Unnecessary Compassion - Moral issues on the Canine Menace in India

Thanks to the overstretched concept of animal rights, mutual coexistence, “jeev-daya” (tolerance of living organisms) and other politically correct mumbo jumbo, stray dogs and their bites have become a menace in India. Here are some news reports:

New York Times, August 6, 2012 - No country has as many stray dogs as India, and no country suffers as much from them. Free-roaming dogs number in the tens of millions and bite millions of people annually, including vast numbers of children. An estimated 20,000 people die every year from rabies infections — more than a third of the global rabies toll. Packs of strays lurk in public parks, guard alleyways and street corners and howl nightly in neighbourhoods and villages. Joggers carry bamboo rods to beat them away, and bicyclists fill their pockets with stones to throw at chasers. Walking a pet dog here can be akin to swimming with sharks.

Mail Online India, May 5 2013 - At least 16 people in Delhi died of rabies contracted from dog bites in the last year. According to a survey conducted by the North Delhi Municipal Corporation, 30,608 cases of dog bites were reported from areas under its jurisdiction in 2012-2013, as against 17,634 cases the previous year. North MCD doesn't have even one dog sterilisation centre in its jurisdiction, and 10 out of its six sterilisation mobile centres are in a state of breakdown. The corporation sterilised just 3,800 dogs last year. On April 25, a pack of stray dogs attacked, without any provocation, a group of people at a bus depot in Mumbai's Govandi area. Fourteen out of the 15 victims bitten by dogs were children in the age group of three to eight years.

Indian Express, August 17, 2015 - The last official survey of street dogs in Delhi was done six years ago by the unified Municipal Corporation of Delhi. That survey had put the stray population at approximately 5.62 lakh. But since its trifurcation into North, South and East corporations in 2012, the exercise hasn’t been taken up, partly due to lack of bidders. The stray dog menace has come into focus after a six-year-old boy was mauled to death by four dogs when he tripped and fell on them in Jamia Nagar this month. Police said Mamun was playing with friends in Noor Nagar when he fell on the pack of dogs sleeping on a heap of sand. As the dogs woke up and started barking, a frightened Mamun began running. The dogs chased and attacked him, the police said. “As the dogs attacked the child, his friends fled. The child suffered injuries to his head, neck and face,” a police officer said. After the incident, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and the Delhi High Court took suo motu cognizance of the issue.

DNA, Sept 9 2015 - With the continuing stray dog menace creating panic among public in Kerala, artist Thrisur Nazeer on Wednesday said he would stage a protest by taking 50 strays and playing music in front of Union Minister Maneka Gandhi's residence in Delhi. In 2014-15, some 1.06 lakh people in Kerala were bitten by dogs, according to the state government. Six persons, including children, were bitten by rabies-infected canines in Ernakulam district during the week of Sept 9, 2015.

Here is today’s statistic...New Delhi alone suffers from 8000 dog bites a day. To add insult to injury and if news reports are to be believed, our national capital was recently out of HRIG - the best anti rabies vaccine,  and we are back to the old system of taking Rabipur with the tortuous frequency of injections in the deltoid region, or as in case of children, in the anterolateral area of the thighs.

What is going on in our country? The NHRC has initiated a debate on the human rights versus animal rights issues.  Hello?  Are we even being human?  I request that this debate be conducted before Mamun’s mother and let us see if she derives any satisfaction or consolation from such intellectual hokum and hogwash.

Let us look at the Legal Position in India. The Prevention Of Cruelty To Animals Act 1960 prevents the killing of Dogs. According to the law, street dogs cannot be beaten or driven away. They can merely be sterilized in a manner envisaged in the Animal Birth Control (Dog) Rules 2001, where they are to be vaccinated and then returned back to their original locations. .  However, there is no law that prevents the feeding of street dogs – thus nothing to prevent their excess in numbers.

I am making an effort here to put this argument in light of what is the moral thing to do.  Let us begin with the poliovirus. The Poliovirus wants to live and multiply.  How have the humans decided that there must be an antivirus for the polio virus?  The only reason I see is that the humans know that the poliovirus does not have a tail and does not wag it in subservient affection like a dog.

There are many mosquito repellents in the market and it is a big industry.  How have the humans decided that humans have a right to dissuade mosquitoes from biting them?  All humans, barring infants and young children, are perfectly capable of shooing away a mosquito (once they see it) but all humans are not capable of shooing away a dog.  Some humans are afraid of dogs.  Is it wrong to be afraid of a dog? Is it a crime to find a dog fearful? Are humans genetically equipped not to fear dogs?

The plasmodium, that enters the human blood via the mosquito, wants to live but this causes a malarial infection to the human being.  However, the human being infected with malaria too wants to live.  Who has decided that a medical doctor must kill the plasmodium and save the human being?  Why do people not love plasmodium?  The plasmodium, and its its subsequent generations, are supremely loyal and promise to stay with humans all the way to the funeral pyre – “zindagi ke saathi bhi; zindage ke baad bhi” (during life and even after life is over) (he he!)

I now put before you my fundamental questions.  The rabies virus that enters a human body through a dog bite too wants to live.  How is a dog bite ok but the rabies infection not ok? Are humans supposed to tolerate a dog bite but not the rabies infection simply because a single dog bite may not kill a person but the rabies virus will?  How is a single dog bite different from multiple dog bites at the same time from the same dog?  How is a single dog bite different from single dog bites from multiple dogs at the same time to the same human?  How is a single dog bite different from a dog bite from different dogs every week (day, or month) to the same human?

Human beings dismiss the dog threat mentioning that dog attacks are the consequence of human aggression towards them. Look at the clever use of words here – human fear of dogs is translated to human aggression towards dogs.  Humans can be afraid of dogs and may show them aggression so that the dogs may not bite them.  Is this wrong?  Is this immoral? Showing aggression to avoid a attack is natural to the living world - the puffer fish being a prime example.  However, here is an interesting observation - Human beings may not show aggression to any animal but will be most willing to show aggression to other human beings who may be aggressive towards animals.  Ha!  Look at the fallacy here.

Here are some moral issues that must be considered in order to control the canine menace in this country.  Stray Dogs have evolved as scavengers along side human beings. The survival of stray dogs depends solely on human beings and have no function that is in any way useful to the human ecosystem.  Let us remove all humans from the equation – vacate a town or a village and just leave the stray dogs by themselves – and the dogs may all die.  Stray dogs do not have an ecosystem that supports them or a place where humans can transfer them to a suitable environment.

Furthermore, stray dogs are dangerous because of their teeth.  They also help ticks and other parasites thrive,  apart from the fatal rabies that they may carry.  However, all the disadvantages of stray dogs need not be so gross.  What does one have to say of the fear and trauma that a person may suffer on account of a dog bite or in anticipation of it?  As this is a trauma that is internal to a human, how do people propose to ameliorate such internal agony to humans?

The dinosaur became extinct and irrelevant as the world around them changed and thus could not evolve and manage like the crocodile did.  Why are human beings not breaking their hearts over the death of the dinosaur species?

Here is the simple truth – there are certain species that are unable to coexist harmoniously with human beings.  Then of course, there are certain species that cannot be relocated by humans (unlike tigers etc) and in both the cases , these species will have to devolve.  The Indian stray dog is one such species.  We cannot look at its wagging tail or in its eyes as all we will see is our own emotions reflecting back at us.  We cannot confuse its loyalty to us versus its potential harm to human beings passing by.

Let us shift gears.  Our Indian Penal Code penalizes for dangerous pets (Sec 289) - “Whoever knowingly or negligently omits to take such order with any animal in his possession as is sufficient to guard against any probable danger to human life, or any probable danger of grievous hurt from such animal, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to six months, or with fine which may extend to one thousand rupees, or with both."

The logic seems to be this - a pet dog can potentially put its owner in jail, while a stray dog has an implicit RIGHT to send humans to a hospital or to their deaths!  Let us take the example of a stray dog which is also a pet of an inhabitant of a house on the street nearby where a person is feeding this dog only so that his house remains guarded. If one accidentally injures this dog, the inhabitant may get all holy and ask for money as financial compensation.  Now, let us assume that this dog bites a passerby.  Will one be able to take the inhabitant  to court? The first defense that this person would probably put up is that the dog is not a pet and that it is just a stray dog whom he feeds out of compassion. There is just no proof to push one's case forward or to establish a liability on someone.

Let us now twist this around.  A person owns a pet dog, say - a Labrador, and this dog bites a passerby.  It is now very easy here to take this person to court only by virtue of the fact that the owner is a moral person who will not just disown a dog in case of a court case and that a Labrador does not resemble a street dog in any way.

And yet, nobody finds it immoral to disown a street dog in the event of a court case and everybody will accuse the Labrador dog owner of gross negligence even though he is moral enough not to disown the dog and face a court case!  I wonder how the animal rights people will approach this matter in the event of such an incident!

The bottom line - justice is assured on account of a dog bite, but only from a pet dog!  An individual can be held accountable only by virtue of being a pet owner. And, who exactly is this individual? He is someone who is spending his disposable income on a dog and taking full responsibility for its actions.  In the event of a disease, it is only a pet owner who would heal the dog.  The stray dogs have only charity to depend on or else die what is known as - a dog's death.

Another problem. The biggest risk to pet dogs is the pack of stray dogs.  Nobody seems to minds this! This is a pet dog being attacked by ill mannered stray dogs.

I hope I have been able to expose the hypocrisy and immorality to all my readers.

Let us now move to another fallacy.  There are multifarious laws against cruelty to stray dogs and a multitude of people who will file court cases against those in violation of these laws.  This is a case where an institution will file a case against an individual where it is obvious that the individual will not have as deep pockets.  It is clear the individual is the loser in terms of time and finance.

However, the safety and health of an individual is the responsibility of the government.  What is the position of the individual who takes the government to task on account of a dog bite?  Here too, he is the loser in terms of time and finance.  The government is funded where it has a battery of lawyers it can afford thanks to the tax payers money.  The government can afford to drag the case out long before the individual can remain solvent - or sane!  It is very clear that a single person has no hope of either retributive or restorative justice from stray dog bites.

Here is a proposal. Let us have a civic body round up dogs in an area, vaccinate them, and then auction them or offer them to the people of that area with the condition that they treat the dogs as pets and take full responsibility u/s 289 of the Indian Penal Code. This act alone will show the extent of love people have  for stray dogs.

Let us now shift to another moral issue.  The municipal corporations spread chemicals in the air to prevent us from mosquito bites but ask us to tolerate dogs and potentially the dog bites. Is there any moral basis for such a law?  Why must corporations not have a free hand to keep the people safe from dog bites?  Why must they be wary of the wrath of law, especially considering that the law pertaining to stray dogs is immoral.

Here is the problem with the law and law makers.  The law and lawmakers need obvious, loud and sometimes gruesome justifications for actions against such devolution of stray dogs – like a pack of street dogs surrounding a maternity ward so that they may devour a newborn or a pregnant mother.

No country has as many stray dogs as India; so – are we the only moral country in the world?  Are all other countries immoral on account of their ability to ensure that there are no stray dogs? Are these other countries against nature?  Has the ecology of these other countries deteriorated on account of their ability to control stray dogs? Can we file an international suit against these other countries for whatever they may have done to control stray dogs?

Come on – the world is laughing at us. Street dogs are no different from street rats (except that they wag their tails while a rat is too busy).  However, plague is considered more undesirable that rabies.  This is the reason why a government moves quickly into action on account of plague and rats but not on account of rabies and dog bites. In my opinion, the Animal Rights people have many things right but seem wrong or ill informed when it comes to stray dogs on the streets of India.

The world currently suffers from Dengue and Zika and the mosquito will soon be declared as the world’s most dangerous non- human entity.  How many bites will people suffer before stray dogs are sterilized, controlled, relocated or eventually put to sleep as a species?

The matter is currently being looked at by The Honorable Supreme Court of India.

© Nitesh Kotecha

Disclaimer:  Neither me nor my immediate family members have had dogs as pets. None of us have been bit by a dog either.  This article is written without prejudice to any species in the entire animal kingdom and planet earth (or wherever any species may live in the universe).

HIPPOS WITH HERNIA – Understanding Nationalism And Patriotism Without The Hullabaloo

I have been reflecting on the above matters and have come to a conclusion – Nationalism and Patriotism come second to Religion in terms of a justification for giving up or sacrificing our lives.

The more one delves into these issues, the more idealistic and (sometimes) pompously moralistic one may become.  As these issues are a source of stability and identity, it somehow allows a person to moralize, control, and sermon others about it.  There is also this metaphysical and invisible crown that people wear when they announce themselves as “nationalists” or  “proud of their nation” individuals.  These very people then remove the crown and put on the metaphysical wigs and robes of a judge and then pass on judgments on people who have views that differ.

I am taking this opportunity to clarify the above issues and hopefully assist my readers in to developing a better understanding of the matters.  It is written in the hope that we all develop a perspective on these issues and thus understand how and why individuals differ in society.  An understanding of the above matter begins with the understanding of virtues and values.  Let us begin with virtues.

Virtue is moral excellence.  Anything that is virtuous is capable of producing moral excellence in individuals or in a society.  Plato, the great philosopher, laid down piety, moderation, wisdom, courage and justice as the principle virtues. Aristotle said famously in his book, Ethics, “Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.”  Here we find that moderation is emphasized as Aristotle often warned us against extremes.  Ayn Rand had her list - rationality, productiveness, pride, independence, integrity, honesty and justice.  Martin Seligman and Chris Peterson list courage, justice, humanity, temperance, transcendence, and wisdom as requisites for a stable personality – in other words excellent moral behavior.

We now see that all virtues somehow are non-arguable, universal, and indisputable truths that cut across all nations, religions, societies, institutions and individuals.  The opposite of virtue is vice.  Buddhism lists vices being Absence of shame and embarrassment, Jealousy, Stinginess, Lack of Remorse, Drowsiness, Distraction, Laziness, Anger and Concealment of wrongdoing.  The Bhagvad Gita lists desire, anger and greed as the three gates to hell – implying vices.  We can now see that all vices too are non-arguable, universal, and indisputable truths that cut across all nations, religions, societies, institutions and individuals.

Let us now come down to values.  This is where we enter cognitive quicksand. Values are preferences that concern an action or an outcome. Values tend to influence our attitudes and behavior towards the world and all tangible and intangible issues that arise therein. Values are ethical, moral, religious, political, and social.

Values differ between people, on a larger scale between cultures, countries, and also between cultures in the same country.  Likewise values may be similar across different cultures in different countries.  A well defined value system leads itself to a moral code and it is this moral code that individuals or societies accept.  It is these very same moral codes and that bring about differences in individuals or societies.

Have you ever seen a society, a religion, or a country that argues and debates on virtues?  Does any country have its constitution that highlights and extols injustice as its pillar for governing its people?  However, the same cannot be said of values.  People born in the same family differ on values and so what can be said of cultures and citizens of the world?  Some values may jump out and call on us (punctuality, tidiness) and yet these very values may seem unacceptable to other people.  Likewise, we may abhor the values that other people have adopted for themselves.

One other fact may be said of values – values have the tendency to go to extremes.  There is nothing like too much justice but there is something like being too tidy to the point that one may defile ones brain with that kind of aggression towards tidiness. Patriotism has its extreme too – jingoism.

With the above sequence of thoughts, let us now move to the topic of patriotism.  Patriotism is an emotional attachment that a person may link either (mostly) with his place of birth or where one had found fulfillment of some sort.  This attachment may be due to other values that the country may represent or its historical background, or the culture it may demonstrate. The World Values Survey (WVS) is a global research project that explores people’s values and they too assess patriotism in their survey as a value.

We now come to an inescapable fact – values are personal while virtues stand the test of universal applicability.   The law may legislate a virtue but the law does not legislate values or morality.  Countries which have legislated values find themselves out of sync with the world with its citizens migrating to other countries.

We come now to the topic of hippos with hernia.  I use this expression (from The Lion King) to describe those people who carry patriotism on their sleeve. Their sole desire is to develop an identity beyond their existing capabilities and create a form of differentiation for themselves.  Somehow they feel that they can carry a plume on their heads when they go around talking patriotism.

The case gets bad when they cannot tolerate light comments and jokes and take offence under the garb of patriotism.  The matter gets worse when any criticism of the government is directly construed as being unpatriotic. One can be patriotic to the core and still have disdain for the political party in power.  In fact, a true patriot would always have an axe to grind with the government in case he / she is under the impression that the government is pursuing policies that go against national interest. If that is the case, the people who love their country step out and express that love for their country by voting the government out of power.

However, the matter then goes to hell when the only objective of these patriots is the pursuit of non-patriots and then somehow turn and twist any fact to label them as such.  This activity seems to keep these patriots busy and under the illusion that they are doing some service to the nation by trumpeting their patriotic feelings at the drop of a hat.

What can I now say of people of one country who have settled in another country and also obtained a citizenship there?  These people earn their livelihood in another country and still tom-tom of their country of birth.  This is a disgrace to the country that granted them citizenship and whose constitution they wowed to protect.  I had a relative from Africa who would kiss his country of father’s birth right there on the airport.  Yet, he would bring in gold without paying the customs duty!  Talk of Patriotism!

Let us now come to the concept where great anger and disdain is shown to those who seem unpatriotic.  This is a violation of virtues.  Here the person expressing anger and disdain has chosen to emphasize a value over a virtue.  This is not only immoral but also illegal.  The law does not account people for their quantum of patriotism - neither its increase nor decrease.

Patriotism is a value and an individual has a right to accord any level to the value and the individual does not have to prove it to anyone – least of all a self-righteous indignant self-professed patriot.  Margaret Thatcher mentioned something that throws light to this – “If you have to prove you are a lady, you are not”.

Patriotism is a value that must be rooted in harmony and certainly not one where a person is willing to break the law in the name of the nation.  Taking the law in one’s hands is probably the most unpatriotic act a citizen can indulge in.

India is a great country. I don’t really care of its faults. Let us respect our constitution and the laws derived from there. India is our mother. Mothers need nothing – only respect.

© Nitesh Kotecha