EVERY morning a house in Gurgaon’s Greenwood City throws open its gates to animals in pain. Villagers queue up with dogs, donkeys, monkeys and even peacocks outside Jean and Bob Harrison’s home. If the couple is not at home, the villagers wait for them till night. Such is their trust in what they call the English kutta ghar. ‘‘They think we can do miracles to save their animals,’’ says Bob. His and his wife share their home with Lucy, Benji, Ratty and Raggi—all rescued dogs. Outside the bungalow are the other members of the family. Scram, Scoot, Old Boy and Moti.
A retired British couple, they have settled in Gurgaon to rescue and help donkeys in the city. Jean and Bob Harrison have given up their home in Essex,UK with the dream of building a donkey sanctuary in Delhi. They have been helping suffering animals in India since 1994. Initially, whilst Bob worked at the British High Commission, Jean involved herself in local animal welfare hospitals and clinics, where she gained the confidence and respect of the local communities and animal owners. With there being so many Donkeys & other animals in need of help and more and more Brick kiln sites and construction sites being developed, when he could, Bob began helping Jean in her work. Then, in 1998, he took early retirement and a mobile clinic was set up.
It all started when Jean Harrison, with her daughter, was in India in 1993 and saw the mules and tongas in Old Delhi. “I just fell in love with the place and the animals and I always wanted to come back. And then you know Bob got transferred here for three years.” This was the starting of their journey towards saving the donkeys and other animals as well. In 2007, the couple started the Asswin Project. Every afternoon, Bob takes an ambulance (that works as a mobile clinic) to areas where donkeys are working and help the ones who need special care. Some donkeys in very bad conditions have been shifted to a animal shelter but now that shelter is refusing to take in the donkeys. The Harrisons are forced to keep these donkeys in their house, which is in one of the most posh areas in Gurgaon. This has upset the neighbours. “The neighbours want us out of here and they have complained to the police against us.”
Jean and Bob Harrison, work every day of every week, and visit numerous construction sites, brick kilns, and encampments to give treatment and care to suffering equines and to endeavour to educate owners and their families in methods of how to care for their animals. They also respond to calls from the community, the police, and the fire service to help animals involved in road accidents. In certain cases they are able to seek assistance of a vet who gives his time on a voluntary basis.
Donkeys are a neglected lot in India. With legs tied, they often die a painful death on the streets,’’ says Jean. The couple’s old Fiat doubles up as an ambulance. Armed with a medical kit, they drive around Gurgaon looking for donkeys in need of help. From untying their ropes to cleaning the wounds on their legs, they do their best to heal the animals. On a recent trip to a building site, Bob and Jean found a donkey so exhausted it could no longer stand. As it lay in the dust, several dogs hovered nearby. Weakened donkeys are sometimes attacked and eaten in the night by roaming packs of dogs.
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BEHIND those glitzy malls and soaring apartment blocks in Gurgaon on the border of Delhi lies the hard work of armies of donkeys. They have been out there in the heat and cold every day of the year, carrying bricks and ferrying mud. You can see them crossing MG Road in single file as shoppers scatter to let them pass and traffic waits impatiently. If you manage to get inside a construction site, you will find them slaving away far below ground level in what will finally be the basement parking lots of the buildings. Travel further south towards the Sona Road, past Gurgaon’s residential colonies of South City and Greenwood City, and donkeys can be seen hard at work at every major site. They mostly do eight to 10 hour shifts and go without food and water. You will also find donkeys at brick kilns where their condition is especially bad. Donkeys have no rights, no unions to speak for them. When they drop dead or become too feeble, they are easily replaced. Theirs is cheap labour because a donkey comes for as little as Rs 60 or Rs 70 a day. So, the next time you read about the wealth of Indian real estate barons, remember it was the humble and persistent donkey that helped build some of those flashy fortunes in Gurgaon and other parts of the National Capital Region.
The donkeys share their pitiable condition with construction labourers who live out in the open at sites. There are no toilets for the labour, no schools for their children, no housing and no clean drinking water. Medical facilities are non-existent. The donkeys either belong to the construction labour or to contractors who hire them out. In an industry where human beings get so little and are forced to live in such squalor, a donkey can hardly have any expectations. Donkeys aren’t among the most expressive of creatures. They hang around and hang around and do what they are told to do. If the sombre demeanour of donkeys is anything to go by, then they are all always having a terrible time. But that is not it either. A donkey on duty will perk up at the whiff of a carrot. It will signal, with a tuneless bray, the arrival of a mate. It will also recognise human warmth and affection.
Donkeys have been known to commit suicide when they get very depressed. Newspaper reports recently said that donkeys driven to despair in Sudan jumped into the Nile to escape their lot. So, donkeys aren’t without feelings and deserve a better deal than what they are getting. It is precisely for this reason Jean and Bob Harrison, both British nationals in the mid sixties, set up the Asswin Project for Donkeys and other Animals in India in July 2006. Bob used to work at the British High Commission here and Jean has always worked for the welfare of animals. Bob says the Asswin Project gets it name from the ‘Asvins’, divine physicians in mythology who healed pain and suffering and were always quick to respond. Civil Society first noticed the Asswin Project’s mobile ambulance pull out of the parking lot of the Galleria shopping centre in Sushant Lok. A few quicksearches on the Internet revealed that “working donkeys” could get free treatment at Jeev Ashram thanks to its collaboration with the Asswin Project.
Jeev Ashram is an NGO run by veterinary physicians at Rajokri on the border of Delhi and Gurgaon. Jean and Bob are available round the clock for treating donkeys. They rush in their ambulance to attend on emergency cases. But more importantly, they have networked the people who provide donkey labour at construction sites. This makes it possible for them to systematically address the problems of donkeys. What do working donkeys need? First of all, donkeys employed in construction constantly need their wounds to be healed. The gashes and sores that they get while carrying loads require treatment. Donkeys in Gurgaon also have stomach problems. They need to be de-wormed. But they also must be fed correctly. They are often given grass that comes from mowing lawns. The donkeys quickly swallow the finely cut grass instead of chewing it and it sits in their stomachs. The grass is unhealthy because it comes with a cocktail of chemicals that go into the fertilisers and pesticides that are lavished on lawns. People sometimes give donkeys food in plastic packets.
The donkeys gobble down the entire packet covering and all and as the plastic collects in the stomach it becomes life threatening. A twisted gut has been the cause of many a donkey death, say Jean and Bob. From one very sick donkey’s stomach, doctors pulled out 35 plastic bags. Donkeys also suffer from respiratory problems and throat infections that come from inhaling dust and cement at construction sites. The infections so inflame the throat and the respiratory system that donkeys are known to die of suffocation. Jean and Bob live in a rented house at Greenwood City. The house is overrun by dogs because they are essentially animal lovers. But as animal activists they are only available for treating donkeys.
The suppliers of donkeys know Jean and Bob and are grateful for all the help they get on a continuing basis. At one of the sites we are prevented from entering and taking pictures. But Vinod, who provides the donkeys here, is happy to come out from somewhere deep below, a hard hat on his head. He says: “I know them well and they do a lot for my donkeys. If you come back at 3 pm I’ll be taking my donkeys out of the site and you can photograph them as much as you like and I will tell you about them and the work they do.” We can’t return at 3 pm, but we meet many families who earn from their donkeys at other sites. They all know Jean and Bob and say they do a lot for the donkeys. But how do you ask people living in such pathetic conditions as construction labour do about the welfare of their donkeys. There are pools of water, mud tracks and flimsy shanties. The children do the house work while the adults earn at the sites. We find it difficult to distribute the carrots we have brought for the donkeys when there are hungry and undernourished children all around. So, we give the carrots to them as well and tell them to eat them raw or include them in the family meal.
We ask Jean why she has taken up the cause of donkeys. “It is because no one speaks for them. There are groups who speak for dogs and cats and other animals. But not donkeys,” she says. Bob says three or four simple things need to be done to improve the lot of donkeys in Gurgaon. They need a de-worming programme, the right nutrition and regulated hours of work. Under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 1960, a donkey is not meant to carry more than 35 kg. “But the loads that are put on them are so heavy that sometimes if you just put a little pressure on a donkey’s spine it collapse because it has been made weak with overwork,” says Bob. A donkey is supposed to live for 40 years, but with the kind of work they do in Gurgaon they are lucky if they survive for 20 years. Failing to provide animals with food and shelter or abandoning them when they grow old, as happens with donkeys, is punishable under the law with a fine of upto Rs 100 or jail for three months or both. The law has never been used in Gurgaon
