ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide. Founded in 1992, ANIMAL PEOPLE has no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.

 

This site built and maintained by: GREANVILLE ASSOCIATESand CRESCENT COMMUNICATIONS •Rev. 12.1.05 Copyright ANIMAL PEOPLE, INC. 1992--2006

 

 

 

 

 
   

 
powered by FreeFind

ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: July-August 2007

ABC & clandestine captures drive Bangalore street dog population down by half since mid-2006

 

BANGALORE--A door-to-door canvas of 3.2 million Bangalore households in mid-June 2007 found just 49,283 dogs-- including 17,480 pet dogs, and only 24,491 street dogs, fewer than half the 56,500 estimated to be at large a year earlier.

The plummeting street dog population attested to both the efficacy of the much-maligned Animal Birth Control programs in Bangalore, and the undiscriminating tactics of dogcatchers who were deployed repeatedly in the first half of 2007 to purge dogs.

ANIMAL PEOPLE surveys of dogs in representative Bangalore neighborhoods found in January 2007 that the ABC programs managed by Compassion Unlimited Plus Action, Karuna, and the Animal Rights Fund appeared to have sterilized between 70% and 90% of the free-roaming dog population. But dog pogroms following fatal dog attacks in January and March 2007 jeopardized the programs' success by killing dogs who had already been sterilized.

Officially the killing stopped and ABC resumed in May 2007, but "Bangalore dogs are still being killed and relocated in big numbers," Animal Rights Fund volunteer Poornima Harish told ANIMAL PEOPLE in late July. "This time it is more lethal, as there is no local, national or international brouhaha. On paper, the dog management program in Bangalore is ABC. But the essence of ABC is that the sterilized dogs should be returned to their places after the operation. This is not happening. After a dog is operated on, the same dog is picked up again and never returned. With new dogs entering each territory and birthing litters, we will never be able to prove that ABC is a success," Harish said.

Drivers and dogcatchers caught in the act by ARF volunteers at first claimed to be working for ARF. Photos documented that most of the dogs they caught were already sterilized. Bangalore officials eventually admitted that eight private vans had been hired to clandestinely capture "diseased" dogs.

After the Deccan Herald columnist "Madhumitha B" in late July 2007 exposed the dogcatching operation, "Joint commissioner B.V. Kulkarni told this reporter that he has instructed his health officers to withdraw the private vehicles from city service," the columnist wrote. However, "When asked to show a copy of the official order, the joint commissioner claimed it's not possible," Mahumitha B added. "CUPA honorary secretary Sanober Bharucha said CUPA had received no notification. Other city officials and the animal husbandry department claimed to be completely unaware of the order."

The clandestine dogcatching apparently began soon after the May 2007 publication of a highly critical performance audit of the Bangalore ABC programs, by a committee chaired by M.K. Sudarshan of the Association for the Prevention and Control of Rabies in India. Skeptical of ABC from the introduction of the approach, APCRI has worked closely with the anti-ABC organization Stray Dog Free Bangalore.

Aware that Sudarshan has alleged a rabies risk in Bangalore in recent years even though no cases had occurred in areas served by ABC, Harish in July 2007 discovered that Sudarshan has been overstating the number of human rabies deaths in Banglore for at least 12 years. In 1995, for example, in a publication sponsored by makers of human post-exposure vaccines, Sudarhan "said there are 70-100 rabies deaths in Bangalore every year," Harish told ANIMAL PEOPLE. "The rabies deaths figure for that year is 21. I got the documents from the Isolation Hospital under the Right to Information Act with the official seal," Harish said, sending copies of all the documents.

But a four-year-old boy named Ajay died of rabies in Bangalore on June 4, after suffering a bite in Kurubarahalli, an outlying suburb. He received three injections of an ineffective post-exposure vaccine from a "private medical practitioner near his house," The Hindu reported. His parents Manjula and Manjunath took Ajay to a hospital only after the onset of rabies symptoms--and then the first hospital they visited did not have anti-rabies vaccine in stock.

Killing dogs for population control has been illegal in India for 10 years, but the federal law is little enforced. Dog attacks are typically followed by dog massacres, as in Kunnamkulam, Kerala, where "1,000 or more dogs were killed," according to local activist Ramesh Ravindra. As in Bangalore, the dog attacks occurred in the vicinity of illegal disposal of meat waste, Ravindra said. The dog purge ended only when the hired dogcatchers were solicited to kill dogs in another community, Ravindra added.

In at least two cases, at Paramathi near Namakkal in June and Tambaram near Chennai in July, dogcatchers of the Nariku-rava tribe produced local opposition to the purges when they reportedly shot dogs in public places with homemade guns, left wounded dogs to die, and shot birds as well.
"With U.S. Agency for International Development support and guidance the Indian NGO ExNoRa [has] helped transform the nomadic Narikuravas from largely unemployed slum dwellers to organized 'street beautifiers,' who earn a living by collecting, composting, and recycling waste," USAid Global Environment Center deputy assistant administrator David F. Hales recently wrote.