The Kerala High Court recently passed a judgment (People for Animals versus State of Kerala). Can a society have a by-law or agreement that absolutely prohibits residents from keeping pets? No, it can’t. That will be unconstitutional and void.
Flowing from Article 21 of the Constitution, I have the right to keep a pet. However, naturally, every society has the right to frame rules for keeping pets. “While holding such clauses as illegal, unconstitutional and unenforceable, we have to observe that the aforesaid freedoms recognised in animals, and the co-relational right recognised in pet owners, is by no means absolute or unconditional and must necessarily be qualified by safeguards designed to protect the competing rights of others including the owners/residents of neighbouring apartments.” There can be rules on the pet riding a general lift, littering at random, or biting as it pleases. Though I said pet, usually, in such cases, one means a dog. The municipality can frame rules on how many dogs can be kept in an apartment or a house and insist on these being registered and vaccinated. I recall Bengaluru’s draft municipal rules from three years ago, where the municipality also sought to determine what breeds could be kept in an apartment, allowing a Labrador or a Dalmatian, but ignoring our very own Indie dogs. I think the new version is awaited.
Personally, I don’t think a municipality getting into breed questions is a very good idea. We might want to maintain our distance from a Dobermann or a Rottweiler, but not every German Shepherd is vicious. Singapore may not be the best example to follow. The Singapore Housing Development Board suggested pet dogs that bark excessively should be debarked, by removing a section of the dog’s vocal chord. In my visits to Singapore, I have rarely seen a crow or a sparrow. They are probably confined to Jurong Bird Park. Dogs may well head in that direction.
How many dogs are there in India? The 20th Livestock Census, for 2019, gives us a figure of 9.4 million, a decline from the 11.7 million of 2012. The gender bias has also become worse. In 2012, there were 2.61 male dogs per female dog. In 2019, that figure has become 2.97. Of the total number of dogs, 6.9 million are rural and 2.5 million are urban.
Where do you find the most dogs? Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Counting dogs in a census is difficult. If it is a pet dog that stays inside the household, matters are relatively easy. The problem is with semi-pets that freely wander around and strays. Dogs have been part of the Livestock Census since 1982, but no one takes the canine part of the census seriously. The figure of 9.4 million is an under-count. That is a figure for stray dogs. As every country urbanises and develops, there is a switch from stray to pet and rural to urban. That same pattern occurs across states too. For pets, gender bias becomes more pronounced. People prefer male dogs, not female ones.
How many dogs are there in India, including pets? I don’t think we have a clear handle on the figure, since registration isn’t mandatory and if so, there is no enforcement. A figure of 20 million floats around for pets, but that probably includes cats too. If one ignores that and allows cats to be counted as dogs, we are talking about 20 million pet dogs and 10 million strays, a figure of around 30 million. Alarmist figures of 60 million cannot simply be true.
How many dogs are there in the US? The figure should make us blink, around 90 million. Or take Israel, with a very high dog/human ratio. How many dogs are there in the world? Probably around 900 million and around 500 million are proper pets (there are wild dogs too). In most developed countries, the dog/human ratio stabilises at between 1:6 and 1:10. Stated differently, we don’t have too many dogs in India. We have too few.
The world is divided into dog-lovers and dog-haters and I can understand antipathy on the part of those who are scared of strays and rabies. In his 1926 “Is this Humanity?” series, Mahatma Gandhi was also extremely harsh about stray dogs. “There should be no stray dogs even as we have no stray cattle.” Elsewhere in the same series, “Failing such (municipal) provision, all stray dogs should be shot.” We continue to have stray dogs and stray cattle. No sensible person will suggest stray cattle should be shot. “What, then, can a humane man do for stray dogs? He should set apart a portion of his income and send it on to a society for the protection of those animals if there be one. If such a society is impossible—and it is very difficult even if it is not impossible—he should try to own one or more dogs.” Such societies are not difficult or impossible and do exist. There have been incidents from assorted parts (MP, UP, Punjab) where individuals have taken Gandhiji’s advice seriously and have shot not strays but neighbours’ dogs. There are others, who, lacking firearms, kill strays through other means. As I have pointed out, the number of strays is declining and will come down even more. If it is not a stray, I don’t understand a dog-hater’s antipathy towards a dog, or towards an animal in general. They deserve to be in a doghouse.
Bibek Debroy
Chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the PM
(Tweets @bibekdebroy)