Stray dogs are not the enemy—but they’ve become a menace. A menace not born of canine cruelty, but of human apathy and an administrative system that has chosen optics over outcomes. The problem in India today is not that we have too many stray dogs; it’s that we have too little foresight, too few solutions, and far too many bureaucrats, activists, and courts playing ping-pong with public safety. Walk through any city or town in India and you’ll notice it’s not the citizens who dominate the public space—it’s the strays. They bark through the night, chase vehicles in the day, maul children occasionally, and gnaw at the idea that this country cares about law, order, and safety.
The numbers don’t lie. According to the Animal Husbandry Ministry’s 2023 data, India has over 62 million stray dogs roaming its streets—more than the population of countries like Italy or South Africa. That’s not a statistic; that’s a crisis. In Bengaluru alone, a city that prides itself on being the Silicon Valley of India, there are over 3 lakh stray dogs. The city has witnessed multiple gruesome dog attacks, including incidents where toddlers were mauled to death. These aren’t isolated horrors—they’re symptomatic of a broken civic framework that refuses to learn or lead.
Now let’s be honest. Dogs don’t form violent packs by reading Sun Tzu’s Art of War. They do so because we’ve allowed the streets to become their jungle. Dogs are territorial by nature. Left to roam, breed, and scavenge, they will protect what they claim as theirs—especially when food is involved. In fact, many attacks on pedestrians, joggers, and delivery boys happen near spots where residents regularly feed strays. It’s not the feeding that’s wrong, but the unthinking, unregulated manner in which it’s done that creates unintended aggression.
India’s policy response is a tragic comedy. The Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Rules, introduced in 2001 and amended in 2023, offer a well-meaning but toothless solution: catch the dog, sterilise it, vaccinate it, and release it exactly where it was picked up from. The assumption? That dog will live a peaceful, disease-free life, no longer reproducing or attacking. The reality? Barely 30% of the stray dog population in most cities is actually sterilised, far below the 70% threshold needed to control population growth or prevent rabies outbreaks. The rest are left to multiply, wander, and fight for food.
And while bureaucrats sit on files, rabies does its work quietly. India accounts for 36% of the world’s rabies deaths—around 20,000 people die each year from the virus, mostly due to dog bites. That’s more than 50 deaths a day. If these deaths were caused by a virus from Wuhan or a terror outfit in Peshawar, we’d be on red alert. But since it’s the neighbourhood dog, we treat it like an act of God—and move on.
What makes this crisis even more dangerous is the warped lens of certain animal rights activists and NGOs. Let’s be clear: compassion for animals is noble. But compassion without accountability is chaos. Many of these organisations oppose any form of euthanasia—even in cases of terminal illness or aggression. They lobby against shelters, oppose relocation, and file petitions at the first sign of municipal action. The result? A policy paralysis where city administrations are too scared to act for fear of legal backlash. In some cities, municipal workers have even been assaulted or sued for simply trying to catch aggressive strays.
And then there’s the judiciary—perhaps the most confused actor in this tragic play. On one hand, courts have banned culling and demanded humane treatment of strays. On the other, they’ve acknowledged the growing threat to public safety. The result is a volley of contradictory judgments, unclear mandates, and an overwhelmed administration that prefers to look the other way. In 2022, the Bombay High Court ordered that stray dogs can be fed, but only at designated feeding spots—not outside homes or in housing societies. A sensible ruling. But who enforces it? Who monitors these zones? And what happens when a dog attacks a child 100 metres from that feeding spot?
In Goa, where the charm of village life now coexists uneasily with urban expansion, the situation is no different. Tourists are often chased by strays on beaches. Children walking to school are taught to carry sticks “just in case.” In cities like Panjim and Margao, the number of stray dogs far exceeds the capacity of existing animal shelters, most of which are underfunded, understaffed, and overwhelmed. Catch-and-release is the standard operating procedure, and once again, the same aggressive or diseased dog is often released right back into the community it terrorised.
What India needs is not more debate, but decisive action—rooted in realism, not sentiment. First, sterilisation and vaccination drives must be aggressive, scientific, and continuous—not the once-a-year PR stunt they’ve become. The government must tie municipal performance rankings and funding to dog population control metrics. If a city fails to vaccinate or sterilise adequately, it must face budgetary penalties.
Second, we need a national digital reporting system—an app that allows citizens to report aggressive dogs, track municipal response times, and hold local bodies accountable. Public participation must be part of the solution, not just public suffering.
Third, shelters must be funded, modernised, and expanded. This requires public-private partnerships, where NGOs receive state support but are subjected to regular audits. No more fly-by-night operators. We need long-term accountability.
Fourth, we must have an honest conversation about euthanasia. Not every dog can be rehabilitated. Dogs that are terminally ill, rabid, or serially aggressive must be put down humanely—under veterinary supervision, with full transparency. This is not cruelty—it’s civic necessity.
Fifth, citizen awareness is key. Feeding strays without understanding canine behaviour does more harm than good. Schools, RWAs, and local governments must collaborate to educate people on safe interactions with stray animals, the importance of sterilisation, and the risks of rabies.
Finally, laws must be clarified. The current framework—split between municipal rules, court judgments, and animal welfare mandates—is a legal minefield. A unified national law on urban stray management must replace this patchwork. A law that respects animal rights, yes, but not at the cost of human lives.
Because that is the heart of this issue. In our race to appear compassionate, we’ve become indifferent to human suffering. A society that refuses to protect its children from stray dog attacks cannot call itself civilised. The stray dog menace in India is not the fault of the dogs. It is the fault of a system that abandoned foresight for appeasement, action for paperwork, and safety for sentiment.
We don’t need to hate dogs. We need to outsmart the problem. Because in the end, it’s not about man versus animal. It’s about society versus failure—and whether we have the courage to fix what we created.
