Animals not be like humans but it doesn’t mean that they do not have right to share benefits of labour.

Looks like the Uttarakhand High Court is the biggest biosphere advocate there is and is laying down the rulebook for a compassionate balance of survival. For, after graduating rivers to “living entities”, the Court has now held that all animal life, on ground and in water, should have equal rights as human beings. In simple terms, it means that humans can no longer reference animals with or make them subservient to their needs. Instead, all creatures of the animal kingdom have as much of a right to a good life as humans do. With the exception of a New York court, which granted partial human rights to chimpanzees, such legal verdicts are rare considering that they question the theory of evolution itself, challenge the food-chain logic and leave a perplexing mess of defining what constitutes human-animal conflict.

Perhaps the Court’s intent was to make the point that as humans were on top of the food chain, only they could be appealed to for reason. While pets get a lot of human attention, other animals do end up getting mistreated and exploited as vagrants, milch and poultry resources or as transport carriers. And since they contribute to the human economy and gains, they should partake of shared benefits, is the logic. The Court’s ruling came in response to a petition seeking the vaccination of horses coming in from Nepal to prevent infectious diseases among native animals. For a State dependent on a tourist economy that peddles horse and mule rides, economics demands that their health and fitness levels be top grade. While owners have to be conscientious about the animals’ diet and not overwork them, the Court has also provided for societies of prevention of cruelty to animals at the district level and local infirmaries on the lines of primary health centres. With “over-tourism” stretching the State’s resources, flora and fauna have been greatly affected and the ruling, more than the funny memes it has spawned, factors in these serious conditions. Fish in the upper reaches of the Ganga, near Alakananda and Rishikesh, was dwindling at one time due to human depredation till the Ganga cleanup happened with the Swachh campaign. At one point, the elephant rides at Jaipur’s Amer Fort came under cloud because of the declining number of pachyderms; now, with a dedicated village where both owners and government are stakeholders and where elephants are taken care of according to rulebook, the rides are back. Perhaps we need laws for conscientious zoo-keeping and animal breeding too.  

Writer: Pioneer

Courtesy: The Pioneer

Animals not be like humans but it doesn’t mean that they do not have right to share benefits of labour.

Looks like the Uttarakhand High Court is the biggest biosphere advocate there is and is laying down the rulebook for a compassionate balance of survival. For, after graduating rivers to “living entities”, the Court has now held that all animal life, on ground and in water, should have equal rights as human beings. In simple terms, it means that humans can no longer reference animals with or make them subservient to their needs. Instead, all creatures of the animal kingdom have as much of a right to a good life as humans do. With the exception of a New York court, which granted partial human rights to chimpanzees, such legal verdicts are rare considering that they question the theory of evolution itself, challenge the food-chain logic and leave a perplexing mess of defining what constitutes human-animal conflict.

Perhaps the Court’s intent was to make the point that as humans were on top of the food chain, only they could be appealed to for reason. While pets get a lot of human attention, other animals do end up getting mistreated and exploited as vagrants, milch and poultry resources or as transport carriers. And since they contribute to the human economy and gains, they should partake of shared benefits, is the logic. The Court’s ruling came in response to a petition seeking the vaccination of horses coming in from Nepal to prevent infectious diseases among native animals. For a State dependent on a tourist economy that peddles horse and mule rides, economics demands that their health and fitness levels be top grade. While owners have to be conscientious about the animals’ diet and not overwork them, the Court has also provided for societies of prevention of cruelty to animals at the district level and local infirmaries on the lines of primary health centres. With “over-tourism” stretching the State’s resources, flora and fauna have been greatly affected and the ruling, more than the funny memes it has spawned, factors in these serious conditions. Fish in the upper reaches of the Ganga, near Alakananda and Rishikesh, was dwindling at one time due to human depredation till the Ganga cleanup happened with the Swachh campaign. At one point, the elephant rides at Jaipur’s Amer Fort came under cloud because of the declining number of pachyderms; now, with a dedicated village where both owners and government are stakeholders and where elephants are taken care of according to rulebook, the rides are back. Perhaps we need laws for conscientious zoo-keeping and animal breeding too.  

Writer: Pioneer

Courtesy: The Pioneer