Animal Laws of India

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2007:

 

 

ABC & clandestine captures drive Bangalore street dog population down

by half since mid-2006

 

BANGALORE--A door-to-door canvas of 3.2 million Bangalore

households in mid-June 2007 found just 49,283 dogs-- including 17,480

pet dogs, and only 24,491 street dogs, fewer than half the 56,500

estimated to be at large a year earlier.

The plummeting street dog population attested to both the

efficacy of the much-maligned Animal Birth Control programs in

Bangalore, and the undiscriminating tactics of dogcatchers who were

deployed repeatedly in the first half of 2007 to purge dogs.

ANIMAL PEOPLE surveys of dogs in representative Bangalore

neighborhoods found in January 2007 that the ABC programs managed by

Compassion Unlimited Plus Action, Karuna, and the Animal Rights

Fund appeared to have sterilized between 70% and 90% of the

free-roaming dog population. But dog pogroms following fatal dog

attacks in January and March 2007 jeopardized the programs' success

by killing dogs who had already been sterilized.

Officially the killing stopped and ABC resumed in May 2007,

but " Bangalore dogs are still being killed and relocated in big

numbers, " Animal Rights Fund volunteer Poornima Harish told ANIMAL

PEOPLE in late July. " This time it is more lethal, as there is no

local, national or international brouhaha. On paper, the dog

management program in Bangalore is ABC. But the essence of ABC is

that the sterilized dogs should be returned to their places after the

operation. This is not happening. After a dog is operated on, the

same dog is picked up again and never returned. With new dogs

entering each territory and birthing litters, we will never be able

to prove that ABC is a success, " Harish said.

Drivers and dogcatchers caught in the act by ARF volunteers

at first claimed to be working for ARF. Photos documented that most

of the dogs they caught were already sterilized. Bangalore officials

eventually admitted that eight private vans had been hired to

clandestinely capture " diseased " dogs.

After the Deccan Herald columnist " Madhumitha B " in late July

2007 exposed the dogcatching operation, " Joint commissioner B.V.

Kulkarni told this reporter that he has instructed his health

officers to withdraw the private vehicles from city service, " the

columnist wrote. However, " When asked to show a copy of the

official order, the joint commissioner claimed it's not possible, "

Mahumitha B added. " CUPA honorary secretary Sanober Bharucha said

CUPA had received no notification. Other city officials and the

animal husbandry department claimed to be completely unaware of the

order. "

The clandestine dogcatching apparently began soon after the

May 2007 publication of a highly critical performance audit of the

Bangalore ABC programs, by a committee chaired by M.K. Sudarshan of

the Association for the Prevention and Control of Rabies in India.

Skeptical of ABC from the introduction of the approach, APCRI has

worked closely with the anti-ABC organization Stray Dog Free

Bangalore.

Aware that Sudarshan has alleged a rabies risk in Bangalore

in recent years even though no cases had occurred in areas served by

ABC, Harish in July 2007 discovered that Sudarshan has been

overstating the number of human rabies deaths in Banglore for at

least 12 years. In 1995, for example, in a publication sponsored

by makers of human post-exposure vaccines, Sudarhan " said there are

70-100 rabies deaths in Bangalore every year, " Harish told ANIMAL

PEOPLE. " The rabies deaths figure for that year is 21. I got the

documents from the Isolation Hospital under the Right to Information

Act with the official seal, " Harish said, sending copies of all the

documents.

But a four-year-old boy named Ajay died of rabies in

Bangalore on June 4, after suffering a bite in Kurubarahalli, an

outlying suburb. He received three injections of an ineffective

post-exposure vaccine from a " private medical practitioner near his

house, " The Hindu reported. His parents Manjula and Manjunath took

Ajay to a hospital only after the onset of rabies symptoms--and then

the first hospital they visited did not have anti-rabies vaccine in

stock.

Killing dogs for population control has been illegal in India

for 10 years, but the federal law is little enforced. Dog attacks

are typically followed by dog massacres, as in Kunnamkulam, Kerala,

where " 1,000 or more dogs were killed, " according to local activist

Ramesh Ravindra. As in Bangalore, the dog attacks occurred in the

vicinity of illegal disposal of meat waste, Ravindra said. The dog

purge ended only when the hired dogcatchers were solicited to kill

dogs in another community, Ravindra added.

In at least two cases, at Paramathi near Namakkal in June

and Tambaram near Chennai in July, dogcatchers of the Nariku-rava

tribe produced local opposition to the purges when they reportedly

shot dogs in public places with homemade guns, left wounded dogs to

die, and shot birds as well.

" With U.S. Agency for International Development support and

guidance the Indian NGO ExNoRa [has] helped transform the nomadic

Narikuravas from largely unemployed slum dwellers to organized

'street beautifiers,' who earn a living by collecting, composting,

and recycling waste, " USAid Global Environment Center deputy

assistant administrator David F. Hales recently wrote.

 

 

 

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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