To shoot a dog, brand it mad

We are a nation of hysterical people. Sports, films and politics launch a thousand screams from the masses. So does the ‘menace’ of stray dogs

I had dwelt in a recent column on the almost funereal burst of lamentation that had rent the sky when India had limped to a poor start in the London Olympics. I had then said that the heavens had not fallen and there were opportunities ahead as the games progressed. In the event, Indian athletes did not set the Thames on fire; but nor did they disappoint with their best-ever haul of medals-two silver and four bronze.

I am not writing this piece to advertise my skill as a crystal-gazer but to underline the proneness to hysteria that sent a multitude of wails soaring heavenward only a couple of weeks ago. All countries get hysterical over something or the other — the US of A over baseball; Britain over soccer and the royal family; Spain over bull fighting, a shameful exercise in savagery; several European and Latin American countries over soccer and Pakistan over the US, India, Kashmir, jihad, cricket and whatever else angers its vocal majority at any particular time. More examples can be cited.

India is second to none in the business. Sports and politics are among subjects that launch a thousand screams. Unto each his or her preference, which varies according a number of things including background, temperament, and peer group pressure. Some among the urban middle classes go visceral at the mention of stray dogs, which are proclaimed as the biggest threat facing the country since civilisation dawned in the valley of the Indus.

They talk of “millions” of stray canines roaming the streets, fangs bared, biting “millions” of people, causing thousands of human deaths from rabies and making children tremble with fear and stay indoors. Their “final solution” to the stray dog problem is chillingly simple: Mass slaughter or incarceration in concentration camps called pounds.

Unfortunately, they forget in their frenzy that India faces a number of other and more serious problems — grinding poverty that blights millions of lives and undermines the health and the mental development of millions of children through under-nourishment; the atrocious state of public health services everywhere, the shockingly poor condition of schools and colleges in the countryside; and, finally, the overarching, all-pervasive corruption spawned by a predatory bureaucracy and an increasingly criminalised and extortionist political class.

They forget that the mass killing of stray dogs has never succeeded in ending their presence in the streets. The preface to the Guidelines for Dog Population Management released in May 1990 by the World Health Organisation and World Society for the Protection of Animals clearly states, “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 find that the destruction had to continue, year after year, with no end in sight.”

According to the guidelines, killing was practised in the past to a large extent “simply because knowledge of the composition and dynamics of dog populations” as well as “crucial data on the density, composition and turnover of dog population” were lacking”. The guidelines add, “Removal and killing of dogs should never be considered as the most effective way of dealing with the problem of surplus dogs in the community: it has no effect on the root cause of the problem, which is over-production of dogs”

In its Eighth Report, (WHO Technical Report Series 824), the WHO’s Expert Committee on Rabies, which met in Geneva from 24 to 30 September 1991, had stated: “There is no evidence that the removal of dogs has ever had a significant impact on dog population densities and the spread of rabies. The population turnover of dogs may be so high that even the highest recorded removal rates (about 15 per cent of the dog population) are easily compensated by survival rates. Therefore, this approach should not be used in large-scale control programmes unless ecological and sociological studies show it is feasible.”

Given how Government bodies in India function, any attempt at mass killing would serve no other purpose than inflicting horrendous sufferings on animals of which the overwhelming majority are utterly harmless. Besides, statistics on rabies deaths in India and dog bites are incredibly exaggerated. Meanwhile, the hysteria continues.