Practising compassion: On the stray dogs issue, Court order

The Supreme Court of India’s proceedings on free-roaming dogs represent an earnest, even if inadequate, attempt to reconcile competing claims of compassion and safety. On August 11, 2025, the Court had directed the Municipal Corporation of Delhi to round up strays and confine them in shelters. Eleven days later, it changed course, permitting release after vaccination and deworming, and that aggressive or rabid animals be retained. India bears one of the world’s heaviest burdens of rabies and anthropological accounts are clear that this threat shapes daily life, limiting children’s movements and forcing families into repeated medical expenses. Rabies also disproportionately kills those least able to navigate the health system. While the Animal Birth Control Rules were updated in 2023, experience shows that without 70% sterilisation coverage, they are ineffectual. The August 11 order was significant because it acknowledged that the present framework, however well intentioned, is inadequate for India’s dense settlements. Objections that shelters will be overcrowded and disease-ridden and that permanent impoundment will precipitate an ecological imbalance confront the same issues that undermine the Rules. Properly resourced and regulated shelters can be managed with veterinary standards, space norms and transparent oversight. India already maintains similar institutions for cattle on a large scale. But if canine facilities are in squalor — which may have motivated the Court to change course — it will be due to the same administrative neglect and policy fragmentation between States that have kept sterilisation coverage from crossing 70% in any major city, and which have been keeping alive fears of other species migrating into the ecological niches dogs once occupied.

Street dogs are woven into India’s urban fabric, even offering companionship to the homeless. Such perspectives deserve a place in cultural discourse but cannot override the human right to access public spaces without fear of injury. Compassion is not annulled if dogs are removed from public roads; they must still be compassionately rehomed, sheltered and, when incurably aggressive or ill, euthanised humanely. A modern statute must replace the outdated Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960. It should classify dogs as adoptable, shelter-bound or unfit and mandate municipal shelters with minimum standards. Crucially, governments should count stray dogs across States and determine the true cost of maintaining shelters rather than chronically underestimating it. This system should also have the support of the national veterinary cadre, better waste management and penalties for abandoning pets. Without these measures, urban India will keep trading visible menace for invisible neglect.