Tuesday, May 5, 2009

'SLUMDOG' Mumbai


The street dogs are an essential part of the Mumbai landscape,
infact they have melted so seemlessly in the citscape that it is difficult to imagine the streets of Mumbai without them.

Here's a  look at some of the  SlumDOG landscape  in  Mumbai .







Some street DOG debates:

“All stray dogs should be killed as a long-term solution…..” ,

says Brihan Mumbai Corporation chief Jayraj Pathak.The BMC in fact plans to put forth a proposal to the High Court and then the Supreme Court on the issue.

Most free-roaming dogs in Mumbai belong to an ancient canine race known as the Pariah Dog, which has existed all over Asia and Africa ever since human beings started living in settlements. They are, and have always been, scavengers–that is, they live on garbage created by humans. In addition to scavenging, they are widely kept as pets by rural and urban slum households


The size of stray dog populations always corresponds to the size and character of the human population of the area. Urban India has two features which create and sustain stray dog populations:

1) Large amounts of exposed garbage, which provide an abundant source of food

2) A huge population of slum and street-dwellers, who often keep the dogs as free-roaming pets

Mumbai has over 12 million human residents, of whom over half are slum-dwellers. At least 500 tonnes of garbage remain uncollected daily. Therefore conditions are perfect for supporting a particularly large population of stray dogs.
According to unofficial figures Mumbai has around 2 lakh stray dogs.

But animal lovers have a point here when they answer this question……

If stray dog population control is the issue, wouldn’t it make more sense to kill the dogs or take them away? 
Removal or killing of stray dogs seems to be the most obvious method of controlling the population, but it has actually proved to be completely useless. This is because even when large numbers of dogs are killed, the conditions that sustain dog populations remain unchanged. Dogs are territorial and each one lives in its own specific area. When they are removed, the following things happen:

·         The food source – garbage – is still available in abundance, so dogs from neighbouring areas enter the vacant territories.

·         Pups born and growing up in the surrounding areas also move in to occupy these vacant niches.

·         The few dogs who escape capture and remain behind attack these newcomers, leading to frequent and prolonged dog-fights.

·         Since they are not sterilised, all the dogs who escape capture continue to mate, leading to more fighting.

·         In the course of fights, dogs often accidentally redirect their aggression towards people passing by, so many humans get bitten.

·         Females with pups become aggressive and often attack pedestrians who come too close to their litter.

·         They breed at a very high rate (two litters of pups a year). It has been estimated that two dogs can multiply to over 300 in three years.

Since dogs who are removed are quickly replaced, the population does not decrease at all.
Since removal of dogs actually increases dog-related problems, the effective solution is to sterilise the dogs, vaccinate them against rabies and put them back in their own areas.




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