April 2008 Edition
Civil Society News
Gurgaon
BEHIND those glitzy malls and soaring apartment blocks in Gurgaon on the border of Delhi lies the hard work of armies of donkeys. They have been out there in the heat and cold every day of the year, carrying bricks and ferrying mud. You can see them crossing MG Road in single file as shoppers scatter to let them pass and traffic waits impatiently. If you manage to get inside a construction site, you will find them slaving away far below ground level in what will finally be the basement parking lots of the buildings. Travel further south towards the Sona Road, past Gurgaon’s residential colonies of South City and Greenwood City, and donkeys can be seen hard at work at every major site. They mostly do eight to 10 hour shifts and go without food and water. You will also find donkeys at brick kilns where their condition is especially bad. Donkeys have no rights, no unions to speak for them. When they drop dead or become too feeble, they are easily replaced. Theirs is cheap labour because a donkey comes for as little as Rs 60 or Rs 70 a day. So, the next time you read about the wealth of Indian real estate barons, remember it was the humble and persistent donkey that helped build some of those flashy fortunes in Gurgaon and other parts of the National Capital Region.
The donkeys share their pitiable condition with
construction labourers who live out in the open at
sites. There are no toilets for the labour, no schools
for their children, no housing and no clean drinking
water. Medical facilities are non-existent.
The donkeys either belong to the construction
labour or to contractors who hire them out. In an
industry where human beings get so little and are
forced to live in such squalor, a donkey can hardly
have any expectations.
Donkeys aren’t among the most expressive of creatures.
They hang around and hang around and do
what they are told to do. If the sombre demeanour of
donkeys is anything to go by, then they are all always
having a terrible time. But that is not it either. A donkey
on duty will perk up at the whiff of a carrot. It will
signal, with a tuneless bray, the arrival of a mate. It
will also recognise human warmth and affection.
Donkeys have been known to commit suicide when they get very depressed. Newspaper reports recently said that donkeys driven to despair in Sudan jumped into the Nile to escape their lot. So, donkeys aren’t without feelings and deserve a better deal than what they are getting. It is precisely for this reason Jean and Bob Harrison, both British nationals in the mid sixties, set up the Asswin Project for Donkeys and other Animals in India in July 2006. Bob used to work at the British High Commission here and Jean has always worked for the welfare of animals. Bob says the Asswin Project gets it name from the ‘Asvins’, divine physicians in mythology who healed pain and suffering and were always quick to respond. Civil Society first noticed the Asswin Project’s mobile ambulance pull out of the arking lot of the Galleria shopping centre in Sushant Lok. A few quicksearches on the Internet revealed that “working donkeys” could get free treatment at Jeev Ashram thanks to its collaboration with the Asswin Project.
Jeev Ashram is an NGO run by veterinary physicians
at Rajokri on the border of Delhi and Gurgaon.
Jean and Bob are available round the clock for treating
donkeys. They rush in their ambulance to attend
on emergency cases. But more importantly, they have
networked the people who provide donkey labour at
construction sites. This makes it possible for them to
systematically address the problems of donkeys.
What do working donkeys need? First of all, donkeys
employed in construction constantly need
their wounds to be healed. The gashes and sores
that they get while carrying loads require treatment.
Donkeys in Gurgaon also have stomach problems.
They need to be de-wormed. But they also
must be fed correctly. They are often given grass
that comes from mowing lawns. The donkeys quickly swallow the finely cut grass instead of
chewing it and it sits in their stomachs. The grass is
unhealthy because it comes with a 
cocktail of
chemicals that go into the fertilisers and pesticides
that are lavished on lawns.
People sometimes give donkeys food in plastic
packets.
The donkeys gobble down the entire packet covering and all and as the plastic collects in the stomach it becomes life threatening. A twisted gut has been the cause of many a donkey death, say Jean and Bob. From one very sick donkey’s stomach, doctors pulled out 35 plastic bags. Donkeys also suffer from respiratory problems and throat infections that come from inhaling dust and cement at construction sites. The infections so inflame the throat and the respiratory system that donkeys are known to die of suffocation. Jean and Bob live in a rented house at Greenwood City. The house is overrun by dogs because they are essentially animal lovers. But as animal activists they are only available for treating donkeys. So, when an anxious brother and sister from a nearby village turn up at their home to seek help for their family’s buffalo, Jean and Bob can at best help them find a vet. They don’t go out to treat buffalos because their hands are full looking after donkeys.
The suppliers of donkeys know Jean and Bob and
are grateful for all the help they get on a continuing
basis. At one of the sites we are prevented from
entering and taking pictures. But Vinod, who provides
the donkeys here, is happy to come out from
somewhere deep below, a hard hat on his head. He
says: “I know them well and they do a lot for my
donkeys. If you come back at 3 pm I’ll be taking my donkeys out of the site and you can photograph
them as much as you like and I will tell you about
them and the work they do.”
We can’t return at 3 pm, but we meet many families
who earn from their donkeys at other sites.
They all know Jean and Bob and say they do a lot
for the donkeys.
But how do you ask people living in such pathetic
conditions as construction labour do about the
welfare of their 
donkeys. There are pools of water,
mud tracks and flimsy shanties. The children do
the house work while the adults earn at the sites. We find it difficult to distribute the carrots we
have brought for the donkeys when there are hungry
and undernourished children all around. So, we
give the carrots to them as well and tell them to eat
them raw or include them in the family meal.
We ask Jean why she has taken up the cause of donkeys. “It is because no one speaks for them. There are groups who speak for dogs and cats and other animals. But not donkeys,” she says. Bob says three or four simple things need to be done to improve the lot of donkeys in Gurgaon. They need a de-worming programme, the right nutrition and regulated hours of work. Under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 1960, a donkey is not meant to carry more than 35 kg. “But the loads that are put on them are so heavy that sometimes if you just put a little pressure on a donkey’s spine it collapse because it has been made weak with overwork,” says Bob. A donkey is supposed to live for 40 years, but with the kind of work they do in Gurgaon they are lucky if they survive for 20 years. Failing to provide animals with food and shelter or abandoning them when they grow old, as happens with donkeys, is punishable under the law with a fine of upto Rs 100 or jail for three months or both. The law has never been used in Gurgaon.
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