Glanders Blow Pushes Indian Racing to the Brink

 

By Sharan Kumar

 

Disaster has struck Indian racing yet again, this time in Bangalore, where five horses have tested positive for the dreaded glanders, forcing a government-mandated three-month shutdown. As if nature’s blow wasn’t enough, human negligence and administrative chaos have eagerly joined the party, pushing the sport deeper into despair. With Hyderabad already crippled and Chennai buried, Indian racing now battles on multiple fronts, disease, incompetence, and a tax regime determined to finish the job.

 

Glanders, caused by the nasty Burkholderia mallei, is not your routine stable sniffle. It is a highly contagious, often fatal, Category A zoonotic disease that can threaten horses, mules, donkeys, and, if fate is feeling particularly cruel, even humans working around them. The moment it surfaces, the rulebook is brutally clear: lock down the centre, quarantine everything that whinnies, and submit every horse to multiple rounds of CFT/ELISA tests spaced 21–30 days apart. No horse movement means no racing, no excuses, and no shortcuts. Stables must be disinfected repeatedly, and the gates remain shut until every last animal is certified safe. Even with military precision, the entire sanitisation cycle takes a minimum of 90 days.

 

Hyderabad had already fallen earlier, with its winter season wiped out before it even began. Their undoing was reportedly a self-inflicted wound, mixing non-thoroughbred horses, without proper veterinary protocol, for a contrived match race. Naturally, the disease piggybacked on this circus and spread. With summer racing impossible, Hyderabad is effectively shut till mid-July.

 

Bangalore was supposed to be the “responsible elder sibling” in this crisis, but here too, human misadventure eagerly helped nature. Warnings existed. Symptoms existed. But precaution? That mythical creature never showed up. Newly elected Chairman Shivashankar, already buried under allegations of being remote-controlled by the tantrum twins, has proved spectacularly unsuited for leadership in a crisis. Crucial decisions were outsourced to lung power and threatening letters rather than veterinary science.

 

The situation deteriorated further when trainers Irfan Ghatala and Dominic reportedly refused to isolate their symptomatic horses until they were “proven positive,” while the Chief Veterinary Officer, displaying a level of misjudgement better suited to comedy than crisis management, allegedly dismissed classic glanders symptoms as mere fungal infection. As this played out, the club was occupied with sacking its Secretary and Chief Stipendiary Steward, leaving behind a skeletal command structure to handle an outbreak that required ICU-level urgency. Predictably, the chain of command failed the sport miserably.

 

With Hyderabad already shut down by glanders, the BTC should have been on war footing. Instead, it displayed an astonishing level of callousness, allowing symptomatic horses to mingle freely in the stables, aided by a Chief Vet asleep at the wheel. The reluctance of certain trainers, emboldened by their committee backers, further ensured that the situation spiralled out of control. Steward Uday Eswaran had earlier scuttled the proposal to appoint a regulatory vet, and with a managing committee notorious for whimsical decisions, officials operated under constant fear of losing their jobs if they dared displease the powers-that-be.

 

Incredibly, there was even an attempt to move these horses to a farmhouse in Hosur without a mandatory glanders certificate, an act that would have been blatantly illegal. The Stewards finally woke up and convened a meeting, but by then the damage had already been done. The administrative machinery collapsed at every stage, and the Chairman, already regarded as ineffective, should offer his resignation along with others who have meddled so extensively in day-to-day affairs that the system has been reduced to rubble.

 

The response mechanism failed completely. In stark contrast to earlier administrations that handled the threat of EIA with exemplary precision, the BTC today has descended to a distressing new low.

 

Now the fallout begins. Owners must feed and stable horses with zero chance of recovering costs. Trainers and jockeys must keep operations alive without income. Token help from the club will do little to offset the haemorrhaging of stake money and lost racing opportunities, the very oxygen of the sport. BTC’s administrative vacuum and misplaced priorities have dragged everyone else into a pit of financial despair.

 

Meanwhile, the club’s much-touted resolution to shift racing to Kunigal is stuck in bureaucratic quicksand. The government had granted only off-course betting rights, not on-course racing. Ironically, the glanders shutdown may help them avoid the more embarrassing question of why they couldn’t secure the licence in the first place.

 

Across India, the situation is nothing short of tragic. Chennai racing has been buried by government ruthlessness. Hyderabad and now Bangalore are crippled by glanders. Only Mysore, Kolkata, Delhi, and Mumbai soldier on, fingers crossed, prayers muttered, and sanitiser bottles close at hand.

 

Nature has delivered a blow. Human incompetence has delivered two more. And looming over everything is the monstrous 40% GST that continues to bleed the sport dry like slow poison. Indian racing now stands on the edge, battered by disease, mismanagement, and hostile policy, fighting for survival with dwindling strength.

 

It is not just a crisis. It is a full-blown catastrophe playing out on turf that once echoed with glory.

 

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