Of mice and rains: Mumbai's fortunes could be tied to its ability to curb its rat population

Rat urine, when it contaminates flooded areas of Mumbai - a normal feature every monsoon - leads to cases of leptospirosis. The city has enough cases to cause concern, with over  a dozen already in a monsoon that hasn’t played out its usual vigour. This marks the annual measure of the public health management of the city government, which time and again, wakes up only after the leptospirosis cases emerge and then slumbers till the next outbreak.

It does not speak well of a modern city, not just in terms of the rat population it harbours, but the way it is managed, or in this case not managed. The point to be noted, however, is that Mumbai is not yet on the list of the top ten worst rat-infested cities which, curiously enough feature many from the western world. (Here is the list of those eleven cities from Animal Planet)

No city knows how many rats it hosts for two reasons. One: their census is impossible, and they multiply so fast that a litter may be on its way before you say ‘Rats!’ Each litter may be of over a dozen pups, the litter coming possibly once every two months. Fertility is an issue in managing the rat population and if they are exterminated in one area, new rats can invade the vacated spot. In short: rats are going to be there, but the question is, how to manage the implications.

The Times of India reported how Andamans managed to deal with leptospirosis since an outbreak in the 1980s outbreak by “conducting awareness programmes for farmers and animal handlers on taking care of their wounds and rearing animals in hygienic conditions.”

Obviously, there is a need to ensure a fine balance between the rat population whose size we just don’t know. It would be too hard to expect Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai to tell us the size of the rat population.

But there have been sub-regional spurts in their population. They had increased drastically in number in the Mumbai suburb of Chembur two years ago, leading to snakes invading the place and scaring people off. In Mahim, life became just intolerable. Everything in homes were gnawed at and residents were chewing their fingernails in dismay.  It had less to do with the rats carrying the leptospirosis bacterium and more to do with the nuisance.

A stray rodent or two at home can be dealt with bait or traps. But dealing with the ‘public rats’ – if that is an apt description for a rodent from outside a home - is an entirely a different thing. For that, night rat killers – a term coined by the MCGM long ago – need to go out and kill them, mostly by bludgeoning them or spiking them. They need to show the stipulated 30 rats per night of work to be entitled to be paid.

A problem is that there aren’t enough night rat killers. Unlike dog catchers who are estimated to number around 2,000 in the city, there are under 40 rat killers. Every year, once leptospirosis strikes, there is talk of engaging more persons to scour the streets.

The attention should also shift to ensuring the city does not get water logged, and that people don’t have to wade through contaminated water. A whole lot of infrastructural issues have to be handled to make water-logging a thing of the past. But even the richest civic body of the country can, and does, plead lack of funds to deal with them swiftly. This the city cannot afford.

Mumbai has had the terrible experience of bubonic plague in the 1890s because of the flea-infested rats. At the time there were on average 1,900 deaths per week in a city that was much smaller than what it is now. Such deaths were reported for an entire year and reduced the population for two reasons – deaths and people fleeing in fear of the disease claiming their lives. A commercial city cannot afford depopulation.

This is no intent to link leptospirosis-triggering rats to plague carriers. But a modern city with people living in slums provides easy targets of the rat-driven menace and ought to know better. It has not even improved the numbers of rat killers for years. Nor has it managed to keep the streets garbage-free to deny rats their food. It produces excuses for water logging year after year.