting to share power in Oct when it is due to relinquish CM

post to Shri Yediyurappa

 

3) Shri Ananth Kumar faction of BJP settling scores with Shri Yediyurappa

faction of BJP.

 

 

 

Or it was a possible combination of all.

 

 

 

Health Minister Shri R Ashoka was caught stating that 1,000 dogs per day should

be killed. More was to come. They hit upon the brilliant idea of blaming Animal

Activists for the tragedy.

 

 

 

March 3, 2007. By this time Commissioner Jairaj had firmed up what he wanted to

do. He clearly wanted to:

 

(i) Kill dogs as an immediate short-term measure to “assuage

public”.

 

(ii) Get our concurrence for the same.

 

(iii) If concurrence not forthcoming, then bypass AWOs.

 

(iv) Set up dog pounds as permanent shelters as a long term

measure.

 

 

 

He was in an unenviable position. He was doing a tightrope walk.

 

 

 

To achieve the above goals, he went about the following:

 

 

 

(i) Hiring 30 dog vans to catch “ferocious” dogs

 

(ii) Stuffing NGOs with dogs to see who co-operates how much

 

(iii) Showing land to be used as a dog pound

 

 

 

Knives were drawn out for (a) Dogs, (b) NGOs in that order.

 

 

 

He had firmed up his mind. We were mere showpieces. He had hired 30 vehicles. To

catch 30 dogs per day in each van. So total dogs caught = 30 X 30 = 900. NGOs

have a capacity to do ABC of maximum 100 dogs per day totally which means that

up to 800 dogs per day would be killed. Since that was the case, we felt it was

a waste to operate 100 dogs because they would be picked up and killed anyway.

 

 

 

In the meeting prior to the “flagging off” day, when Brinda asked him about what

he wanted us to do with the dogs, he assured us that only 4-5 ferocious dogs

would be picked up, which should be housed for a few days. So taking his word

for it, we participated in the flagging off. I remember Dilip telling me that

the public cannot be fooled like this.

 

 

To minimize animal atrocities we sent along some of our field staff to accompany

and see that they keep detailed records of dogs caught so that they could be

released there later.

 

 

 

The first two days it was OK. The pourakarmikas who had been sent alongwith the

van in neat uniforms were untrained dog catchers. And they caught very few dogs.

 

 

 

From the third day, professional Kerala killers took over and they were involved

in an intensive dog catching drive. Dog vans were stuffed with dogs and sent to

us. We accommodated as much as we could, placing 2 dogs in a kennel, etc. Still

they kept bringing us dogs all the time. They did Day and Night catching. We

don’t know what happened to dogs that we were unable to accommodate and some

vans which never reached the AWOs.

 

 

 

There was very poor recording of areas dogs were caught from. Innocent,

friendly, community dogs with collars and sterilized dogs were caught.

 

 

 

That was the day Rahul was also in Bangalore. When things went out of hand we

rang the alarm bell for dogs.

 

 

 

The Extortionists

 

 

 

We were trying to do our work in the most civilized manner as possible –

participating in news conferences, writing, speaking, networking with govt

officials, ministers, etc. Around this time there were some “animal lovers /

extortionists” who started getting rough with us. On March 6, 2007, in the

evening we had called a meeting of volunteers at 5 pm to decide on strategy to

deal with the disaster. The meeting was hijacked by anti-social elements.

 

 

 

I walked over to the next BMP building where Dilip and Rahul were and warned

them of the situation in the meeting. They decided to go back to the meeting and

convince the gathering. I chose not to attend the volunteer meet. I decided to

go back.

 

 

 

I was told that in the time that I had walked out and Dilip and Rahul reached,

the atmosphere was completely vitiated. Dilip tried to bring situation under

control.

 

 

 

In the “public dog-fight” we had realized earlier that being decent and nice was

not enough. We wanted to have a massive poor people rally. But after this

episode we dropped the idea. We did not want to take on long term head ache to

solve a short term problem.

 

 

 

In the days to come, the anti-social elements were to vitiate the atmosphere

even more. We wanted this leader to run himself out. He was creating suicide as

some people began realizing this and started distancing themselves.

 

--------------------------

 

 

 

Around this time we were sure that the Commissioner was conning us. We wanted to

meet somebody higher up. We met Health Minister Shri R Ashoka, MP Shri Ananth

Kumar, Deputy CM Shri Yediyurappa, anybody we thought who would make a

difference. Health Minister became better. Deputy CM was non-committal and MP

Ananth Kumar gave us hints about media management.

 

 

 

Even though at that time we did not get any instant result, in hindsight, I

think it was very important to make the politicos aware that there is a Lobby

which will not keep quiet. The same got reinforced by public rally, meeting of

the governor, etc.

 

 

 

The sympathy wave for dogs was beginning to be seen, but it did not reach the

crescendo that it deserved. It was mainly because we stopped being the focal

point for volunteers. If the public had been channelised then the result would

have been massively different.

 

 

 

We had to catch up on paperwork -- reconciling all our ABC-related registers –

in anticipation of a deeper inquiry, of cross checking catching, OT,

euthanization, organs registers and ensure that they match.

 

 

 

In the midst of all this, a very good, respected, honest and senior BMP official

went crazy. He was responsible for stopping killing of dogs in Chikamagalur.

Because of political pressure, he started talking of dog pounds as permanent

shelters. This sinister design was set in the form of Licensing all pets and

“housing” (killing) all else. Even though because of ABC rules they could not

spell out their plan in so many words. However, they appeared determined to

house all “unlicensed” dogs permanently. Dilip did a great job of giving our

opinion to them in writing so that they don’t end up writing what they want in

their “Minutes of Meeting”. The licensing is going slow. They are unclear about

how to manage once they have made a public announcement. They are searching for

answers and we are happy to assist them and channelise the issue.

 

 

 

The Legislative Assembly was to start session by March 15, 2007. We were able to

create small awareness thanks to one of our trustees coming to life after a

five-year hibernation.

 

 

 

However, a heavy price has been paid. Some dogs were slaughtered and we NGOs

belonging to the exalted human race survived the carnage.

 

 

 

As I write today March 23, 2007, I have a lot of other important work to do. Our

Income Tax 80G exemption is coming up for renewal on March 31. Don’t have much

time.

 

 

 

Also we are tight financially. BMP owes us money for six months. The donors are

afraid to touch us. We had depleted our reserves for Hubli project. Remaining

afloat has become a key issue.

 

 

 

Lessons for all AWOs:

 

1.. Become a financial powerhouse. Keep a huge corpus so that all energies can

be used only to do AW. No energy should be wasted in critical times on fund

raising. Funds are tough to come by in difficult times.

2.. Concentrate on political networking.

 

 

Regards

 

 

 

Poornima Harish

 

 

 

Animal Rights Fund

Cell: + 91 98801 94757

Visit www.arfindia.org