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Animal Welfare Overseas
- 1. Brazil Battles Blood Sport (Farra do Boi)
- 2. Fighting to End Horse Slaughter in France
- 3. Educating India - Ghandi's School of Animal Welfare
- 4. Fighting to Survive in Sri Lanka
- 5. Saving the Wild Horses of the Bahamas
- 6. India Takes Sterilization to the Streets
- 7. Spay Day in Sayulita, Mexico
Educating India - Ghandi's School of Animal Welfare
Terry Kennedy
India's Maneka Gandhi is carrying on the traditions of her famous revolutionary family. As the widow of Sanjay Gandhi and daughter-in-law of India's only female prime minister, Indira Gandhi, she has stirred controversy by denouncing the Dalai Lama for eating meat and by exposing the abuses of India's meat and leather industries to the point where other countries have boycotted trade. Today, she's working to make animal welfare part of mainstream life in India.
But it hasn't been an easy road to travel. Gandhi's dark eyes grow even darker at the mention of her late husband, who perished in a helicopter crash in 1980. Suddenly a single mother with a son to raise, she turned to animals for comfort. Her personal affection for animals and her pro-vegetarian ideals grew into a mission, and when she found herself in the political arena, she carried her animal-welfare beliefs along with her. She became the minister of animal welfare in a country that ranks second in the world for producing animals raised for meat. A country whose wild animal population - once large - is dwindling for lack of a single trained forest officer, wildlife veterinarian, zoo or sanctuary manager to protect it. And although nearly 70 percent of India's one billion people are dependent on agriculture and animals for their livelihood, the country doesn't practice even the most basic veterinary care.
"India's animal welfare movement had no knowledge base, not even that of rudimentary medicine or law," Gandhi says. But she's trying to change that. For instance, she turned the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, which was passed in 1960, into law in 1990. "Then I founded People for Animals and that really moved things along. Thousands of people came into the movement, but they had no idea of what to do next except bleat on about not being cruel." So Gandhi and her team wrote the first book of animal laws in India, as well as an animal first-aid book and more than 50 animal-care manuals.
"As the animal movement grows from the little-old-lady-feeding-stray-dogs model to an alternative world view that has compassion as the basis of sustainable economics, it must invent new veterinary systems, and it must have knowledge and respectability as its foundation," she explains. To that end, Gandhi began an animal-welfare training program. "We have regular training workshops for laboratory checkers, policemen and municipal workers, but we need to institutionalize the training," she says. "We need to retrain veterinarians who have no ethics in what they do; we need humane laboratory assistants; we need caring people in the slaughterhouses." Since nearly every aspect of life in India is dependent on animals, Gandhi believes that professionals are needed for every branch of life and government to watch out for the welfare of the country's animals. She's currently building the foundation for the first animal-welfare school in the world, the National Institute for Animal Welfare, which will offer a bachelo
r's degree in Animal Welfare (BAW). The educational facility, which will have undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral programs, is being built on eight acres of land in Faridabad, near Delhi, where it will also house an animal shelter and hospital.
"I had no idea how to do it so I went to Edinburgh University [in Scotland], which has an animal course, to ask them to design it for me. They were very kind, but when they priced the help it came to £750,000 just to begin the project, which we did not have. We spent hours on the Internet looking for courses run by universities all over the world. We wrote to each one of them asking for help. Some kindly replied and so I set up a small group of educational advisors and worked with them to design the course." The course study for a BAW will include such subjects as animal ethics, animal behavior, rehabilitation of wildlife, animal laws, ecology and conservation, shelter management and lobbying.
| WHAT YOU CAN DO To donate animal-related books or to get more information about the National Institute for Animal Welfare, contact Mrs. Maneka Gandhi, 14 Ashoka Road, New Delhi, India 110001. |
By the Book
A self-proclaimed workaholic, Gandhi finds time at night to relax and read. Books bring her much comfort, she says, and she hopes that people will send books - new or used - for the university. "When the Government of India sent me to the United States on official business," she recalls, "I saved all the money they gave me for my food budget and spent it on books for our library." (The animal-welfare library, the largest of its kind in India, is located in her office.) Funding for the facility will come initially from the government, industrial grants and the United Nations Environ-ment Programme. "Ultimately, the sustainability of the institution would be through the income generated from its own sources, such as student fees," she says. But for now, she's counting on the generosity of outside sources to get started. Before the school can take shape, however, the idea must first pass through the Parliament. Gandhi is confident that the members of Parliament will agree with the goals of the program. "We are living in the here and now, and we have to do something about the situation," she says, the dimples in her cheeks deepening into a smile as she watches her dogs play.
Gandhi hopes others will join her crusade, both as students and teachers. But, she says, only those "interested in making animal welfare their lives" need apply.
Terry Kennedy is a freelance journalist living in India.
© 2002 ASPCA
ASPCA Animal Watch - Fall 2002
Courtesy of
ASPCA
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New York, NY 10128-6804
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