There is a stray dog who lives in our building. She was around when I moved in four years ago, and she is still here - older, slower, asleep by the side of my car most of the time, and looking up and wagging her tail at me when I call out to her. She is fed by local animal lovers, and, sometimes, by me. We get her a bed and a blanket every winter. Quiet and sweet-natured, she seems more like a house dog than a toughie who has fought to survive on the streets. At night, when the pack of strays stalking the colony's lanes erupts into a bark-fest, Princess (I call her that) remains calmly aloof, choosing to remain curled up in her corner instead of joining her feral cousins out there.
I would hate to see our gentle, lovable Princess bundled off to a dog shelter. However, the fact is that she, too, belongs to the vast population of homeless dogs who have the run of Delhi's streets. Unlike her, many of them are aggressive, and there have been several incidents recently of children being mauled, or even killed, in attacks by ferocious strays. Of course, it is not just stray dogs and cats who roam free in India's urban spaces. Monkeys and cows wander with equal impunity, often causing significant harm to humans - and giving a jolt to India's self-proclaimed image of a country galloping towards "developed nation" status. Because, let's face it, in no developed country will you find strays and other animals foraging for food or attacking people in the streets.
This week, the Supreme Court took suo motu cognisance of a report published in The Times of India about the menace of Delhi's huge number of stray dogs. The report highlighted the death of a six-year-old girl who developed rabies after she was bitten by a stray last month, and another incident where a four-year-old boy was severely mauled by a pack of street dogs. Ordering it to be turned into a PIL, the apex court said, "Let the order be placed with the news report before the honourable CJI for appropriate directions."
Some measures to address the issue are on the cards already. On Wednesday, a committee set up by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi announced its decision to launch a campaign of sterilisation and immunisation of stray dogs in 12 assembly constituencies, with the target of achieving 70%-80% sterilisation in each area. In addition, the veterinary department has been told to come up with a plan to sterilise 70% of stray dogs in the entire state of Delhi. Twenty new dog shelters will also be set up.
These are welcome decisions, but it remains to be seen if they are rigorously implemented to bring down the staggering number of strays in the city. At last count (2022-23), the capital's stray dog population was around 10 lakh. According to one newspaper report, Safdarjung Hospital has registered 91,009 cases of dog bites this year, which translates into 249 cases per day. And these are figures from just one hospital in the city.
How did we get to this point? After all, controlling the number of stray dogs is not an insurmountable problem. Other countries have done it, and done it with a combination of strategies that are humane as well as effective. In the developed world, strays are rounded up - most of them are pets abandoned by their owners - under strict legal mandates and taken to shelters where they are sterilised and made available for adoption. If they do not get rehomed, they are cared for in the shelter. Euthanasia is resorted to only if the stray has an untreatable disease or has severe behavioural issues. What's more, micro-chipping is compulsory in most countries, so the owners can be identified. Pet abandonment usually attracts hefty penalties. For example, abandoning a pet in France is punishable by a fine of up to 45,000 euros and a prison term of three years.
Fines for pet abandonment apart, all the other measures can be easily put in place in Indian cities, provided there is a willingness to do so. But for decades, the authorities have mutely watched as the population of strays has swelled on our streets. Dog shelters are few and far between, and sterilisation efforts have been abysmal. In Delhi, people who feed street dogs face a lot of flak from others who allege that feeding them keeps their population growing. But the simple fact is that if the state did its job, picked them up, sterilised them and housed them in humane conditions, citizens would not need to step in and feed them.
Before the G20 summit in Delhi in 2023, stray dogs were rounded up by the municipal authorities and disappeared for the duration of the summit. Did they take this opportunity to sterilise them? Or permanently house them in a rescue shelter? They did not. The whole exercise was unabashedly cosmetic, and the moment the event was over, the strays were released right back into the streets. In other words, though we know that the sight of stray dogs sniffing at garbage and chasing after motorists does not make for the spiffy First World urban landscape that we would like to present to foreign visitors, we have no desire to do what it takes to actually make our streets stray-free.
This hitherto woeful civic apathy towards the problem of strays underlies an inability to appreciate the fact that letting strays run untrammelled in our neighbourhoods will, of necessity, bring them into conflict with us. Also, there seems to be a lingering notion that taking steps to curb the number of stray animals - including monkeys that are menacing and cows that stand motionless slap bang in the middle of busy roads - amounts to cruelty to our fellow creatures. Of course, since every monkey is symbolic of the god Hanuman and every cow is a holy mother, who can be so undevout as to want them banished from our cities?
Fortunately, dogs have not been imbued with such divinity. Hence, making our cities free of stray canines ought to be a less complicated exercise. In the case of Delhi, the municipality has declared its intention to work with animal welfare NGOs and other stakeholders to build more shelters for strays, amend the Animal Birth Control rules to facilitate relocating them, and urgently step up sterilisation targets to reduce their numbers over time. One just hopes that there is an understanding amongst all concerned that taking stray dogs off the streets is essential not just for the danger they pose to vulnerable citizens; it is also essential because real kindness lies in providing them with a safe and stress-free environment, rather than in allowing them to roam wild on our streets, which often brings them into violent conflict with humans.
(Shuma Raha is a journalist and author)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
