Animals and humans

HEADS AND TAILS: Maneka Gandhi; Other India Press, Above Mapusa Clinic, Mapusa-403507, Goa. Rs. 175.

Ms. MANEKA GANDHI has become quite well-known for her unflinching and almost one-woman campaign waged against the killing of animals for food. The pleas she has made in this book to meat- eaters to switch over to vegetarianism present her as a very warm-hearted lady with her heart in the right place. The arguments she has put forward for ruthlessly demolishing the arguments supporting eating of meat are borne out by the extensive studies she has carried out and it would be very difficult for anyone to dismiss her as a crank. Her response to those who are not impressed with her reasoning, is with a spray of facts and statistics delivered with a disdain for meat-eaters.

She repeatedly makes the point that killing of animals for food is putting the earth on the road to eventual extinction of all living species, including human beings. Part of the brutal thoroughness which is now being resorted to in many countries including India, for fattening the animals for enriching their meat content prior to their slaughter, is their extensive grazing and their being fed with cereal. This has already impoverished grasslands and led to the animals devouring the grain which could have fed the starving children in Africa. Apart from the slaughter of animals for meat, killing of animals for laboratory research is another sad story.

Ms. Gandhi mentions that the chimpanzee, the killing of which has gone on for years in the interests of science, falls short of the human DNA by only two per cent. She writes that during a state visit to Mauritius she came to know about an ambitious programme for the killing of monkeys, cats, dogs, goats and crows because their presence discouraged western tourist inflow.

The gains brought about by the ``Project Tiger'' launched two decades ago would not have materialised had they listened to the stupid objections against the saving of forests to enable the tiger to hunt wild deer and boar without any thought being given to the ecology which has a way of sustaining these animals against beasts of prey. ``Together,'' says Ms. Gandhi, ``these life forms restored a multi-tiered canopy which brought health to the forest. By simply doing nothing and by allowing nothing to be done, the forests regenerated themselves and nature sprang back to life. One of the first signs of restoration was that dry streams began to flow all the year round.''

A comment repeatedly made on the state of legislation in India is about its spreading where it is not needed and being obstructive on the one hand and its being wholly absent where it is badly needed. An instance of this given by Ms. Gandhi is while the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has enforced laws against the administering of as many as 143 drugs and pesticide residues in meat and poultry, ``India is using every single one of these drugs and quite a few more as our standards are much more lax.''

Among the many other matters at which she has taken a piercing look is the pedigreed dog - which is a ``manufactured species'' - to give it an alluring look derived from a heartless cross- breeding. She has much to say about the myth - to the spreading of which even the Khadi and Village Industries Board has been vulnerable - about the leather products being made only from the hides and skins of dead animals. She gives details about how a great deal of slaughtering of young and healthy animals takes place before leather is obtained.

The prodigality which precedes the making of meat could be seen from a pound of pork requiring 430 gallons of water, with the corresponding figures for beef and chicken being 350 and 375 gallons respectively. The ignorance about the ecology chain which links every species from the smallest insect which sustains the butterfly and which brings about cross pollination, right up to the homo sapiens, has led to the thoughtless and callous killing of them, making man the only cruel and unteachable species.

The research which Ms. Gandhi has been engaged in for years to give us a torrential run of facts on everything she has dealt with in this remarkable book reveals her as a dedicated lady who runs a number of centres for taking care of animals which otherwise would have died from lack of care and cruelty to which they would have been exposed. If, even as a Minister in the Union Government holding a portfolio which is obviously of her choice, she finds herself in a state of helplessness, it is a reflection of how things will not change or change only very slowly.

CVG

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