Contain the Disease or Contain the Sport?

 

By Sharan Kumar

 

Glanders brought Brazilian racing to a moment of reckoning, but not to a standstill. When the disease re-emerged there in 1999 after a thirty-year absence, there was no nationwide blackout, no "lost years," and no mass internment of healthy animals. Instead, authorities treated it as a biosecurity puzzle to be solved with a scalpel.

 

In Southern India today, the response has been a sledgehammer. While Brazil isolated infected premises and cleared healthy ones to compete, the Indian circuit, Bangalore, Mysore, and Hyderabad, has been frozen in a state of administrative rigor mortis. This raises a haunting question for the industry: Is the sport being killed by a microbe, or by a lack of institutional courage?

 

The Brazilian Blueprint: Precision over Panic

 

When Glanders reappeared in the Brazilian Northeast, the Ministério da Agricultura did not treat the horse as the enemy. They immediately implemented a "sanitary vacuum" policy. The philosophy was clinical: contain the infection at the source, protect the clean population, and let the economy of the sport breathe wherever the science allowed.

 

Quarantines were not slapped onto entire cities or states. They were pinpointed to specific stables or training yards with confirmed positives. These "infected zones" were sealed, the populations tested, and positive cases humanely euthanised. Crucially, the rest of the racing ecosystem was allowed to function. A horse from a clean yard, armed with a negative test certificate, was free to move, train, and run. Brazil managed the risk; India is hiding from it.

 

The Southern Circuit: A Purgatory Without a Calendar

 

 

Contrast this with the current state of the Bangalore Turf Club (BTC) and its neighbours. Here, the authorities have treated entire jurisdictions as single biological units. One positive sample in a crowded stable complex has been used to condemn thousands of healthy horses to their stalls for months on end.

 

The irony is visible on the track or the lack thereof. While "compliant" trainers in Bangalore watched their winter seasons evaporate, those who were quick enough to move their strings to Mumbai or Kolkata before the dragnet closed are racing happily. The current system has inadvertently created a scenario where foresight is rewarded, but staying to face the music is punished with financial ruin.

 

The "Blunt Instrument" Problem

 

The Animal Husbandry Department’s guidelines were intended to govern movement, not necessarily to annihilate the racing calendar. Somewhere in the gap between veterinary advice and administrative execution, the sport was sacrificed.

 

Could racing not have been paused for a brief, 30-day "circuit breaker"? Could stable blocks not have been isolated and activity resumed once two consecutive testing cycles yielded negative results? In the high-density environment of the BTC, the risk of transmission is real, but it is not unmanageable. By refusing to differentiate between an infected stall and a clean wing, administrators have chosen the path of least resistance and most damage.

 

Leadership in a Time of Crisis

 

The tragedy is that the governance of turf clubs, particularly in Bangalore, has shifted away from equine experts toward a mix of politicians and bureaucrats. Faced with a complex zoonotic challenge, their instinctive reflex is to shut the gates and wait for the problem to disappear.

 

But Glanders does not simply "evaporate." It requires active, precise management. By treating a serious veterinary issue as a PR disaster to be hushed, leadership has eroded the livelihoods of thousands of syces, farriers, and jockeys.

 

The Uncomfortable Lesson

 

Glanders is a serious, unforgiving disease. But Brazil proved that you can respect the pathology without paralyzing the profession. It requires a belief in testing, a commitment to biosecurity, and the courage to let the healthy run.

 

In Southern India, the disease provided the spark, but the response has set the sport ablaze. It is time to stop containing the sport and start managing the disease.

 

 

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