Another child killed by dogs in Bangalore

A four-year-old boy, Manjunath, who was playing hide-and-seek with his friends, was chased, attacked and mauled to death by a pack of stray dogs in the BEML area of Bangalore on Wednesday evening. This is the second time in the recent past a child is succumbing to attack by stray dogs.

Like last time, the death of Manjunath too will unleash fierce arguments. Like last time, the government will try to remove the stray dogs from the streets, but animal rights groups will oppose that. The government will, in all probability give up, and it’ll be status quo.

It’s a shame that Bangalore’s administration hasn’t been able to effectively rid the city of stray dogs. I don’t think there is any major global city where small children and two-wheel riders in the night live in danger of being bitten and killed by dogs.

I love animals. I had at one time 12 cats, spanning three generations, in my house. Till very recently, till we moved into an apartment, we had four cats in our house. Once we also adopted a stray dog, and looked after it till it died. But, still, I don’t understand the animal rights-human rights conflict here, if at all there is one.

No one is blaming the dogs. 1) Be it a pet dog or a stray dog, if provoked it will bite. 2) Small children are always attracted to animals. Some birds, like crows, attack small children, especially if the children have eatables in their hand. Animals tend to get closer to small children. 3) Animals need to be treated with respect, just as human beings are. Just because they can’t talk like us, we shouldn’t show our brute power on them.

It’s precisely because of these reasons, that I would like Bangalore – in fact any public place – to be rid of stray dogs. Stray dogs are a menace to people. The city abounds with stories of how much of nuisance they cause. Two-wheel riders are a major target. I was myself surrounded by half a dozen dogs, one night, and bitten by one of them. Worse than the bite or the money I had to shell out for the anti-rabies vaccine was the scare that these dogs gave me. The worse point that night was, when for a brief while, I thought a dog, really a ferocious one, would just pounce on me.

At night, I am scared not just about the criminals who might mug me, but dogs too. I don’t blame the dogs, never; not for one moment. I blame the civic administration, the state government and organisations that are committed to providing dogs a dignified life.

Animal rights activists, and many animal lovers, should first accept that Bangalore’s streets and public places shouldn’t have stray dogs wandering around. No, we can’t have stray dogs on Bangalore’s streets. There has to be, first, an agreement on this single point.

How to achieve this objective? Shooting at random may be too harsh; and some innocent, non-violent stray dogs, whatever that means, may also get killed. Round them up, take them away. To where? Keep them in well-managed kennels.

Do we have enough of them? We should; a large number of kennels. Treat the dogs well there. They can put up for sale, and people, who are looking for pets, can buy them. There can only be pet animals in a civil society, not stray and wild animals.

NGOs that are involved with animals receive crores of rupees of funding for protecting animal rights. This money has to be productively utilised. The funding agencies, like the government, should find out what’s happening to the money that’s disbursed. The government should work alongside these NGOs and put an end to this situation that is at one level demeaning to dogs themselves, and at another, threatening the lives of people.