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).