A letter to Gardiner Harris; author of 'Where Streets Are Thronged With Strays Baring Fangs'

I was extremely disturbed to read the article ‘Where Streets Are Thronged With Strays Baring Fangs’, published 6th August 2012 in the New York Times. This is my response to the author, GARDINER HARRIS

. The link to this article may be found at the bottom of the letter. Please feel free to write to her with your own thoughts, by clicking on her name (in bold.)

Dear Ms Harris,

If you had even bothered to do a little legitimate research before condemning the strays of India, you would have found that the problem is a lot more complex than you make it out to be.

As an animal rights advocate, I found it to be not only one-sided and ignorant, but willfully insensitive. Firstly, the headline is itself is a gross exaggeration. Was your intent to ignore facts completely and indulge solely in fear mongering? Where are these throngs of fang-baring dogs exactly? I walk on the streets every day and I am met only with wagging tails and eager faces.

Yes, we have a rabies problem in India. My own pets have been infected, and I myself have been bitten. I dealt with it, without condemning all strays to mass euthanasia. You’re so eager to quote the rabies toll in India. Why don’t you try to provide a figure for the number of animals that are abandoned by privileged citizens in this country?

The problem of free-roaming dogs, is a two-fold, man-made problem. Firstly, it is a failure of the authorities to humanely control the population through sterilizations. Secondly, it is a result of dog-owners failing to neuter their pets, and consequently abandoning them. For these reasons, mass euthanasia, has failed time and time again, and has been done away with. It just doesn’t solve the problem, therefore it cannot be the cause of the stray dog numbers. As long as human insensitivity and selfishness exists, we will always have stray dogs.

Who are the strays bothering exactly? Definitely not the homeless street dwellers who have a symbiotic relationship with these creatures. Definitely not people like me, who show them kindness with a few biscuits when the garbage cannot sustain them.

You further say that ‘walking a pet dog here can be akin to swimming with sharks’. Have you even attempted to understand why? It’s common knowledge that dogs are naturally territorial. Add to that, the fact that strays are ceaselessly teased by infants and their pups are often run over by vehicles. They’re going to be wary of people, aren’t they? Do the people in their ivory towers walking their pedigree dogs realise that the stray dog population would cease to be a ‘menace’ if only they adopted strays instead of buying dogs from breeders, who often flout basic animal welfare laws.

What’s more it is highly irresponsible to mention that distressing comment made by a member of the Punjab Legislative Assembly who proposed sending strays to China. Are you aware of the intolerable cruelty that persists in Chinese dog-farms? There are millions of poverty stricken, disease riddled people in India. Should we ship them off to China as bonded labour and just as easily get rid of the problem? When someone is sick/old or injured, do we blindly kill them off? Or as a civilized society, do we tackle it in a manner that is slightly more evolved than what the Nazis practiced. And while it’s awful that people get bitten, you conveniently dissociate the human hand in this ‘menace’. The stray-dog problem could be easily tackled, if everyone accepted and took responsibility for it. I’ve had many of the strays in my neighbourhood neutered. There are NGOs people can call who will do it for free. Fostering panic helps no one.

One individual said, “There are stray dogs everywhere in Delhi”, “We are more scared of dog bites than anything else.” Really? Above and beyond that fact that Delhi is the rape capital of India? That more humans are killed and maimed by other humans doesn’t bother her more? I’d say she’s quite lucky then.

If the privileged brats of this country can’t handle sharing it with the other inhabitants, humans and otherwise, then I suggest shipping THEM off to China.

To actually quote one or two random victims and make it seem as if they are speaking for everyone, boils down to unethical, sub-standard journalism. Overall, this kind of one-sided, ignorant story-telling is damaging to any efforts made toward animal-human co-existence and needs to be dealt with sternly.

Regards,

A concerned citizen,

Hannah Joseph

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/07/world/asia/india-stray-dogs-are-a-menace.html?pagewanted=1&smid=fb-share