Policy Needed To Control Stray Dog Population 

Mahesh Vijapurkar

Name a city, town, or a village which is devoid of stray dogs on its streets, menacing the life of an unsuspecting passer, who could die of rabies after a dog bite. Or a civic body from the gram panchayats to the big municipal corporations who have managed to make a difference by their dog management; you would be lucky if you do.

Their menace has not been recognized in its right proportion to life in an organized society, which we claim we are. A couple of years ago, the BBC had put out that India had 300 million strays, and that some 20,000 die of rabies every year. There is a dispute though: a claim that most were bitten by pets, so strays are not a huge issue.

A few years ago, dog bites on a child in Mumbra, Thane required over 100 sutures. In another case, a pack attacked a child for no reason in the same area. And in areas around the Sanjay Gandhi National Park—the only national park in an urban area in the world –the leopards stray outside the park to hunt because dogs are their easy prey.

Here, people prefer the leopards to be shot, or captured and relocated. But none moves towards pressuring the civic authorities to curb the strays’ menace. In fact, they are ignored, or the stray population is encouraged by feeding them out of compassion. However, they do not take any responsibility to get them inoculated for rabies. Or get them sterilised.

A couple of years ago, a health official of the Mumbai civic body had explained that controlling the feral dog population by sterilisation alone was difficult. Nor are there any affordable programmes, which add to the woes. It would take over a decade to curb the population by sterilisation alone.What is never conceded is that mass sterilisation and anti-rabies work is a desultory activity in civic bodies.

This scenario lends itself to the following interpretation. There are dog lovers who do not keep them as pets but feed them for two reasons –compassion and gaining merit. That those who have pets which have bitten the owners– Raj Thackeray’s wife needed 60 sutures when the pet bit her– do not see the risk from the strays.

Those like the Thackerays who are politically influential– it has nothing to do with the ability to win an election- have not put any pressure at all for a workable stray dog policy. The Mumbai High Court had allowed culling of those which were “causing nuisance” but this was stayed by the apex court and ordered that only mass sterilisation programmes would be the policy.

Such a policy is yet to emerge in the country’s civic bodies at all level because there is a feeling that as long as one is not bitten, that person would not think about the problem. Like, the father of a four-year-old in Thane who swore to kill the pack that attacked his child without no provocation at all. Another child had been almost torn to tatters needing over hundred stitches.