Column

A veterinarian operating from Andheri is not supposed to have a sonography machine. Why should you think it is a big deal? This is no forum to publicise individual grievances, some of you might say. Since not much is coming from Napier by way of good news, I feel confident about pressing this case. It is for the greater common good, believe me.

Now, the Pluto Pet Clinic’s doctor is denied the opportunity to acquire a sonography machine — for last two years — for the same reason that most of his peers in the city are barred from owning that equipment. Authorities apparently fear that veterinarians will join the legions of dodgy medical practitioners who break the law by offering gender-determination tests on the sly.

The authorities deserve to be commended for attempting to curb a retrograde and immoral practice. God knows that there are lakhs of yahoos in India who would have such a test conducted and slaughter the chance of a girl child being born. Now I would be the first to recommend that such people be treated as murderers and executed before sunrise. But I do want to ask the authorities how likely it is that foetus killers, however crazed by medievalism they are, will bring a pregnant woman for a test amid dogs that require anti-rabies boosters and rabbits that need multiplication-thwarting procedures?

That prospect does not seem at all likely to me. And, let us consider the human doctors. For every evil, penny-sniffing crook that breaks the law and collaborates with the benighted foetus killers, there are thousands of decent doctors who abide by ethics and humanity. Do you ban the machine because a handful of wicked morons could misuse them? Can you legislate cars out of existence just to eliminate the possibility of a Bollywood star or a middle-class party beast mowing down those who sleep on platforms? Do you make all women wear heavy shrouds because there are perverts in the city who are ‘provoked’ by any hint of femininity?

I do not know how many would answer yes to any of those questions. India is diverse and I am sure it has people hiding even in the coruscating metropolitan complexes who will answer in affirmative to the question of women’s dress code. That thought that such mean-minded women-haters exist can generate revulsion, does it not? Now think of an elderly, lonely couple to whom their dog means the world. That dog’s simple kidney condition cannot be diagnosed because the vet does not have the machine, treatment is delayed and the dog dies. Some would say that people keep dying in the metro all the time. To these heartless fiends I will say, politicians keep getting guns all the time, and as ‘Vote with DNA’ tells you, scores of these netas have criminal complaints against them.