What tops the list of issues that are likely to become major sources of conflict in this country in the near future? You could suggest religion, or water, or caste, or language – good guesses all. But in fact we’ve already had plenty of conflicts along those lines, which certainly suggests we might have plenty more.
There might be another issue one on the sidelines, readying to take, if not the top spot, at least a rather aromatic place in the list. I refer, of course, to dog excrement, dog poop, dog-doo. There are areas of our cities – and their number rises by the day – where the simple act of walking on the street has been elevated to something akin to a tap-dance, just to avoid small mounds of canine excreta. Carmichael Road and Turner Road in Mumbai are delectable examples; but similar high-stepping experiences are available, for example, in New Delhi’s South Extension, Chennai’s Kilpauk and Bengaluru’s Malleswaram.
Whether this is due to a sudden rise in dog-ownership, or an unexplained, widespread and ongoing epidemic of doggie diarrhoea, I don’t know. What I do know is that, at least anecdotally, almost nobody cleans up after their dogs. Of the dozens of dogs that are walked near my home, I know just one owner who picks up the excrement. Just one. And given the experience of those other neighbourhoods mentioned above, picking up is just as likely a rare sight there.
Hockey sticks and pistols
Naturally, this leads to resentment in those who don’t own dogs, who run the minute-by-minute risk of stepping in the stuff if they don’t have one eye constantly focused on the ground. Sure enough, it has resulted in at least one reported clash.
Synopsis: In a South Delhi neighbourhood, a man walks his dog. The dog takes a dump. Another man objects because said dump is uncomfortably close to some gym equipment. He abuses the dog-owner. Dog-owner and friends beat up the complainer. Complainer summons up a gang of masked men carrying “hockey sticks, pistols and iron rods”. They rampage through the area looking for the dog-owner, damaging cars and firing randomly. One bullet injures a man.
The swift escalation is breathtaking: how much longer before the army would have had to be called in? All of which might have been avoided had the dog-owner simply picked up his dog’s mound of poop.
What happened in Delhi is a cautionary tale, but one that is hardly surprising: after all, and again, almost nobody cleans up after their dogs. In fact, nobody who walks dogs appears to think this is even their job. Someone else has to do it.
Sidestepping bye-laws
Yet municipalities, faced with the enormous and thankless job of keeping our cities clean, are at least trying to nudge dog-owners in this direction. The municipal corporation in Mumbai, for example, has a 2006 bye-law that spells out fines for littering (Rs 200), urinating (Rs 200) and defecation (Rs 100, though it’s unclear why defecation attracts a lower fine than urination).
The bye-law explicitly says: “Pet owner [is] responsible to clean litter by pet.” The fine if you, the pet owner, sidestep such responsibility? Rs 500.
In 2007, officials sought to apply precisely this regulation to the columnist Tavleen Singh who was walking her dog on Marine Drive. When it defecated and Singh did not clean up, BMC officials asked her to pay the Rs 500 fine.
Amazingly, Singh refused. “It is a conscious objection to a half-baked, stupid law,” that report quotes her saying. “This law is just like treating a cancer patient with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.” She also pointed out that, unlike “in cities like Paris and New York”, Bombay does not make available “dustbins and plastic bags” to pick up your dog’s excrement. Elsewhere, she claimed that her “protest was against the absurdity of a municipal law that made Marine Drive the only road in Mumbai on which the poop of pedigreed dogs is illegal”.
Never mind that the regulation does not so much as mention Marine Drive.
Cleaning up after Tommy
That 2007 episode did not escalate into vandalism and shooting, as happened in Delhi. Small mercies. But the point is clear: if I want a dog and I take little Tommy outside to do what he must, cleaning up after him is my job every bit as much as cleaning up after my child is my job. This is the spirit of the municipal bye-law and its Rs 500 fine.
But if I continue to believe cleaning up my dog’s poop is someone else’s job – as too many dog owners appear to believe – then we had better get ready for more rampages by masked men.
Or more tap-dancing rampages, at any rate.
There might be another issue one on the sidelines, readying to take, if not the top spot, at least a rather aromatic place in the list. I refer, of course, to dog excrement, dog poop, dog-doo. There are areas of our cities – and their number rises by the day – where the simple act of walking on the street has been elevated to something akin to a tap-dance, just to avoid small mounds of canine excreta. Carmichael Road and Turner Road in Mumbai are delectable examples; but similar high-stepping experiences are available, for example, in New Delhi’s South Extension, Chennai’s Kilpauk and Bengaluru’s Malleswaram.
Whether this is due to a sudden rise in dog-ownership, or an unexplained, widespread and ongoing epidemic of doggie diarrhoea, I don’t know. What I do know is that, at least anecdotally, almost nobody cleans up after their dogs. Of the dozens of dogs that are walked near my home, I know just one owner who picks up the excrement. Just one. And given the experience of those other neighbourhoods mentioned above, picking up is just as likely a rare sight there.
Hockey sticks and pistols
Naturally, this leads to resentment in those who don’t own dogs, who run the minute-by-minute risk of stepping in the stuff if they don’t have one eye constantly focused on the ground. Sure enough, it has resulted in at least one reported clash.
Synopsis: In a South Delhi neighbourhood, a man walks his dog. The dog takes a dump. Another man objects because said dump is uncomfortably close to some gym equipment. He abuses the dog-owner. Dog-owner and friends beat up the complainer. Complainer summons up a gang of masked men carrying “hockey sticks, pistols and iron rods”. They rampage through the area looking for the dog-owner, damaging cars and firing randomly. One bullet injures a man.
The swift escalation is breathtaking: how much longer before the army would have had to be called in? All of which might have been avoided had the dog-owner simply picked up his dog’s mound of poop.
What happened in Delhi is a cautionary tale, but one that is hardly surprising: after all, and again, almost nobody cleans up after their dogs. In fact, nobody who walks dogs appears to think this is even their job. Someone else has to do it.
Sidestepping bye-laws
Yet municipalities, faced with the enormous and thankless job of keeping our cities clean, are at least trying to nudge dog-owners in this direction. The municipal corporation in Mumbai, for example, has a 2006 bye-law that spells out fines for littering (Rs 200), urinating (Rs 200) and defecation (Rs 100, though it’s unclear why defecation attracts a lower fine than urination).
The bye-law explicitly says: “Pet owner [is] responsible to clean litter by pet.” The fine if you, the pet owner, sidestep such responsibility? Rs 500.
In 2007, officials sought to apply precisely this regulation to the columnist Tavleen Singh who was walking her dog on Marine Drive. When it defecated and Singh did not clean up, BMC officials asked her to pay the Rs 500 fine.
Amazingly, Singh refused. “It is a conscious objection to a half-baked, stupid law,” that report quotes her saying. “This law is just like treating a cancer patient with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.” She also pointed out that, unlike “in cities like Paris and New York”, Bombay does not make available “dustbins and plastic bags” to pick up your dog’s excrement. Elsewhere, she claimed that her “protest was against the absurdity of a municipal law that made Marine Drive the only road in Mumbai on which the poop of pedigreed dogs is illegal”.
Never mind that the regulation does not so much as mention Marine Drive.
Cleaning up after Tommy
That 2007 episode did not escalate into vandalism and shooting, as happened in Delhi. Small mercies. But the point is clear: if I want a dog and I take little Tommy outside to do what he must, cleaning up after him is my job every bit as much as cleaning up after my child is my job. This is the spirit of the municipal bye-law and its Rs 500 fine.
But if I continue to believe cleaning up my dog’s poop is someone else’s job – as too many dog owners appear to believe – then we had better get ready for more rampages by masked men.
Or more tap-dancing rampages, at any rate.
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