Why in news?
- In April, a 65-year-old woman in Srinagar was attacked by street dogs outside her home. Also sitting in front of her house is a garbage collection point.
- This incident, once again, highlighted the link between urban solid waste management and stray dog attacks in Indian cities.
What’s in today’s article:
News Summary:
What do dog bites have to do with poor waste management?
- Carrying capacity of cities and population of dogs
- The carrying capacity — the ability of a city to support a species — is determined by the availability of food and shelter.
- Free-ranging dogs, in the absence of these facilities, eventually get attracted towards exposed garbage dumping sites.
- Dogs thus congregate around urban dumps, such as landfills or garbage dumps, due to feeding opportunities.
- Waste generation in India
- Indian cities generate more than 1,50,000 metric tonnes of urban solid waste every day.
- As per a 2021 United Nations Environment Program report, an estimated 931 million tonnes of food available to consumers ended up in households, restaurants, vendors and other food service retailers’ bins in 2019.
- Ideally, all the waste collected should be transported to designated landfill sites.
- However, estimates by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change of India show that only 75-80% of the total municipal waste is collected, and only 22-28% of it is processed.
- The rest is dumped across cities.
- A study found that garbage from bakeries, restaurants, and houses was the primary food source for free-roaming dogs.
- Primary source of food and Nature of dog
- Stray dogs are fed around the urban dumps, such as landfills or garbage dumps.
- As dog is a loyal animal, it develops an affinity towards these areas.
- As a result, these dogs become territorial and aggressive about public spaces where they are fed.
What role do urbanisation and urban planning play?
- In 2015, a study conducted in 10 Indian metro cities found a strong link between human population, the amount of municipal and food waste generated, and the number of stray dogs in the cities.
- The report concluded that the present mode of urbanisation provides enough unconfined and unmanaged leftovers. This, in turn, end up aiding the proliferation of stray dogs.
- Tepid animal birth control programmes and insufficient rescue centres, in conjunction with poor waste management, result in a proliferation of street animals in India.
Population of Stray Dogs in India
- As per the official 2019 livestock census, the stray dog population stood at 1.5 crore. However, independent estimates peg the number to be around 6.2 crore.
- The number of dog bites has simultaneously doubled between 2012 and 2020 (although there is a paucity of data on dog bite deaths due to neglect in the management of rabies).
- India also shoulders the highest rabies burden in the world, accounting for a third of global deaths caused due to the disease.
How has India managed human dog population so far?
- Animal Birth Control (ABC) programme
- India’s response to the stray dog menace has relied upon the Animal Birth Control (ABC) programme.
- Through this programme, municipal bodies trap, sterilise and release dogs to slow down the dog population.
- Rabies control measures
- The second anchor is rabies control measures, including vaccination drives.
- But implementation suffers from:
- low awareness around the health implications of dog bites,
- irregular supply of vaccines,
- delay in seeking treatments, and
- a lack of national policy.
- Other informal measures
- Other informal measures include mass culling of dogs in States like Kerala or imposing bans on the entry of stray dogs in colonies or feeding them in public.
- In November 2022, the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court ruled that people interested in feeding strays should first formally adopt them and feed them in their own homes.
- It directed the municipality to impose a fine of ₹200 on anyone found feeding dogs in public places.
Way forward
- As long as there is solid waste on streets, peaceful co-existence of humans and dogs will be a challenge.
- In this context, experts believe that the responsible waste management is the only solution to this issue.
