Dog culling in Kerala has caught the eye of dog lovers across the world including Bollywood stars. Actors including Varun Dhawan, Sonakshi Sinha, Kapil Sharma have spoken against culling of dogs in the state.
The controversy began after an all party meeting in July chaired by Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy took a decision to intensify the programme to kill rabid and dangerous dogs. State government reiterated that there is no decision for mass culling of dogs.
"I think stray dogs should be eradicated. Only if an animal lover's child gets bitten like how my child was, will they understand the trauma and pain," says father of Shivaprabha who was bit by a group of stray dogs. She is still traumatised after she was bitten inside her school more than a year ago. The wounds are as fresh as the marks on her body.
This is not just a one-off case, a three-year-old boy in Ernakulum district was also so badly bitten by a stray dog that he has been in hospital for nearly 10 days.
More than one lakh twenty thousand dog bite cases have been reported across Kerala in the last one year.
Battling from the menace, 40 dogs were recently killed in Kannur by injecting them with cyanide. In Muvattupuzha, 130 dogs were killed in June. Local authorities say the residents might have poisoned the dogs.
In a reply to an RTI query, the Ponnani Municipality said they had euthanized 4,512 dogs from 2002 to 2014. The reasons given were that the dogs were suspected to have rabies.
Animal lovers say killing all stray dogs is not the solution. "More than 50% of the cases are not from stray dogs but from owned dogs. People don't vaccinate their dogs," People for animal (PFA Trivandrum chapter) trustee Latha Indira said.
"Some of the dogs have to be euthanized, some are diseased, and some are too aggressive to be on the street there is no doubt about that. We spend the last six months having arguments, making protests spending money on protests they could have spend the money on sterilising the dogs," Mary Muscroft said who started the animal protection organisation Street Dog Watch Association.
The Kerala government has maintained that the Animal Birth Control programme is a costly affair. "For this ABC programme, we will have to spend about Rs 1000 per dog. Which is cost wise not possible for gram panchayats and municipalities," Kerala Urban Affairs Minister Manjalamkuzhi Ali said.
With increasing incidents of dog bite being reported from the state, stray dogs have become a terror for the average Keralite. The government has promised to strengthen ABC but till then Keralites walking on the street and the stray dogs will have to pay for each other's aggression.
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