AN ANIMAL LOVER SHALINI SAID

I think the primary thing we forget in our paranoia is that we HAVE been killing dogs for decades, and it has been all in vain! I visited BEML layout the day after the terrible incident took place, because I wanted to see the situation for myself this time instead of being led by one-sided media reports, and before the corporation stepped in to kill all the dogs there. We also tried to document on film as much as we could, but we have not looked at it to compile it yet. The situation there was indeed terrible, the entire area is nothing but a dumping ground! On all sides of the residential area, just a few feet away from the apartments are vast stretches of garbage and meat scraps. All the neighboruing areas apparently dumb their garbage there, which was veyr believable. The residential area is a short distance away from what seemed to be the marketplace centre of the layout - where there are a couple of meat shops as well as many shops and the medical centre. The dogs around the shops were the first we encountered, and they seemed very fearful but docile. We spoke to a some slum dwellers, who live a stone's throw away from the market - they take care of one (again, fearful) dog. They said that the dog wouldn't bite anyone, but those near the residential area had gone 'bad'. Even if they stepped into that area, they'd get bitten. The state of the other people in the market area was just too sad. We saw a little boy standing with an old construction worker, with a sort of whip (long stick with a rope attached) - both whipping any dog they saw, and all those who were just peacefully lying around. This seemed to be a form of amusement - both would laugh when the dog jumped up and ran away in pain. We spoke to them, the boy shyly grinned and said he hit them for no reason, and only grinned further at any sort of 'how would you feel if I did that to you?' The old man at first denied hitting a dog, but later said the owner of the shop had asked them to do it. When we attempted to speak to the owner, he pretended he knew neither english nor hindi nor kannada! When human beings constantly hurt dogs, isn't it only natural for them to grow scared and attack? At the residential area, we spoke to a few lady residents, who were understandably very upset and scared. They told us there had been another incident almost as bad just a little while back, where the young child fortunately survived. They had complained to BEML and to BMP, but to no avail. We also spoke to someone at the medical centre, who told us that there hadn't been too many bite cases, and when there were it was mostly adults coming in for a scratch or something. These two severe cases were an exception. There had also never been a case of rabies in the area. One of the women sent her son to show us around. He took us to an exansive overgrown garbage dumping field right opposite the apartments, where he said Manjunath had been hiding behind a bush while playing hide and seek. My heart sank when I saw the area. There are bushes everywhere, and a man standing there gave us a perhaps exaggerated figure of 80-100 dogs that must live in that expanse. There is no way even a small proportion of those dogs could be caught for any purpose unless the field is cleared entirely, and that would be a HUGE task! Stationed around the field were men hired to beat up viciously any stray dog they spotted. They had been set to the task a month ago, and after the recent incident, even more young boys had voluntarily joined. We saw and hopefully got on film one of these beatings, and it was terrible! This was a perhaps 3 or 4 month old PUPPY - and the men would not let it escape, they chased it beating it until it managed to escape somehow. I couldn't bear looking at it, and the SADDEST thing was the reaction of the young boy with us! I would not have let ANY child see such an act of violence and cruelty, but this boy was completely insensitive, and seemed quite amused with everything. After that, we despondently moved back to the car, while the boy told us stories about how you could open manjunath's head like a cap (!), and how if you put any water into his mouth it would come out through the holes in his throat. It seems a terrible terrible cycle! It was so clear to us and many of the residents also seemed to understand that besides being an impossible task, even if you did kill all the dogs there, dogs from surrounding areas would move in to feed on the garbage, within NO time. reproduction betweeen them would be unrestricted, survival rates would be very good because of all the food and shelter, and because there would be no established territory for them, fights would increase! Meanwhile, people grow scared of the dogs, treat them inhumanely, and instill in the dogs a fear and viciousness towards human beings! It becomes a war where it is the dogs versus people. Why need it be that way? Dogs are not naturally vicious, no animal attacks for no reason, and human beings are not what dogs consider food! It is this atmosphere of hostility that seems to cause most problems. And I've been hearing so much of 'in the US this doens't happen, why do we allow it to happen?'. This sort of argument is unbelievable- conditions are completely completely different in developed countries! They have no open garbage dump sites, there is no way we can have a stray dog free bangalore with all the garbage lying around - it is utterly impossible! What we must do is find better systems of garbage management, CONTROL the numbers of stray dogs by sterilization, control rabies by vaccination, and remove this hostile fear from both dogs and people by educating people to treat dogs better. I am glad commissioner Jairaj and the BMP are simply intensifying the sterilization drive, and isolating ferocious dogs for observation, and NOT killing mercilessly all the lovely, affectionate dogs of the city. I do hope no killing takes place, because it is clear to me that it will only worsen the situation!