SC has missed elephants in the room: dirty streets, mauling

Let us, by all means, be dog lovers but not by casting them onto the streets. Would animal activists also like bovines to roam our streets?

- S MURLIDHARAN

The August 22 modified order of the 3-member bench of the Supreme Court on stray dogs overturned the 2-member bench order of the same court of August 11 (original order) has been hailed gushingly and with tears of joy by the stray dog activists. The modified order has pan-India applicability, ordaining the release of stray dogs after sterilization to the same streets they were picked up from, whereas the original order triggered by the suo motu initiative of the 2-member bench was directed at the Delhi government, asking it to banish stray dogs completely from the Delhi streets.

The only imperfection in the original order was it didn't pay heed to logistics—not enough dog shelters to house and nurture about two lakh stray dogs. While it didn't ordain culling of stray dogs, stray dog activists have equated housing them in cramped places as nothing short of culling. Be that as it may, let us see what other countries do with stray dogs. In the USA, as indeed in large parts of Europe, stray dogs are conspicuous by their absence.

A rare abandoned dog is put in a dog rescue centre where accredited dog trainers train and tame them before selling them to those willing to adopt them. In the state of Massachusetts, US, domestic dogs are culled if they bite someone the second time. That puts the fear of God in their masters, who keep them on a short leash lest they pounce on unsuspecting pedestrians. In short, the onus of domestic dogs not making a nuisance of themselves or menacing others is strictly on the owners, who carry a bunch of poop bags when they walk their dogs to mop up the dog excreta for eventual disposal at the first available dustbin.