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Journalism of Courage
Be they dogs, cats, leopards, tigers, monkeys, elephants, snakes et al, our conflicts with these animals in our day to day lives have grown worse and more violent over the years, usually with the animal being at the receiving end. Stray and even pet dogs find themselves in the doghouse, with angry citizens — up in arms against animal lovers who feed them — demanding the wholesale removal and sterilisation of strays and the muzzling of pet dogs. Outrage flares up after every incident of dogs biting and attacking people. The media joins in the clamor big time. Agreed, being bitten is not a pleasant experience nor are the inoculations that follow but dogs usually attack with a reason – either on provocation, or if strays get together in packs and the hunting instinct takes hold (just like mob mentality), or if pet dogs have not been properly socialised.
As for leopards sneaking into outlying houses (now even cities like Mumbai and Gurugram), we have impinged on their territories to such an extent that they have no choice but to stalk and snatch dogs and alas sometimes children living in the periphery of their territories. In Delhi, when they came back to the wonderfully restored Yamuna Biodiversity Park, the surrounding villages demanded their immediate removal. Mumbaikars living adjoining the Borivali National Park have made their peace with the animals, ensuring their children and women are not out during evening hours and the night. Again, the root cause for conflict is because we have infringed upon the animal’s territory and are the true villains.
Elephants, whose ancient migratory routes have been blocked by us with tea gardens, panic with the bursting of firecrackers and burning torches and naturally go berserk. Being intelligent beings, they will attack village homes (and bars!) and trample all those who dare come in their way.
Tigers may attack if surprised and this is often because villagers intrude into their territories for fodder collection. A tiger that kills a human is doomed — either caught, tranquilised and banished to distant forests or thrown into zoos or sentenced to be shot. Once tigers realise how easy it is to hunt us, they may make a habit of it.
Barefoot farmers in paddy fields, step on cobras hunting rats and may get bitten. Usually, the nearest source of antidote is too far away and often the victims prefer localised treatment which does not work.
Macaques and langurs are learning the advantage of living in big cities where many are patronised for religious reasons and grow bolder, attacking at will and demanding parties and becoming nastily belligerent if denied these privileges. While many people extend warm invitations (‘aao-aao-aao’), others are hostile and this probably sends the simians’ blood pressure skyrocketing and shorts their tempers. Again, the root cause for conflict is ourselves.
Most animals kill for a reason – to defend their homes and territories or babies or themselves or for food. They are not blind drunk (some elephants may be if they raid the village bar) or reckless. In most of these cases of man-animal conflict the media goes to town while reporting them, often glossing over the fact that the root cause is ourselves. And though snakes (who do not get the same publicity probably because those they bite are usually poor farmers) account for something like 50,000 lives every year, the number of people killed by all the other animals comes nowhere near this figure. And certainly, nowhere near the nearly 200,000 people killed by motor vehicles every year – a toll amounting to a fully loaded 500 passenger Airbus A 380 crashing every day! People get run over every day and usually the media gives the incident just a few centimeters of space and it is forgotten all too soon. Also, the way some of these so-called ‘accidents’ are reported imply that the vehicle itself is to blame such as ‘bus falls over mountainside’ or ‘truck jumps divider’. As if the drunken moron at the wheel has nothing to do with the incident and the vehicle itself took it into its head to jump off a cliff. There is special gloating if the vehicle involved is a BMW or Mercedes – now the media will get after the sozzled underage ‘driver’ at the wheel (for a short while).
But there is no universal hue and cry or hullabaloo that such drivers be banned for life and if they ever need to use a motor vehicle again, then the best place for them is bound and gagged and dumped in the boot. Underage, reckless and sozzled thugs (often alas with fond parental blessings) take their parents’ supercars out and cause mayhem. Being ripped to shreds by a pack of hunting strays is as bad as being dragged under a Lamborghini or truck for half a kilometer. The punishment for both, however, is very different.
So clearly there are outrageous double standards at play here. Even abroad, animals that step out of line are usually condemned – animals that may escape from zoos are shot, stray dogs ‘euthanised’, if not claimed within a certain period. But there is one difference. There the punishment for erring humans is harsh too – they take away your license, so no one dares to drink and drive, and drivers will stop before intersections regardless of how empty the roads are.
As has often been said, human life in ‘developing’ countries is cheap, especially if claimed by other humans, but certainly not so when caused by an animal. Two hundred thousand killed by motor vehicles is less valuable than one person taken down by a tiger.
