19 April 2007

Pawsted by Mosilager

Save the dogs concert

There's going to be a concert to save the dogs at Stein Auditorium at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi on April 24th. Govindrajan Elangovan and Rekha Raj will be singing. It will be carnatic and sufi music.



I'm not sure if this is related to the Delhi concert, but I encourage Bangaloreans to learn more about the stray dog issue. Stray dogs of Bangalore who are being killed by the local authorities in gruesome ways to cover up their own corruption and inefficiency. The authorities do not dispose of garbage in time, leading to stray dogs on the street. A culling programme has been instituted for the strays. The Bangalore authorities have failed to realise that killing the dogs will have no effect as long as they have food on the streets to live on. Other dogs will just come in from the villages to replace the dead ones. A similar thing happened in Mumbai before and they realised that there was no use to the killing. Instead they have sterilization programmes now which have been effective in keeping the dogs from hurting people and each other.

Sushruta and others are trying to work towards a reasonable solution in Bangalore but have been stymied by the politics so far. Anyone who is on the fence about the stray dogs can take a look at this post (warning: extremely graphic images) by raccoon who demolishes some of the common myths about the usefulness of culling.

4 comments:

Pranav said...

hey thanks for dropping into my blog. The address for WSD is: www.wsdindia.org - it was working fine right now.

Anonymous said...

With the constant barrage of bad news, it's always heartwarming to see that there are people trying to make a better world for animals and people.

e said...

Thanks for putting this up.
I once ran across Kolkatta with a dying puppy in my arms. It had been run down by a car and was left to die. No one would help me. I shouted out to everyone to please help the bleeding dead puppy who was gasping in my arms but everyone stood around and stared. I caught a taxi and told him to bring me to the free clinic for pets or the nearest hospital. He didn't want to because the dog was dying but I said the magic word "Baksheesh" and it worked.
The dog died before any doctor came out to see it. I felt hopeless but ashamed at the same time for seeking help because people in the hospital said to me, "people out there can't even feed themselves".

Eve

Mosilager said...

raccoon I like your blog, will be back for sure. Thanks for the link, must have been server overload or something when I tried.

karen there's so much bad news there right now, I don't know how people are coping with it. This inability to learn from the past is dragging India down.

e That's a touching story... I'd probably have done the same in your place. It's not a human welfare vs. animal welfare thing, which opponents of animal rights keep turning it into. We should all be able to share the planet.