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Besides ensuring exemplary punishment to the brutal dog-killers, the Kerala Government must drastically step up the implementation of the Animal Birth Control programme in the State
Activists of the Youth Front (M), an offshoot of Kerala Congress (Mani), scripted a new chapter in savagery when they reportedly killed around 10 stray dogs, and carried several of them tied to a pole, to protest against what they called increasing stray dog “menace” in the State and Union Minister Maneka Gandhi’s stand on the issue. According to them, she prevented the State Government from taking “stern action”, including the killing of stray dogs. Shockingly, they killed the stray dogs in question not because these had harmed any human being but simply to register their protest through murder. That they chose to do this when there were other methods of protesting, like mass signature campaigns,dharnas, slogan-shouting demonstrations or hunger strikes, provides a horrifying reflection of their own violent nature and suggests that the talk of “menace” was a mere pretext for indulging in their own lust for murder.
This, in turn, casts serious doubt on the genuineness of their allegation of depredation by stray dogs, against whom a section in the State has been persistently trying to whip up mass hysteria. The police, which has registered cases against them under provisions of the Indian Penal Code, must ensure that they receive the maximum possible punishment under the law.
In their lust for slaughter, the murderers ignored the fact that in opposing the killing, Maneka Gandhi was only upholding the law of the land as laid down by the Animal Birth Control (Dog) Rules 2001 and Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Amendment Rules 2010, promulgated under The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960. Under the Rules, stray dogs can be removed from their usual dwelling places only for neutering and vaccination against rabies, and, both done, have to be released where they had been taken from. Further, they ignored — or did not know — that the Rules were in consonance with the method of controlling stray dog populations recommended by the World Health Organisation.
In its Technical Reports Series 931, WHO’s Expert Consultation on Rabies, held in Geneva from October 5 to 8, 2004, identified three practical methods of dog populations management: “Movement restriction, habitat control and reproduction control”. As stated in Guidelines for Dog Population Management, issued jointly by the WHO and World Society for the Protection of Animals in 1990, movement control meant preventing restricted or supervised dogs or family dogs from cutting lose to either mate or merge into the stray dog population. As for habitat control, each habitat has a specific carrying capacity for each species, including higher vertebrae like dogs, determined by the “availability, distribution and quality of resources (shelter, food, water) for the species concerned”. Effective removal and management of garbage, for example, would eliminate an important source of food for stray dogs. The Guidelines further state that the only way of ensuring reproduction control was a serious, nationwide implementation of the ABC programme.
The Technical Report Series 931 says, “Since 1960s, ABC programmes coupled with rabies vaccination have been advocated as a method to control urban street male and female dog populations and ultimately human rabies in Asia. The rationale is to reduce the dog population turnover as well as the number of dogs susceptible to rabies and limit aspects of male dog behavior (such as dispersal and fighting) that facilitate the spread of rabies. Culling of dogs during these programmes may be counterproductive as sterilised, vaccinated dogs may be destroyed.”
Referring to killing, the Guidelines categorically state, “All too often, authorities confronted by problems caused by these [stray] dogs have turned to mass destruction in the hope of finding a quick solution, only to discover that the destruction had to continue, year after year with no end in sight.” The Guidelines further state that killing was practised in the past to a large extent “simply because knowledge of the composition and dynamics of dog population” as well as “crucial data on the density, composition and turnover of dog population” were lacking.
The Guidelines emphatically add, “Removal or killing of dogs should never be considered as the most effective way of dealing with the problem of surplus dogs in a community; it has no effect on the root cause of the problem, which is the over-production of dogs.”
Experience also underlines the futility of large-scale killing. In almost all urban areas in India, regular, large-scale killing of stray dogs, from the time of the establishment of municipal bodies to the promulgation of ABC Rules, could not prevent a continued increase in their numbers. Dr JF Reese writes in Dogs and Dog Control in Developing Countries, “In Delhi, a concerted effort at dog removal killed a third of the straying dogs with no reduction in dog population.” In his paper. ‘ABC responsible for decline in human rabies cases’, Dr Chinny Krishna, co-founder of the Blue Cross Society of India and Vice-Chairman of the Animal Welfare Board of India, cites the instance of the Madras Corporation’’s “Catch-and-Kill’ programme that started in 1860. He quotes Dr Theodore Bhaskaran, a former Post Master General of Madras, as stating in an article, “In 1970s, the number of stray dogs destroyed by the Corporation was so high that the Central Leather Institute, Madras, designed products-such as neckties and wallets-from dog skins.” Dr Krishna has pointed out elsewhere that the number of dogs killed by the Corporation had risen to 30,000 per year by 1995. Yet the dog population continued to rise.
It has been the same experience the world over. Dr Reese writes in Dogs and Dog Control in Developing Countries, “In Hong Kong, approximately 20,000 dogs were killed by the Government and another 13,000 by welfare organisations every year…with little impact on the free roaming dog population. In Equador, the elimination of 12 to 25 per cent of the dog population every year for five years did not reduce the dog population (WHO 1988). In rural Australia, a 76 per cent reduction in free roaming dog population failed to drastically reduce their population, and the number of free-roaming dogs returned to their pre-cull level within a year (Beck 2005). In Kathmandu, street dogs have been poisoned for at least 50 years with little long-term effect on the population.”
On the other hand, the ABC programme has successfully brought down dog populations wherever it has been seriously implemented. In India, Jaipur and Chennai provide good examples. Hence, besides ensuring exemplary punishment to the dog killers, the Kerala Government must drastically step up the implementation of the ABC programme in the State.
(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)
