A quote from Gandhi

This photograph is from our local VSPCA animal shelter. A friend of mine called me up a few days back and said he’s going there. I joined him. One of the boys over there took us on a short guided tour of the shelter, and then we spent about an hour talking to Sharada (the person incharge there), who kindly gave us an account of her experiences being there for the last decade or so. One of the factors, as usual, is the money needed to fund the operations. These are the kinds of services that we as a society should spend our capital on. They provide a valuable socio-environmental service and provide employment too (they employ some 40 people). It reminded me of my previous post on voting with money, and how powerful and important capital reallocation is. The services are useful and already there. The people are there willing to do more. We just need to divert the capital to increase the scale of these services.

Closer home, i had an opportunity to work on a situation. For about an year now, a street dog has been living in our apartment complex parking lot. Some of us in the complex used to give some food occasionally, and he used to forage on the streets also. He seemed to be pretty happy and made our complex his home. I personally did not have a problem with the situation as Blacky seemed pretty harmless, but some residents felt threatened and i have to respect their wish if they wanted to drive him away. Recently, a new watchman was appointed and some of the residents apparently told him not to allow the dog in the complex. He took their words rather seriously, and started giving the dog a big whack with a stick whenever it entered the complex. Dogs are quite attached to a place though, and they don’t leave comfortable places so easily. When i approached the watchman and told him that beating was not a good idea, he said he actually did not want to beat the dog either, but felt compelled to do so as some residents insisted on keeping the dog out. But when i talked to couple of folks who apparently ordered the dog out, they seemed to be unaware of the situation, and also agreed that beating was no solution. So, no body wanted to actually beat, but still the dog got beaten !! communication errrrrors could indeed be costly ! Anyway, instructions went out not to apply force, and thats where the story stands now. Who knows where it ends. I suspect Blacky will continue to just hang-out around the complex, and enjoy the occasional snack from kind residents.