The answer to protecting animal rights and ensuring animal welfare does not lie in a blanket ban across circuses. In fact, the Animal Welfare Board of India's recommendation that the environment ministry ban use of all kinds of animals in circuses clearly goes too far. Let's remember that many wild and endangered species are already outlawed from circuses. It's understandable that constant relocation via travelling circuses is considered cruel and intolerable for the likes of lions and tigers. But to ban the use of all animals in all Indian circuses would really be overreaching.
Proscribing the use of all animals will affect the already shrinking circus industry reeling under the impact of all kinds of laws that protect their rights. As is the case with many other outlawed activities, restrictive measures will encourage circuses to procure wild animals by illegal means, including poaching. Besides, this will adversely impact many peoples' livelihoods and force them out of an industry that employs them for the special skills, of working with animals. Another problem that is likely to arise in the wake of a complete ban is rehabilitating a large number of animals not fit to survive in the wild. With a dire shortage of space in already-overcrowded government rescue shelters, these animals will perish or get ravaged by humanity.
A far more thoughtful solution would be to effect rules and regulations that subject circuses to regular inspections so that compliance measures, with strict licensing conditions and welfare standards, are properly implemented. Regulators must make sure that all circuses training and exhibiting wild animals for entertainment are registered with the appropriate local authority under the state governments. Regulators must also set benchmarks when it comes to animals' requirement for food, water and suitable living space, ensuring that circuses provide animals a healthy and stress-free living environment.
Circuses are cruel by definition
COUNTERVIEW
Murali Ramachandran
The recommendation of a ban on all circus animals by the Animal Welfare Board of India is most welcome. This is because circus animals are inflicted unbearable cruelty during their forced captivity. They spend their life in cages and pens that are only a fraction of the size of enclosures in zoos, and minuscule as compared to the animals' natural habitats. Moreover most of these wild animals are housed singly in individual cages, which deprive them of social lives. Unfortunately government regulations are unlikely to be of much use as most circus troupes have only limited ability to improve their working conditions.
This scenario is made worse by poor training processes which usually stress on punishments, which in turn involve deprivation of food or even physical harm. Heightened noise, intense lighting and large crowds in circus tents add to the torture of these poor animals. Then there are issues related to the customary transfer of animals over long distances, as circuses move from one town to another. Animals have to suffer from indifferent loading and unloading methods, poor roads, inadequate food and water, and constant weather changes as they criss-cross the country. The erratic earnings of the circus only add to the problems.
Fears about the poor rehabilitation of circus animals are entirely unfounded. In fact, soon after the earlier ban on use of lions, tigers, leopards, bears and monkeys in circuses, as many as 314 lions and tigers and other animals were send off to live in the off-display areas of the large zoos. With the central zoo authority meeting their maintenance costs, these animals were finally able to get humane treatment and enjoy dignified life for the first time in their lives. Government would do well to extend this protection to all circus animals. Many countries have already enforced such policies.
