Colour television sets shall provide the streets dogs in Sibsagar district of Upper Assam the much needed warmth during the harsh winters of January. The question here is how do TV sets provide warmth to stray dogs. Well, Sibsagar town is planning to deploy these sets, which are now electronic junk, as shelter for strays.
Abhijit Duwara has taken it upon himself to provide shelter to animals during the cold and uses old TV sets for this.
"These days people do not use television sets any more. LCDs have reduced them to electronic junks. Owing to their bulky size, they aren't easy to be stored in storehouses too. I got a few of them to turn them into shelters for street dogs. To make them standout, I painted them in yellow and green. Yellow helps to identify the box while the green mixes with the nature. To make the street dogs adopt them as their shelter, I kept pieces of cloth from my pet dog’s kennel in the sets. I named these television set kennels as “Bator Ghor” or street home,” Abhijit Duwara says.
Abhijit is a college student and has teamed up with a veterinary doctor to make dog shelters. He even uses his pocket money to feed the street dogs in the television set shelter on Wednesdays and Saturdays, while the vet takes care of skin and worm infections in these canines. The boxes are fitted with water bowls which are protected from leaves and are designed to get refilled with rainwater.
“Bator Ghor happened by chance. It was on my birthday that my brother gifted me a puppy. With the little creature wimping around, I realized the plight of the street dogs during the cold winter nights. The next morning, I took out an colour television set from my garage and started working on it," says Abhishek. He has made six Bator Ghor and placed them in different parts of of the city, including one near his house. He relatives and friends who had such old TV sets called him up to extend the help.
Abhijit is currently working on 12 dog shelters.
An inquisitive mind, Abijit has earlier made the recycled CSB (Cellular Switching Board). The CSB allows the operator regulate switches by giving a missed call from the mobile. There are different codes for on and off and as this is not app-based which enables the elderly to use it comfortably. He had also come up with “We Safe” a safety device for women which works like a torch. We Safe is fitted with buttons for laser light, beep, 220 volt shocks and a cutter which the women can use in distress. His “Life Drops” is a simple device which helps watering the street plants twice a day. It uses rain water harvesting with a provision of manual operation to water the plants.
“During the pandemic I made the V Fighter. It has four machines, one that sanitizes with hot air another a full body sanitizer. A machine that gives the thermal scanning if you stand in front of it and the last one the V Cycle. It’s a cycle which sanitizes while your ride it. It has long pipes that helps to sanitize inside the rooms while that cycle is parked outside. There is provision for a small fan and sound system for the operator, head and tail lamps that enable one to operate it at night. However, now I am busy making LED lamps and incubator for hatcheries and poultry farms” says Abhijit.