Doomed by best friend of man

Man’s “best friend” has turned a serial killer. The “wolfish” genes in stray dogs surfaced when they savaged a 40-yearold mentally challenged man in Talwandi Chungla village of Batala tehsil of Punjab some time ago. Villagers discovered dogs with pieces of the man’s flesh swinging from bloodied jaws. There has been a series of mauling of kids and aging humans by dog packs residing near cattle carcass dumps in Punjab. And, mind you, these were not rabid dogs. These were those that had tasted blood, having habitually fed on rotting cattle in the absence of vultures.
At the root lies the limited impact of the well-intentioned Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules, 2001. Sterilisation of dogs is just unable to keep pace with breeding rates. Though the World Health Organisation (WHO) mandates that 70% of a given dog population must be sterilised within six months to ensure ABC success, NGOs handling such programmes do not have the capacity to neuter more than 5% of them annually. The result is a veritable dog time bomb ticking away furiously, with national population estimates ranging between 20 to 28 million canines. The bad news is that nearly 60% are strays.
The WHO’s National Multicentric Rabies Survey of 2003 puts the figure at 20,565 rabies deaths a year in India out of a global figure of 55,000. Most victims are poor children, brought to clinics late when hydrophobia has set in and doctors merely dispense tranquilisers to ease the torment of a terrible death. Shockingly, 79% of the rabies victims did not receive vaccination due to a poor public healthcare system. The WHO estimates the number of people bitten by dogs annually in India at 17 million.
Even optimal use of NGO resources cannot keep pace with the infamous breeding rates of dogs. According to the International Fund for Animal Welfare, one female dog and her offspring can produce 67,000 puppies in six years! Add to this pups dumped on streets by pet owners faced with unwanted pregnancies or those finding dogs inconvenient to maintain due to reasons such as shifting to tighter accommodation. Well-meaning people feed strays and even oppose dogcatching drives. Animal welfare laws are riddled with anomalies, such as ABC’s Rule 7.9, which bans abortion and sterilisation of a stray bitch until delivery of pups!
No less an entity than the chairman, Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI), Maj Gen RM Kharb (retd), has been forced to admit: “The sheer magnitude and logistics of catching, neutering and releasing such a huge number of stray dogs has been a big challenge in the successful outcome of the ABC programme.”
What is galling is the absence of a national strategy, an action plan and timebound sterilisation goals. An indifferent union government does not even require hospitals to report rabies deaths. A section of the NGOs, which receive Rs 500-770 for every dog sterilised and vaccinated, has developed vested interests in status quo. Such a situation requires the government to take over the ABC progamme and put in place an infrastructure for mass sterilisation at one go. Rabies should be treated as a public health calamity and a national drive should be initiated, like the successful campaigns to eradicate polio and small pox.
Even sterilisation does not tone down the aggression of all dogs. A percentage of sterilised dogs will bite persistently. Dogs have to be caught periodically and re-vaccinated for rabies, but there is no such sustainable programme. Sterilised dogs are vaccinated once and released, and not caught again for annual vaccination. While the ABC requires sterilised dogs to be reintroduced in the same localities, municipal authorities under public/VIP pressure abandon dogs in jungles where they turn serial wildlife killers, targeting the young of deer/antelope species. Thirsty, tired wild animals are easy prey for dog packs at water holes in summer. At the same time, untended dogs around human habitations attract leopards, which in turn attack people.
Cities supporting unsustainable dog numbers are going to experience rising casualties. There are few who have not felt the blood-curdling shudders of facing a growling dog pack when walking home at night. Former Punjab social welfare minister Laxmi kanta Chawla, who has written to the Prime Minister seeking externment of strays, says, “Dogs kill abandoned babies, most of whom are unwanted daughters.” If cities and villages are not to become hostile “jungles” patrolled by “man- eating” dogs, sterilisation programmes must be backed by adoption of strays and creation of shelters. Garbage and carcass dump sanitation helps erode breeding rates as pups do not find food readily. Beyond such measures, a calculated number of dogs could be euthanised through humane methods.