Fixing India’s street dog problem | It’s not as simple as ABC

Mumbai and Bengaluru are getting it right with WhatsApp groups, collars with QR codes, and a symbiotic relationship between dog lovers and local authorities. But elsewhere, the Animal Birth Control programme is hampered by bad implementation and a lack of resources

Last year, before he passed away, Ratan Tata made headlines for ensuring all street dogs got ‘free entry’ at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Colaba. In Tamil Nadu, former chief minister M. Karunanidhi was a dog lover, and for many years, his regular walk at party headquarters, Anna Arivalayam, wouldn’t be complete without the street dog there accompanying him.

The more you look, the more you’ll see love for streeties across the country. People spend lakhs of their own money to treat the dog down their street who has a tumour; women take the onus of feeding fresh food to 200 dogs across a city; others quarrel with their families to take in an injured dog — stories like these are increasingly common.

But so are the stories of legions of gated societies, resident welfare associations (RWAs) and market associations at perpetual war with the dogs in their area, to the extent that they pay catchers to, at best, drop off neighbourhood dogs in nearby forests and, at worst, dispose of them. Their reasons are also unassailable: if a dog is biting passersby, maybe even children, what is to be done?

The issue is fraught and tends to ignite high passions on either side. So, what is the solution to the street dog issue and more importantly, which cities are getting it right? “In every city, there is a very small minority that says, remove the dogs. There’s an equally small pro-animal lobby. And then we have the silent majority of 85%, who just keep quiet,” says Chinny Krishna, founder of Blue Cross of India.

Since Independence, India has dealt with street dogs the only way it knew how: catch and kill. Dogs were shot, poisoned with strychnine, clubbed, drowned and electrocuted by municipal corporations across the country. The killing went up from a few dogs in the 1910s to more than 16,000 in the 1960s. In spite of this, the number of dogs showed no sign of reducing, and rabies deaths kept increasing. The reason was simple: existing dogs kept breeding twice a year. As one activist emphasised, a single unsterilised female dog and her offspring can potentially lead to the birth of 67,000 dogs in six years. That’s when corporations, spurred by animal rights NGOs, decided to try something different.

Chennai, in collaboration with the Blue Cross of India, was one of the first cities to experiment with the Animal Birth Control (ABC) programme in 1996. “We called it ABC to show authorities that control of the street dog population was as simple as ABC,” recalls Krishna. Mumbai began soon after, and within a few years, the programme had spread to a number of cities. It got its final seal of approval in 2001, when the Indian government, under the guidance of the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI), formalised the ABC (Dogs) Rules under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960.

Cut to the present, and the implementation of the programme has been varied. Though some cities have fared better than others, a few consistent problems have been plaguing them all.