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Journalism of Courage
While asking the authorities to shift Delhi’s stray dogs to shelters, the Supreme Court found it “unreasonable and absurd” that, under the Animal Birth Control (ABC) program, sterilised dogs are returned to the streets they were picked up from.
The apex court’s intervention resonated with many whose lives and livelihood have been affected by the proliferation of aggressive dog packs in public spaces. But returning sterilised dogs to streets is not the reason why the ABC program has not been able to stabilise the stray dog population. On the contrary, that is the very essence of ABC science.
To bring down a population through sterilisation of individuals, the females are the principal targets. Because anything short of 100% success in neutering males potentially leaves open the window for all fertile females getting productive.
Spaying females is also the preferred approach because neutering impacts males behaviorally — turning docile is not a good survival option in the wild. But when it comes to street dogs, reducing aggression in males helps reduce conflict. That is why ABC programs for dogs target both females and males.
While all dogs cannot be sterilised at one go, the efficacy of any ABC drive depends on the outcome of the race between volume and time. The thumb rule: at least two-third (ideally 70%) of a population should be sterilised within a year. And this is where returning sterilised dogs to streets becomes all important.
Securing ‘unproductive’ streets
Consider a scenario when dogs from two out of ten streets of a neighbourhood are picked up for sterilisation and not returned. The garbage dumps on those two dog-empty streets will invariably invite unsterilised dogs from neighbouring streets. With uncontested resources at their disposal, they will multiply quickly to reoccupy those streets.
The ABC program also seeks returning sterilised dogs to streets to maintain their social order and cohesion. But, primarily, returning sterilised dogs to streets ensures that potentially productive space remains under unproductive occupation. This is absolutely vital in the initial months of an ABC drive as it makes spatial progress incrementally.
Crisis of Capacity
The urgency of the apex court’s order also caught the civic authorities off guard. In its order on Monday, the SC asked them to make shelters to house stray dogs, and pick up 5-6,000 from vulnerable areas in the next six to eight weeks.
Since the Delhi government does not have any shelter of its own, the implementation of the court’s order may take longer. While the government has hospitals, around two dozen dog shelters, with a combined capacity of less than 3,000, are all run by NGOs.
Some are also concerned that housing thousands of unrelated dogs together may cause stress and anxiety. There are standard housing protocols in individual cages with physical and visual barriers to ease aggression. But dogs are inherently social animals — forming packs, establishing hierarchies and learning from one another — not suited for captivity.
The fact that Delhi does not have anything close to the holding capacity required to meet the apex court’s urgency also shines light on the gross inadequacy of the capital’s ABC drive.
As mentioned above, an ABC drive must cover 70% of the population within a year. For an estimated population of 8 lakh street dogs in Delhi, this would require neutering up to 5.5 lakhs. Considering 300 working days, this breaks down to a requirement of operating on 1,800 dogs per day.
According to standardStray d government protocol, each dog has to be kept for 3 days post-operative care and will have to be brought to the ABC centre one day in advance. Therefore, to operate on 1,800 dogs daily, Delhi would have required four times kennel infrastructure to hold 7,200 dogs.
With a daily holding capacity well under 3,000, Delhi’s ABC drive was evidently running at 40% of the desired intensity. Unsurprisingly, it failed to make any difference.
Home to street
What overwhelmed a tepid ABC drive is the irresponsibility of a large number of dog owners. India does not have a national law that requires dog owners to register their pets. A few cities have made rules but do not bother with enforcement. It is not mandatory to get pets sterilised or vaccinated either.
Since owners are not accountable for their dogs or their dogs’ pups, hundreds of unwanted pet dogs and pups are abandoned on the street daily. Besides, thousands of pet dogs are allowed to roam or break free and breed with street strays. This is why the so-called ‘Indian street dog’ is mostly mongrels of various crossbreeds.
The solution, experts say, is to have ABC drives target pedigreed pets with high breeding frequency. The government could offer incentives to owners to get their pets registered and sterilised. A steep tax may be levied on breeding pets.
Recipe for conflict
In all cities, neighbourhood good samaritans feed stray dogs on the streets outside their homes or workplaces. This has the same effect as petting, and turns stray dogs territorial and aggressive.
Such feeding has also created monsters of monkeys in many parts of India. Over the decades, governments cutting across party lines have sponsored the feeding of stray dogs by various organisations.
In The Ecology of Stray Dogs: A Study of Free-ranging Urban Animals (1973), Professor Alan Beck wrote: “Loose or straying pets and stray (feral) dogs are different. True stray dogs form somewhat stable packs… are more active at night and cautious about people. In general, straying pets have smaller home ranges and [are] active when people are.”
This is why abandoned or proxy pet dogs on the street are more likely to be aggressive towards people who do not feed or pet them.
