Sunday, December 9, 2012

In dogged pursuit...!!

Is putting stray dogs to sleep the solution to the menace?

Somehow, since childhood, dogs always attracted my attention. Every time while returning from school, I would spare about half an hour playing and feeding the dogs in my colony. But it so happened that every night their barking, and also those of dogs from the other streets, would disturb my slumber. Perturbed with their presence, eventually, my most-awaited everyday activity took a permanent halt. The recent case of Mr. K E Mammen of Thiruvananthapuram, who was constantly disturbed, attacked and finally bitten by the stray dogs of his locality, took me back to my own troublesome experience which changed my love for stray dogs to indifference.

Many are of the opinion that dogs are adorable and harmless but if they turn out to be a menace to an extent to threaten one’s life, then what would one do? The one to face such a predicament, Mr. Mammen – a human rights activist himself – was perhaps right in voicing out an appeal to the Human Rights Commission to step in and also propagating the killing of stray dogs. Expressing his views on this issue, Jaya Simha, the Campaign Manager at PETA first explained the root cause of this problem. “‘The kill or not to kill’ issue has been lingering for long but we have to understand why stray dogs exist. Poor garbage management attracts stray dogs to make a habitat in residential localities and near shops. Their population is directly proportional to food, and since people usually have the habit of shooing them away, these dogs feel threatened, leading to attacks.” Calling the resentment of various animal rights groups with his agitation and appeal to kill the stray dogs, Mammen backed his argument by quoting Gandhi who propagated the killing of stray dogs and had also permitted so in 1926 in Ahmedabad where a pack of stray dogs had become a nuisance for a mill owner.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

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