Humane solution to street dogs: It's as simple as ABC

Hindustan Times

2 days ago

About 14 millennia ago, somewhere in Europe and probably simultaneously elsewhere, a unique bond developed between humans and wolves. Provided with scraps of food when approaching the early encampments and settlements of man, the wolf soon became a frequent and welcome visitor, warning man of imminent danger and later assisting him in the hunt for wild animals. Thus, began the domestication of the dog and the establishment of a bond between man and animals that has no equal. Today, man violates that bond by allowing dogs to breed excessively and then abandoning them in great numbers, thus creating hazards for the dogs themselves as well as a considerable health risk to human society. In 1990, Dr K Bogel, chief veterinarian of the World Health Organization (WHO) said: 'All too often, authorities confronted with the problems caused by these dogs have turned to mass destruction in the hope of finding a quick solution, only to discover that the destruction had to continue, year after year, with no end in sight'. New Delhi: Stray dogs at a street at Shalimar Bagh area, in New Delhi, Monday, Aug. 11, 2025. (PTI Photo/Shahbaz Khan) (PTI08_11_2025_000447A)(PTI)
Albert Einstein described insanity as doing the same thing over and over expecting different results! Moreover, by reducing temporarily the population of free-roaming dogs, the authorities had improved the chances of survival of the remainder and provided fresh opportunities for newly-abandoned dogs. It is now becoming recognised that removal of surplus dogs cannot solve the problem unless combined with other measures such as registration and neutering of dogs and education of the public
The Blue Cross of India in Chennai was the first to start sterilisation programmes for street dogs--indeed it was the first to propose such a programme and set up its first free clinic in 1966. Thirty years later in 1996, they were able to convince the Chennai Corporation headed by M Abul Hassan, IAS, regarding the viability of such an approach. We called it the ABC programme to show the authorities that control of the street dog population was as simple as ABC. The Blue Cross of India took up the total funding and was soon joined by People for Animals led by Maneka Gandhi. The Corporation's only expense was to continue to provide the dog-catching staff and vehicles.
The number of cases of rabies which had been rising every year and had reached a high of 120 reported cases in 1996 began a steady decline and by 2007 it had dropped to zero. After three successive years of zero rabies, Chennai was declared rabies-free in 2010--the first metropolis in India to achieve this. Jaipur had also reached zero even earlier after starting a similar programme in 1996.
Seeing the success of ABC-AR in Chennai and Jaipur, the Government of India's Animal Welfare Board adopted ABC-AR as its policy and recommended the Government to adopt it. Things moved swiftly and Parliament approved the ABC Rules in 2001 which stopped the poisoning or electrocution of street dogs and made ABC mandatory for all local bodies.
With increased awareness and vaccination drives, rabies cases dropped by over 95% from WHO's 29,000 in 1996 to about 500 in 2024.
Sadly, most municipalities did not implement ABC aggressively to reach the 70% coverage which would have stabilised the population. Sporadic ABC camps will not suffice. Since catching street dogs is the most traumatic part of the programme, many animal welfare groups supported street dog feeders only to get them to befriend the dogs so that they could be easily caught and sterilised and vaccinated. Many feeders, unfortunately, stopped with the feeding part and just began to dump newborn puppies at animal shelters.
Armchair critics and keyboard warriors, in the meantime, instead of helping those groups struggling with overloaded shelters and large numbers of sterilisations, just kept using the double-edged sword of social media to find fault with what municipalities and local organisations were doing.
The onset of Covid stopped most ABC programmes for well over a year, undoing years of work and virtually bringing everything back to square one.
Having said all this, the recent order of the Supreme Court is totally impossible to implement. Putting captured street dogs into massive pounds will lead to massive and unbelievable cruelty. Such an experiment was tried out by a group called EAST in Taipei about 25 years ago. Virtually every dog of the thousands put in died due to infighting and unequal feeding--a clear case of the survival only of the fittest--till infections killed these too. Fortunately, a Buddhist monk who took over the organisation convinced the government to stop this inhuman practice and go in for an ABC programme. The Supreme Court order also goes against the ABC Rules and the orders of another two-judge bench. The order was also passed without giving a chance for other stakeholders to be heard. No municipality has the space or the funds required to run such pounds--euphemistically referred to as shelters.
That ABC-AR works is not in doubt. Indeed, in Radford University's Milestones in World Environmental History
(www.environmentalhistory.org) , the ABC programme of the Blue Cross of India is listed as one of the milestones, right after Jane Goodall, in 1959.
Let all of hope that better sense prevails and the three-judge bench formed by the Chief Justice of India, following protests from all over the country, puts the onus on all local bodies to fulfil their mandate of properly carrying out aggressive ABC programmes--the only viable solution to this important issue. Just as we have reduced rabies to a minor fraction over the last quarter century, a few years of an aggressive, sustained ABC-AR programme all over the country will ensure this. Let us be very honest about this--urban human population densities and road traffic make life for the dogs on the street difficult, too. But, as the nation that gave the world the word and the concept of ahimsa, and where Section 51(a)(g) of our Constitution requires us to show compassion to all life, we all have the moral obligation to tackle this issue in the most humane way possible.
This article is authored by S Chinny Krishna, cofounder, Blue Cross, India's earliest animal protection group.