Just days before 90-year-old Raghavan was mauled to death by street dogs at his home in Varkala in Kerala on October 26, the Supreme Court appointed committee to study the stray dog problem submitted its biting report to the apex court.
The panel headed by the former High Court Judge S Siri Jagan said the stray dog menace was grave in the state and the Kerala government was lethargic in finding a solution to the problem. The report sounded a warning that if the issue was not resolved it would pose a grave danger to both humans and livestock.
The report cited the state’s Animal Husbandry department which puts the number of stray dogs in Kerala for 2015-16 at around 2,68,994. What is really alarming is the rough calculation by an expert which the report has quoted: In three years a pair of dogs can multiply up to 300. Even a ten-fold increase of the stray dog population is alarming. So imagine a hundred-fold increase!
The Kerala government is at its wits end on how to control the canine population or deal with the dog bite cases. In the last three years it has spent nearly 20 crore for the buying rabies vaccines but have done precious little in the way of Animal Birth Control Procedures. Not an easy job of rounding up street dogs, neutering them and then releasing them back on the streets. From 2001 the government has failed to do this on a regular bases and the reason for the expontenital increase in the street dog population.
Adding to the state’s woes are Maneka Gandhi, the Union minister for women and child development, who frequently raises the issue of the state’s cruelty towards stray dogs. On the day Raghavan died she had said that cases should be registered against those killing stray dogs. The committee report goes on to enumerate that 31,000 people have been bitten by stray dogs in the first five months of 2016 in the state. A few months earlier in August, a 65-year old woman, Siluvamma, was attacked by nearly 100 stray dogs (according to media reports) on Pulluvilla beach, Thiruvanathapuram.
With the government dragging its feet, people are taking to culling the dogs themselves. One prominent businessman has been going on hunger strikes while Boby Chemmannur, chairman of Chemmanur International Jewellers, has been catching dogs himself from the streets of Kozhikode in a bid to relocate them in his 10 acre property in Wayanad. He plans to catch 10,000 dogs but the people of Wayanad have protested against this grand idea. Meanwhile an old students association of St Thomas College in Pala has offered gold medals for the panchayat that kills the largest number of stray dogs. God’s own country is going certainly to the dogs.
