ABC of dog-human conflict; fix accountability for solution
By Bhavna Pant
New Delhi, March 3: Before 1990, killing of dogs was considered to be the only solution to control their population by authorities. One of my most painful childhood memory is when municipality people will put poisonous gulab jamuns all over the area in the garbage and within a few hours heart-wrenching cries could be heard from all the directions.
Poor animal would roll on the ground in writhing pain for hours and blood oozing from their mouth. As a child, I always felt helpless and would hide myself somewhere in the house.
In some states, dogs were captured and electrocuted by running water over them and using electricity. All kind of cruelty could be seen all over the country. In 1990 ABC program started in India. Catch /spay/Neuter/Vaccinate and release method was gradually adopted in the cities, while bringing down the number of street dogs in a humane manner. The number of cases of humane rabies also dramatically declined.
In Jaipur, ‘Help In Suffering’ also started this programme very early in 1993. It was a well-planned and to an extent successful in declining the population of stray dogs and human rabies cases.
The Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Rules 2001has been enacted under section 38 of the prevention of cruelty to animal Act 1960 and later amended in 2010. ABC programme’s success rate vary from state to state but largely it hasn’t achieved the goal. On paper it looks great but in reality it doesn’t.
In reality, ABC programme across India tend to go on for decades. All too often, this has no real impact on the ground as dogs are being sterilized at a rate consistently outplaced by the continued population growth of unsterilized dogs.
In reality, the authorities who are responsible to carry out this program doesn’t have any action plan. Whenever they get a call related to dog menace from any specific area, they catch whosoever they get without any survey about the number of dogs, especially female dogs in that area they neuter them and release but the dogs who are left increase the population of dogs of that area which kill the main purpose of sterilizing the first batch.
The involvement of the local people specially the feeders, who know everything about the dogs of that area, is essential, but lacking right now. Mostly feeders get the dogs sterilized personally with the help of NGOs who were allotted to do these operations.
Corruption in municipalities is the most important factor for not reaching the target of ABC programme. Large amount of money goes for this project but in reality the infrastructure, their shelters, ambulance service, staff, veterinary doctors, coordination between authorities, are not up-to-date for this project. The NGOs who are allotted to do the operations doesn’t go and catch the dogs on their own in the locality where unsterilized dogs are in numbers, as they take action only when someone complains to them. They get money from government agencies per dog.
The NGOs take care of those dogs who are with them. Directly they have nothing to do with the ABC. Even one of the NGOs in my area, who is authorized to do ABC operations, rejected my suggestion that we should jointly go to the areas where unsterilized dogs are hiding in the narrow lanes of the unorganised dwelling units away from the gated societies. In the absence of a sustained plan, unsterilized dogs from these congested areas keep increasing the canine population in the cities.
A lot of selfless and good work in different areas of various cities to operate strays has been done by devoted individuals but a regular and systematic effort by government and the NGOs with the active support of public has been completely missing. There is hardly a system in place to monitor, regulate and fix accountability for the delivery in the ABC programme in different states. (Cobcluded)
This is third of 3-part series. Earlier posts were: Abc of dog-human conflict amid paralysis of action Link: https://theraisinahills.com/abc-of-dog-human-conflict-amid-paralysis-of-action/
& Abc of dog-human conflict; civic body rot exposed Link: https://theraisinahills.com/abc-of-dog-human-conflict-civic-body-rot-exposed/
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