The silly demand of councillors from the Mandya municipality in Karnataka that community dogs must be relocated far from the town and in a forest, needs to be severely condemned

In March 2007, Mandya, near Mysore in Karnataka, shot into infamy for the savage manner in which community dogs, labelled pejoratively as stray dogs in common parlance, were caught and slaughtered en masse under orders from the authorities. A video clip of the carnage, shot by two animal activists, l Srinivasan and Savitha Nagabhushan, and telecast by several national channels, had sent shockwaves throughout the world.

Now some members of the Mandya City Municipal Council are reportedly demanding the shifting of community dogs to the Muthathi forest within the Cauvery Wildlife Zone. Besides demonstrating outside the residence of the Member of Parliament from Mandya, Ms Ramya, whom they accused of scuttling their move, they have threatened to release some community dogs in front of her house. 

This is not the first time that the MCMC or its members have demanded the following of this utterly pointless, illegal and inhuman course. In 2008, the MCMC had issued a short-term tender notice asking for bids for catching community dogs and shifting them to the forest outside the city. The move was abandoned after Ms Maneka Gandhi had intervened and explained to the authorities that the animal birth control programme for dogs, which involved the capture, sterilisation and vaccination of community dogs and their return to the place from which they had been lifted, was the only effective way of controlling their population as well as rabies. Subsequently, it had launched an ABC programme in association with an NGO.

There have been since then instances of killing of and cruelty to community dogs, but no institutional slaughter or move for relocation until the recent demonstration. Quite possibly political rivalry is behind it. Also, the harsh fact is that a large section of Karnataka’s population is virulently against community dogs and hostile to animals. Not surprisingly, animal lovers generally feel that the State has among the worst records in India for cruelty to animals.

The savage mass murder in 2007 occurred while a completely illegal and wholesale slaughter of such dogs was being carried out in the State capital, Bangalore, by the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike or Bangalore Municipal Corporation, which became Bruhat (Greater) Bangalore Mahanagara Palike on February 1, 2007. Shockingly, as I have shown in my book, Savage Humans and Stray Dogs: A Study in Aggression, there were strong indications that the massacre might have represented a deliberate attempt to scuttle the highly successful animal birth control programme in Bangalore city which had brought down the number of human deaths from rabies to nil in three preceding years. The result was a sharp fall in the indenting of anti-rabies vaccine for humans in at least one major city municipal hospital.

The suspicion that something diabolical was afoot is strengthened by looking at two things. First, some of the main advocates and inciters of the carnage — who also denounced the ABC programme itself — were beholden to pharmaceutical companies manufacturing anti-rabies vaccines for humans, and that events leading to the carnage had begun just after a Karnataka High Court judgement in December 2006 staying an order by a Karnataka lokayukta on March 6, 2003, calling for mass killing of “stray dogs” and stating that the lokayukta’s order be implemented in accordance of the ABC (Dog Rules), 2001. Second, the committee set up the BBMP to audit the progress of ABC programme in Bangalore was headed by a person who had been sharply critical of the ABC programme itself and was associated with an organisation which owed much to the manufacture of anti-rabies vaccines.

There was thus a very genuine conflict of interest issue which should have deterred the BBMP from appointing the person and the person himself should have declined the assignment given his past stand. Why did he not do soIJ The BBMP could not claim that it was ignorant of the person’s past role as an NGO had protested in writing against his appointment, citing his record, almost as soon as it was announced.

Besides, the BBMP, having earlier stopped the killing of stray dogs and approved the implementation of the ABC programme, could not have been unaware of the fact that the Animal Birth Control (Dog) Rules, 2001, made the killing of such dogs illegal. Not only that, the Rules, clearly laid down that community dogs could be removed only for sterilisation and vaccination and, both done, had to be returned to the place from where they were lifted.

The BBMP ought also to have known that, promulgated under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, the Rules had the same force as law and that Section 13 of the Rules clearly stated that any Act, rule, regulation or bye-law in force in any area shall, in relation to any matter covered by the Rules, prevail only to the extent its provisions were less irksome to the animals than those contained in the Rules. These will be of “no effect” to the extent to which their provisions are more irksome to animals.

The BBMP should also have known that the Guidelines for Dog Population Management, jointly released by the World Health Organisation and the World Society for the Protection of Animals in May 1990, clearly stated, “All too often authorities confronted by problems caused by these [stray/community] dogs have turned to mass destruction in the hope of finding a quick solution, only to discover that the destruction had to continue year after year with no end in sight”.

The Guidelines further said, “The removal or killing or dogs should never be considered as the most effective way of dealing with the problem of surplus dogs in the community: it has no effect on the root cause of the problem, which is the over-production of dogs”.

There was doubtless intense pressure from a section of the public which had been worked up to a frenzy by a section of the media. But as an institution operating under the country’s legal system, the BBMP had a responsibility to act according to the law. It failed to do that.

Equally, the fact remains that the mass slaughter reflected the inability of Karnataka’s animal lovers and their organisations to organise effective opposition. They now need to overcome their differences and pool their resources and efforts to launch a campaign to create a strong public opinion against the killings.