Expert Explains: Eradication of stray dogs is an impossible promise. The problem needs a different approach

The Supreme Court took suo motu cognisance of the concerns surrounding stray dogs last year, subsequently calling for moving the animals from public spaces to shelters after sterilisation and vaccination. However, several groups challenged the removal order. Over the last month, the top court heard the arguments and reserved its verdict last week. Dr Krithika Srinivasan, a professor of political ecology in the School of Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh, explains what the numbers indicate about India’s stray dog population, why mass dog-feeding may not be helping the situation, and the dangers of reactive policy-making. Srinivasan is the Principal Investigator of the ROH-Indies project (Remaking One Health: Decolonial Approaches to Street Dogs and Rabies Prevention in India), which combines human geography, behavioural ecology and social psychology to study human-dog interactions. In the ongoing court proceedings, advocates frequently claim there is no data on street dogs in India. Is that true? That is simply not true. We must distinguish between two kinds of data. First, there is the government’s “reported data,” based on hospital records. This is often inaccurate due to under-reporting — many people may not go to hospitals, or inconsistencies can arise during aggregation at the state level. Epidemiological surveys, which study disease and its determinants in a defined population, are more robust. Two comprehensive surveys were conducted in 2003 and 2022. Contrary to the panic that this subject often evokes, these showed a steep decline in both rabies and dog bites. There was a 75% decrease in rabies cases, from 20,565 in 2003 to 5,276 in 2022-23, and in annual dog bite incidence, from 15.9 per 1,000 persons in 2003 to 5.6 per 1,000 in 2022-23. Similarly, reported human rabies deaths in India dropped by over 90% between 2005 and 2022. The Indian Livestock Census reflects similar trends, with street dog populations dropping by over 10% between 2012 and 2019. If the numbers are dropping, why does the conflict feel so acute right now? A good part of the decline in rabies is due to vast improvements in Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP). But this doesn’t explain the decline in bites. That is likely linked to the cessation of mass dog removal after 2001. This brings us to a crucial ecological concept: the perturbation effect. When you disturb a population by removing or killing animals, you disrupt their social dynamics. It causes movement — some dogs escape and move to other sites, while new dogs enter vacated territories. These changes increase disease transmission and bites. By stopping the removal, we reduced this perturbation. However, in the last two or three years, we have seen a slight spike in reported issues. Part of this is better reporting, but our research suggests a behavioural shift in urban pockets. Changes in caregiving practices, specifically the shift from casual foraging to regular, mass feeding of full meals, are altering dog behaviour. How does dog feeding change the dynamics? It sounds counterintuitive, but a street dog cannot afford to behave like a pet dog. Ecologically, street dogs are foragers. They usually maintain territories to secure limited resources, which keeps populations stable. They learn to coexist with a wide range of people — those who like them and those who don’t. Dogs that are aggressive towards humans generally don’t survive; their gene pool is eliminated. This changes with regular mass feeding. When dogs no longer need to forage, they form strong attachments to specific feeders and locations. This “de-skills” them. They lose the capacity to stay out of trouble. They start engaging in behaviours like chasing or mobbing, often out of boredom or territoriality over the feeding spot. A pet dog plays with a ball; a street dog typically conserves energy. But if they are fed full meals and don’t forage, they have energy to burn. While these dogs may be friendly to their feeders, they can be aggressive toward strangers who don’t know how to interact with them. This creates localised surges in density and conflict. So, is the Animal Birth Control (ABC) program the solution? The ABC rules are based on the assumption that all problems — rabies, bites, nuisance — can be solved by birth control. While ABC was effective in stopping the perturbation effect caused by killing, it is not a silver bullet for the nuisance issues people are currently angry about: chasing, barking and congregating. Our surveys show that for the lay public, rabies is low on the list of concerns. The daily irritants are noise and the fear of chasing. Just because a dog is neutered doesn’t mean it won’t chase a bike or bark at night. To address these, we need to look beyond just managing population numbers. We need to manage resource availability. The 2023 ABC rules, which entrenched “feeding spots” in law, are perhaps the worst thing you can do ecologically. Concentrating food concentrates dogs, leading to fights and conflict. We need to stop mass feeding while encouraging the traditional, dispersed tossing of scraps and leftovers, which supports foraging without creating territorial hotspots. ## The SC has ordered the removal of dogs from public spaces, like railway stations, to shelters. Is that feasible? There are multiple layers to why this is problematic. First, look at the example of IIT Madras. They removed dogs to a shelter, where many died, but to maintain that “dog-free” status, they had to build high walls, employ 24-hour security and check every car trunk. Most public spaces do not have those resources. If you remove dogs from a porous area like a railway station without hermetically sealing it, new dogs will simply move in to fill the vacuum, triggering the perturbation effect and increasing bites. Second, we must look at the “invisible public” behind animal welfare. Our research shows that rescue organisations rely heavily on the lay public to neuter, vaccinate and report sick dogs. If you remove dogs and place them in shelters, you sever this community care network. Critics often ask why India should have street dogs when developed nations like the UK do not. What does your research say? The UK eliminated street dogs by the mid-1900s, which was easier because it is an island. But the ecological niche didn’t stay empty — urban foxes and gulls filled that space. These animals generate the exact same complaints in the UK that dogs do here: bin raiding, noise and aggression. Gulls swoop down to snatch food from hands, foxes occasionally bite children. And yet, the UK no longer advocates elimination. Municipal councils explicitly state they will not remove foxes because they understand the perturbation effect. Additionally, despite having no street dogs, hospital attendance for dog bites in the UK has risen steadily since the 1980s. A study in Cheshire showed a higher incidence of dog bites per 1,000 people than we see in India. This is driven entirely by pet dogs. So, removing street dogs doesn’t eliminate the problem of bites or nuisance, it just changes the form or the animal causing it. The debate is often framed as dogs vs humans. Is that what you see on the ground? Our research across India shows that 96% of human-street dog interactions are uneventful or positive. The predominant relationship is one of indifference or casual coexistence. Many people who want street dogs removed actually like dogs — they might even own pets. They are simply frustrated by specific annoyances like barking or congregations. Conversely, “dog lovers” often prioritise only the specific dogs they care for, not, for instance, dogs being subjected to medical experiments. We are dealing with problems at the interface of human-dog interaction. You cannot solve this by looking at just dogs. We need a multidimensional approach: accessible post-bite treatment for rabies prevention, environmental and resource management to stop congregations, and education. People have lost their “street skills”. We need to relearn how to interact safely with animals that share our spaces, rather than relying on the impossible promise of eradication.