The other day a young girl of 9 was mauled to death in Bangalore by stray dogs (not rabid dogs). The BMC predictably suddenly were "seized of the menace" and swung into action trying to catch and put strays to sleep. Equally predictably animal rights activists raised a shrill cry against man's inhumanity to beast. There were suggestions that the dogs could be neutered instead of being killed. Which sounds like punishing murder with castration.
I have mixed feelings here. The child that was killed was the daughter of a construction labourer who was playing around on the roads while her parents were at work. She should possibly have been in school if our society and powers that be had any interest in universal education. The protesters are predictably drawn from the middle and upper classes, who possibly never see a stray dog except when it is being taken away by the BMC.
I am against the killing of any animal for sport or for similar purposes. That is an act of cruelty. Removing dangerous stray dogs (or rabid dogs) is not easy to classify as a sport. Catching them and keeping them in cages in the Municipal Pound may be a solution but again in a country where we do not have adequate resources to educate and feed over 300 million people it may be difficult to find resources for dog shelters. We need to find a solution that is not cruel but is also practicable in our socio-economic context.
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