As part of Clean India drive, lots of efforts are being devoted to prevent open defecation and urination by citizens who sometimes do so because of deep aversion to defecating inside their homes and sometimes, especially in urban areas, for want of a proper toilet. The campaign is indeed showing results and yet cities are drowning in poop, i.e., animal poop.
I believe it would be very difficult to find a city where you can drive, say, 20 kms without your tyres picking up cow dung or some other animal poop. Same applies to walking. Your shoes are bound to pick up excreta of one variety or another. This, perhaps, is the reason that people normally take their shoes off before entering a home.
Where does all this poop come from? Our cities are infested with stray animals of a large variety. You will find cows and bulls. You will find donkeys, mules, and pigs. Monkeys have added further variety to the animal kingdoms interspersed throughout our cities. Dogs are of two varieties, stray and domestic with the former outnumbering the latter. Cats mostly are stray ones. To be fair, I must add that pigs while contributing to the menace also help in containing it to some extent!
When I visited the USA for the first time, I was surprised by the lack of boundaries in most homes. Also most homes are built out of wood as the primary building material. My first reaction was, "OMG! If they had stray bulls of the Lucknow variety, those houses will get razed to the ground in no time."
The total absence of animal poop on the streets in the towns and cities of the developed world is not entirely due to absence of animals. They do have domesticated ones, especially dogs, in large numbers. However the owners pick up after their pets. Plastic bags for the purpose as well as covered disposal bins are readily available at most public places where animals are allowed.
Back home here, if you were to ask a dog owner to clean up after his dear pet, he may not actually murder you but the murderous rage on his face will be unmistakable. Once he has managed to contain that rage, the standard reply would be, "And how about all the droppings of stray dogs here? Will you pick it up?"
By the way, dogs are nice animals and quite amenable to training. However it is surprising that we have thus far failed to toilet train them. Naturally it will be vastly more difficult to train the others like bulls. But the menace of animal poop can be resolved only in two ways. We either remove all stray cattle from human settlements or toilet train them and build toilets especially designed for them.
Any other suggestions?
I believe it would be very difficult to find a city where you can drive, say, 20 kms without your tyres picking up cow dung or some other animal poop. Same applies to walking. Your shoes are bound to pick up excreta of one variety or another. This, perhaps, is the reason that people normally take their shoes off before entering a home.
Where does all this poop come from? Our cities are infested with stray animals of a large variety. You will find cows and bulls. You will find donkeys, mules, and pigs. Monkeys have added further variety to the animal kingdoms interspersed throughout our cities. Dogs are of two varieties, stray and domestic with the former outnumbering the latter. Cats mostly are stray ones. To be fair, I must add that pigs while contributing to the menace also help in containing it to some extent!
When I visited the USA for the first time, I was surprised by the lack of boundaries in most homes. Also most homes are built out of wood as the primary building material. My first reaction was, "OMG! If they had stray bulls of the Lucknow variety, those houses will get razed to the ground in no time."
The total absence of animal poop on the streets in the towns and cities of the developed world is not entirely due to absence of animals. They do have domesticated ones, especially dogs, in large numbers. However the owners pick up after their pets. Plastic bags for the purpose as well as covered disposal bins are readily available at most public places where animals are allowed.
Back home here, if you were to ask a dog owner to clean up after his dear pet, he may not actually murder you but the murderous rage on his face will be unmistakable. Once he has managed to contain that rage, the standard reply would be, "And how about all the droppings of stray dogs here? Will you pick it up?"
By the way, dogs are nice animals and quite amenable to training. However it is surprising that we have thus far failed to toilet train them. Naturally it will be vastly more difficult to train the others like bulls. But the menace of animal poop can be resolved only in two ways. We either remove all stray cattle from human settlements or toilet train them and build toilets especially designed for them.
Any other suggestions?
