Friday, May 12, 2006

Dogs: Best Friend or Enemy of State

What inspires this post is a news item in CNBC TV-18 news yesterday on lifestyle. The focus, as you would have guessed it by now, is on dogs - so called man's (or to be politically correct, human's) best friend.

The case in point is the expenditure incurred on dogs vs the kids. As per the news item, buying a dog could set you back by 50,000 - 75,000 INR. And their monthly maintenance expenditure runs from 15,000 - 30,000 INR. That's a whopping INR 180,000 to INR 360,000 per year per dog. For international readers (if any) of my blog, that translates into $4,000 - $8,000 per dog per year.

Sample these facts. Indian per capita income is less than $600 per person per year. So an average dog has higher per capita income than an average Indian (or for that matter, higher than an average citizen in half the world's countries). Even on purchasing power parity, Indian at $3,400 falls short of a dog.

But that's not what I want to debate on. My concern is the next fact.

It costs INR 800 to educate one child for one year, that's less than $18 per child per year. You can sponsor a balwadi, (place where 35 below-poverty child below 6 yr old stay so that they don't get dragged into child labour) for a sum of INR 30,000 (or $670) for a year.

That to me translates that a dog consumes equivalent to 210 - 420 toddlers' basic needs; or education of 225-450 kids.

Still with me?

Another fact: India is home to 17 million child labourers (official). Unofficial estimates put this figure to close to 75-80 million.

I live in Bangalore. I have seen that the dog craze in this city is much more than in places such as Delhi. So much so that I am often disturbed by their indiscriminate barking that I can't work or live in peace. I wonder how people cope with that.

Estimating that only one in 50 families have at least one dog in Bangalore (I think I'm being conservative here); with population of more than 5 million, that would translate into more than 20,000 pet dogs in Bangalore. But even by this standards, that dogs consume more than what it would cost to setup up 240,000 balwadis caring for more than 8 million toddlers or about 10% of India's child labourer population. And that's just one city.

So, these dogs to me are more of enemy of these poverty stricken kids than human's best friend.

Talk about getting the priorities right?

I remember one poem from my school days. I forget the name of poet, but was probably, Sumitra Nandan Pant (one of the four great Hindi poets during 60s - 70s). Let me know if that's right. It goes:

"Kutton ko milta doodh, bhooke balak akulate hain.
Maa ki haddi se chipak chipak, jaade ki raat bitate hain."

Its in Hindi, written sometime in 60s or 70s. Here is English translation:

"While the dogs enjoy the milk, hungry kids agitate and go restless.
Clinging on the mother's bare bones, they pass the winter night."

(agitate is probably not the correct word here to Hindi "akulana" which is feeling of hunger, restlessness and feeling of being not able to do anything to change status quo)

Next time, you decide to buy a dog, think of how many kids you can rescue from the clutches of poverty. Go here and save the India's future.

2 comments:

Nitin Goyal said...

Rupak,
The post is interesting, but I have a difference of opinion. This logic of yours can be extended to many other things like cars, flights or even marriages. All these are expensive affairs and can be substituted by an equal number of children that can be educated. However, "gross consumerism" or consumption is something that is very powerful. I would not like to say that a dog is better than a child, but the industry supporting the upkeep of the dogs (and pets) will generate a lot of jobs and thus in effect end up educating a lot of kids. For a fair deal, you should be comparing the net number of children that are getting educated by the employment generated by the dog food, vet and pet care industry and see if a dog is really "consumes equivalent to 210 - 420 toddlers' basic needs".

Rupak Rathore said...

See my latest post for my take on consumerism.