Animal crackers

Yet, if there’s anyone to blame for this situation, it is the good minister herself. Hers has been a notoriously quickfix approach. While her alacrity to sympathise with animals is to be commended, her attempts to solve the problems concerning them often end up making things even more dire for her dumb proteges. This is precisely why many objected to the arbitrary transfer of the animal welfare board from the environment ministry, where it logically belonged, to the ministry of social justice and empowerment, just because its minister happened to have a well-known partiality for animals. Take this business about stray dogs in the Capital. So affected was Maneka Gandhi by the cruel manner the municipal authorities handled the strays, that she went to courtdemanding a stay on such measures. The net result is that many diseased dogs, some of them rabid, are allowed to roam at will. Not only do they pose a threat to the city’s residents, these canines themselves undergo a great deal of suffering, even experiencing very painful deaths.

This is not to argue for the unregulated abuse of circus animals. The whip and the torch have been regularly requisitioned to train lions, tigers and elephants to squat on stools or jump through hoops. But an immediate and blanket ban on such activity, without the necessary infrastructure to house the creatures so displaced, is self-defeating and expensive. It would have been far better if this measure was introduced in a phased manner over a period of time. For instance, the training of such animals could have first been prohibited, followed by a ban on their performances in circuses. This way, the circus authorities would themselves have been forced to phase out the more cruel performing acts themselves.