(18 Mar ’07)
Read in the papers that
Bangalore is going to be a stray free city. Cheers, that would be the first in
India. Why? Because there were two cases of dog-bite deaths not due to rabies
but traumatic injuries. Of the ten lakh or so dogs that have lived in Bangalore
since time immemorial, two went ‘mad’ and bit humans to death. The Municipality
of that garden city (no longer do those gardens exist as prettily as we’d read
of in our childhoods) has gone on overdrive to protect its citizens from the
menace. Rightfully so. Goa should do the same. Then, when all the dogs have
died, peacefully or otherwise, who will attack the garbage? The cats. One odd
cat will scratch a child who will be hospitalized for infection (more likely
hospital acquired but that’s another article) and then we’ll have an anti-cat
drive. No more cats. Great. Then what’ll happen to all the offals, fins, heads,
intestines in the fish, mutton, chicken markets? The rats will get them. No
cats or dogs to scare them away, the rats will flourish. Naturally, one or
other of them will bite a human, even adult, maybe, (actually, visit some of
our poorer brethren’s homes and you’ll come across several cases where this
happens, but no NGO/government has yet awoken to the problem, except in Surat
where in the ‘nineties there was a plague) and rats will be the contemporary
enemy. Then will begin a fun exercise, rat-catching. Expert runners, benders,
bio-technologists, pest-controllers, the green brigade, will all get involved
in ridding Goa of rodents. Tourists will chase vans with their cameras, filming
the opening of gutters, uniformed men netting protesting bandicoots and
thrashing them with sticks, and more. A new cottage industry will mushroom as
the foreigners will buy rat-traps at exorbitant rates to take home as
souvenirs. New games will evolve in
primary schools with nursery rhymes and stories revolving around King Rat,
Queen Rat and their twenty million subjects. In the meantime, what with
everyone dutifully killing the pests on a war footing, there’ll be no one to
clear the garbage. So, assuming that not a single rat is left inside, above,
around, near any sewage hole, the next target will have to be crows. That’s
simple. Chop off the trees. Not difficult, because if by then Goa has any left,
they’ll be more twiggy than branchy. No nesting places, no crows. Or pigeons.
Back we’ll come to a
new problem: cockroaches. If the rats were tough customers to tackle, think of
these. And then the micro-organisms that we can’t even see. Use anti-biotics
and the viruses and mutants will flourish. So-o…on and on.
Why, why can’t our
governments get rid of the problem, garbage? Killing animals isn’t going to
solve anything. It’s like this: cigarettes, paan masalas with tobacco, all can
be banned. But the ban will really, really work of the growing of the tobacco
crop is halted. Example two: if we want silent roads, don’t ban the big bad
horns on the cars. Halt their manufacture. If we’re really concerned about our
people, our land, our children, and their safety, killing gentle dogs isn’t the
answer. Making everyone responsible for his or her own garbage is.
Goa was pretty even a
few years ago because it was clean, green. We have to be firm and alert if we
don’t want it to go the Bangalore way.
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