Cultural "Blind Spots," Social Influence and the Welfare of Working Donkeys in Brick Kilns in Northern India.
Authors: Watson Tamlin L, Kubasiewicz Laura M, Chamberlain Natasha, Nye Caroline, Raw Zoe, Burden Faith A
Journal: Frontiers in veterinary science
Summary
# Editorial Summary Working donkeys in Indian brick kilns continue to suffer despite decades of veterinary interventions, prompting researchers to investigate why welfare improvements fail to sustain themselves. Using the Equid Assessment Research and Scoping (EARS) welfare tool alongside socioeconomic surveys and interviews with donkey owners across Northern India, Watson and colleagues identified six interconnected themes—including caste, ethnicity, gender, migration, and religious belief—that fundamentally shape owner capacity and willingness to provide adequate care, revealing what they term cultural "blind spots" that organisations typically overlook when designing welfare programmes. The findings underscore that poverty, social marginalisation and transient employment create conditions where human vulnerability directly translates to animal neglect, making the human-animal welfare link inseparable in these contexts. For equine professionals working with NGOs or development programmes, this research demonstrates that welfare interventions based solely on veterinary reactive measures or generic best-practice guidelines will fail without genuine community engagement that acknowledges local power structures, religious perspectives, and the socioeconomic constraints facing owners—suggesting instead that sustainable improvements require programmes co-designed with stakeholders that address underlying social and economic barriers rather than simply imposing external standards.
Read the full abstract on PubMed
Practical Takeaways
- •When designing welfare improvement programs for working donkeys, assess and address the socioeconomic constraints, cultural beliefs, and social status of owners rather than assuming access to resources or knowledge—one-size-fits-all interventions will fail
- •Build relationships with local communities and involve owners as partners in problem-solving; understand their lived experience of poverty, migration, and exploitation as these directly drive their ability to care for donkeys
- •Recognize that improving donkey welfare in these contexts requires simultaneous attention to human welfare, dignity, and community cohesion—welfare gains are sustainable only when owners' own survival needs are addressed
Key Findings
- •Cultural 'blind spots' related to caste, ethnicity, gender, and religion significantly impact the ability of NGO interventions to improve working donkey welfare in brick kilns
- •Owner socioeconomic status, poverty, and migratory employment directly influence donkey care quality and welfare outcomes
- •Six key themes emerged from analysis: caste/ethnicity/inherited knowledge, social status impacts, gender inequality, migration/shared suffering, compassion, and religious belief/species hierarchy
- •Human and animal welfare are inextricably linked in marginalized communities; sustainable welfare improvements require community engagement and acknowledgment of sociocultural factors