Misery of Stray Dogs in India

By Seema Sengupta

KOLKATA ― When an avid animal lover-cum-activist Rana Ganguly revealed the plan of setting up a separate and exclusive entity for the treatment of stray dogs during a recent visit to the Moitri Veterinary Clinic in Kolkata, the spirit of compassion that once indulged me to adopt a mongrel engulfed my inner-self for a split second.

I was reminded of the day when I brought a drenched puppy home from the street as the hovering monsoon cloud whipped the spray into my face.

Since Kutus, my late pet dog who went on to become an intricate part of my family made me realize that animals are such agreeable friends and selfless lovers, I decided to extend my moral support to the activism against cruelty meted out to animals by human beings.

More than anything else we owe it to ourselves to prove our humaneness by lavishly bestowing love and compassion on these miserably hapless animals who got trapped in the midst of human dwellings.

It is nothing but a paradox that though Indians often pride themselves on the virtues of kindness and forbearance, a stroll through any urban or rural center will reveal countless episodes of cruelty toward stray animals.

This is usually a common trait that Indians possess cutting across age and demographic profile right from kids stoning stray dogs to adults beating up the hapless species.

Probably humans in India are more frightening to our animals than anywhere else in the world. A look into the eyes of the stray dogs, who generally feed on litter, reveals their immense satisfaction even when the offerings are so petty.

These poor animals unfortunately do not even realize that while relishing the niggling meal they gradually inch toward a painful death. The common Indian practice of stuffing all excess food in plastic bags results in the clogging of their internal system as these animals ingest the toxic material while trying to salvage something for a meal.

And yet we boast the great Mahatma Gandhi's ideals in our public and private lives whose passion for animals is manifest in his statement: ``The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.''

A nation which indulges in poisoning stray dogs as part of an anti-rabies program certainly does not deserve to be called a civilized one especially when the poison in use is strychnine which cripples the nervous system prior to choking the victim to death.

One can imagine the horrible sight of the poisoned dogs writhing in pain before suffocating to death by the roadside. Yes, it is true that India is struggling to cope with the problem of excessive stray dogs similar to that of its human population.

But there is a historical reason behind it. Generally, the majority of the free-roaming dogs in India are scavenger breeds widely adopted as pets in rural and urban slum households.

Since the size of the stray dog population always corresponds to the size and character of the human population in the locality, the presence of a huge number of slum and street dwellers and piles of uncollected garbage in Indian cities sustains the stray population.

These features along with haphazard urban planning leads to frequent dog fights and bites that result in a fatal disease like the rabies. In fact India records the highest number of human rabies deaths in the world, an estimated whopping 35,000 per annum.

But then in a country where exposed garbage and slums encourage the existence of strays, killing or removing them to prevent rabies and controlling their population is a completely ineffective method since the dogs removed from an area are easily replaced in no time.

Dogs being high breeding and territorial animals with a fixed niche multiply quickly to fill up the vacuum. Also, the status quo having been breached, there is a rapid rise in incidences of dog fights between the new dogs entering the neighborhood and the old guards resulting in a parallel jump in rabies cases with humans getting bitten accidentally.

Unfortunately, it is often noticed that dogcatchers are loath to picking up rabid ones, eliminating healthy dogs instead. The Indian authorities, having imported the concept of killing stray dogs without assessing the nature of our living conditions, have only managed to create an unstable, constantly changing, rapidly multiplying- and rabies carrying-dog population.

Thus, animal lovers have been prodding the authorities to launch an effective and humane sterilization-cum-vaccination program nationwide so as to ensure a stable, non-breeding, non-aggressive, rabies-free and a gradually decreasing stray dog population over a period of time.

At the end of the day it certainly is a matter of satisfaction for dedicated activists like my friend Rana that people are now even voicing their concern over Vodafone's mascot pug being reportedly subjected to unbearable physical exhaustion during the shooting of a television advertisement.

To encourage these tireless crusaders of animal rights, hopefully the Indian authorities will wake up from the deep slumber and provide infrastructure as well as financial assistance in the setting-up of welfare center-cum-shelters for destitute animals throughout the country.

Seema Sengupta is a journalist based in Kolkata, India. Her articles have been published by The Tribune, The Telegraph, The Pioneer, The Asian Age and other newspapers. She can be reached at seemasengupta@vsnl.net.