New Delhi
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One by one, they come out of sleep. Dholu is an energetic young man with a prominent footstep. Oldy, a belly-loving grey elder. Snoopy, a golden-eyed boy patiently waiting for his turn.
They are not summoned by whi, but the familiar smell of Kichidi, a traditional dish of rice and lentils. Himanshi Varma carries two large bags to this New Delhi neighborhood where her evening ritual begins amid the chaos of the Indian capital.
For seven years, Varma has fed the city’s roaming strays. She is a quiet agreement she made with these homeless dogs after adopting a puppy born under the stairs at her home.
Using her own savings, she paid for sterilization of over 500 animals and found hundreds more homes. “There’s no count, there’s no end,” she said as a “indie” pack to play with grass nearby, as Indian strays are lovingly known.
For a period of time, quiet despair over Balma’s daily acts of compassion.
The Supreme Court order of August 12th declared that their homes – the city of New Delhi is no longer theirs. The court took the issue in itself, following a surprising report of dog attacks, including where the children were killed, and ordered that all stray dogs on the capital’s territory be rounded up and be locked in shelters forever within eight weeks.
The announcement sparked panic among animal lovers and welfare groups. Welfare groups claim that the city does not house its vast wandering population near its infrastructure, and is estimated at around 1 million.
But on Friday a wave of relief wiped out their ranks. After a review by a special three judge bench, the court issued a stay and altered the previous order. The new ruling revealed that stray dogs picked up by authorities will be sterilized, vaccinated and released into the same area. Only animals found to be rabies or excessively aggressive are kept from the streets.
The court said the ruling applies to all Indias, and at the same time it prohibits public distribution of food to dogs and requires feeding in designated areas.
“I think that’s a very thoughtful verdict,” said veterinarian Dr Sarunbam Yaipabi Devi.
“As so many people came out through India for their neighboring dogs, the court definitely appears to have public pulses in mind.”
The original intervention from the Indian Supreme Court was swift and decisive, and controversial in a country with ingrained cultural respect for animals.
Euthanizing healthy wanderings in India is illegal and before being released, the wanderings of the 2001 law must be addressed to rabies, castrated and vaccinated.
Although humanitarian in principle, this approach has been difficult to implement effectively on a national scale. The vast number of dogs overwhelm the limited funding and veterinary infrastructure in the world’s most populous countries. This means that sterilization rates cannot be in line with the rapid breeding cycle of dogs.
As a result, an estimated 62 million stray dogs (reported by Indian press) have roamed the country’s streets, neighbours, slums and villages.
Many of these animals live in harmony with humans. However, bites and fatal attacks made people more cautious with the risk of infection.
Rabies is a vaccine-preventable disease that can spread to humans if bitten or injured by an infected animal, and is almost always fatal unless someone can administer a series of jabs immediately after it is bitten.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), dogs are the source of rabies deaths in most humans, contributing up to 99% of all rabies transmission to humans. India is endemic to rabies, and WHO said it accounts for 36% of rabies deaths worldwide.
“When I walk home late at night, there are horde of dogs that I usually have to pass by,” said Sriya Ramani, a medical student based in Delhi. “If there’s food left in the tiffin (food container), they smell it, then they jump to you, and it’s very scary.”
She believes that the population of dogs in Delhi must be controlled, but “it should be done in a humane way.”
Arjun Sen, the father of a 12-year-old boy who was bitten, feels that stray dogs should remove the street “as soon as possible.”
“This time my son was bitten. Tomorrow it can be someone else’s child,” he told Reuters. “This is a big problem.”
After the fatal attacks of a 4-year-old from Hyderabad in 2023, fear of dog attacks has skyrocketed. This led to a CCTV attack that terrified the country, sending shockwaves through the media and political circles, causing a desperate search for solutions.
Some have sought to challenge existing laws to better manage numbers. In 2016, the campaign to ur stray dogs from southern Kerala gained traction after a series of bites, but encountered fierce opposition from animal rights activists.
The controversial plan never came to fruition. It shows a deadlock between public safety concerns and animal welfare advocacy.
Devi, a veterinarian who cared about the city’s troubles, struggled to see how the Supreme Court’s first order was enacted.
“The order was very unexpected,” she said. “It’s also unfair and unrealistic.”
Devi operates a sterilization unit for small animals in Delhi, allowing temporary accommodation of up to 100 lost children. It’s already crowded and needs repairs due to lack of funds. She was worried that other centers like her could not handle the hundreds of thousands of dogs the court ordered to pick up.
Even bigger shelters have the capacity.
The Jammu Foundation’s animal shelter in Gurugram’s satellite city just outside Delhi shows a frontline crisis.
Meenakshi Bareja is caring for 78 dogs here, and the shelter is chronically understaffed and underfunded. Financial tension creates a near constant state of panic.
“We need 500,000 rupees ($5,700) a month and it’s always shortfall,” Bareja says.
All kennels have a stake visible. All dogs are rescued from the streets, but many cannot simply be castrated and released. They require long-term care for injuries such as large tumors in the hind limbs, partial paralysis from suspected hits and run, or deep painful cuts in the legs.
Lifelong dog horror made Bareja unlikely to be a candidate for work in an animal shelter, but the pandemic left her with little choice. What began as a passive salary slowly transformed into a deep sense of purpose. Her passion was so contagious that her husband, Naresh, joined her. When he squeals hist, the dogs they care about build boundaries before, their tails swaying in the madness of affection.
“Gurgram has developed a lot,” he said of the city with over 800,000 people. “But dogs can’t leave old creatures.”
More than 100 people in Mumbai last week endured heavy rains in protest of the original Supreme Court order.
On Friday, after weeks of stress, Varma, a community feeder, said he was “at the pinnacle of the world.”
She asks questions about the revised ruling, including those qualifying as an offensive dog, which is a reprieve for the street dog she affectionately calls “child.”
“The key is that our child’s stomachs are filled,” she said. “They should be treated, vaccinated and sterilized.”
