The bond between man and dog had its beginning 12-14 millenniums ago, somewhere in Eurasia, where a mutually advantageous relationship between them first emerged. The domestication of the dog and the companionship between the animal and man go back very early on the Indian subcontinent. At Bhimbetka in Madhya Pradesh, prehistoric paintings (7000 BCE) reveal several figures of dogs, including one on a leash led by a man. Terracotta figurines from Harappa include dogs wearing collars, and a collared dog begging on its haunches, obviously a result of training.
The earliest mention of the dog is in the Rig Veda, where Indra’s divine dog Sarama pursued and recovered cows stolen by the Panis. The conversation between Sarama and the Panis brings out some interesting facts: that the dog was a herder, kept by pastoral tribes; and that the dog was deeply loyal and could not be bribed into changing camps. The Rig Veda refers to the dog as Vastospati, the presiding deity of the house. Many of the later associations of the dog can be traced back to the Vedas, for the Atharva Veda describes Rudra, a form of Shiva, as surrounded by dogs who are saluted. This association is carried over to Bhairava, an aspect of Shiva, with the dog as his companion.
Yet today people are clamouring to kill dogs or send them away. Resident welfare associations do not want street dogs to be fed or permitted in their areas. Pet lovers and animal welfare NGOs are hounded. How did this happen?
The arrival of the British changed the sanctity accorded to dogs. The British brought their breeds, which were used to hunt dogs belonging to local villagers. Unplanned urbanisation resulted in poor garbage disposal, with food available for dogs on the streets. With the abandonment of native dogs, municipalities all over India were encouraged to kill dogs. Let’s take the example of Chennai. From 100 dogs killed per day in Chennai in 1860, the Corporation was killing 16,000 a year by 1964 and 30,000 in 1985. By 1995, the numbers were as high as 135 per day. And yet, the number of human deaths from rabies and the number of dogs on the streets showed no sign of going down. In 1996, there were 120 deaths from rabies in Chennai alone.
In 1964, the Blue Cross of India, one of Chennai’s oldest animal welfare NGOs, proposed that the street dog population could be controlled by Animal Birth Control (ABC) with a mass anti-rabies vaccination programme. In 1995, appalled at the horrific methods used to kill dogs, the Blue Cross requested permission from the Commissioner of the Corporation of Madras, M Abul Hassan, to start the programme in South Chennai. The cost was met by the Blue Cross. It was befitting that the Corporation—then over 300 years old and considered the second oldest municipality in the world—was the first to implement a street dog ABC programme.
Seeing the positive results, the Animal Welfare Board of India adopted it as its policy in 1997. WHO adopted Blue Cross’s ABC programme, including the name, as the most cost-effective and best way to control street dog populations. Several countries took it up, too.
Reviewing the success of ABC in places where it had been implemented as a pilot project, the Indian government passed the Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Rules 2001, introducing regulations which stopped the killing of stray animals and replacing it with ABC-AR. In 2004, WHO carried out a rabies study in 84 communities—it found that rabies cases in humans as well as the incidence of dog bites showed a dramatic drop in areas where ABC-AR was aggressively implemented. By 2001, the Jaipur Walled City showed a drop of rabies cases to zero, followed by Kalimpong by 2002, Chennai by 2006 and Tirupati by 2007.
The ABC programme aims to catch street dogs, surgically sterilise them, vaccinate them against rabies and release them back to the location from where they were picked up. This a humane way of controlling the street dog population. Nature abhors a vacuum and if the dogs in an area are killed, they are quickly replaced by a new pack. Whereas a sterilised, non-aggressive dog becomes good security for its area.
In 2010, the Indian government accepted the recommendation to propose two new rules under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 1960—the Pet Shop Regulation and Breeding and Sale of Pets Rules—to further control the dog population.
Everything was going well till the arrival of Covid and the consequent lockdown. ABC-AR was stopped and the number of puppies increased dramatically in all Indian cities. Further, municipalities were tasked with the job of ABC-AR. Anything taken up by local governments gets mired in corruption, non-implementation and controversy, and this is no exception. So today, we read news about children chased by dogs, people bitten by dogs and so on. An unsterilised dog tends to be aggressive. This becomes the perfect time for vested interests to close down the ABC-AR programme and go back to killing.
To stop the proliferation of dog numbers, effective solid waste and garbage management and implementation of dog breeding and pet shop rules is essential. And, of course, aggressive implementation of ABC-AR.Dogs have given humans love, loyalty and security for millenniums. Surely, they have a right to live with dignity. The world was made for them, too.
Nanditha Krishna
Historian, environmentalist and writer based in Chennai