Dogs in India – The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Dogs in India

Encountering street pets around the world can be confronting. We often want to help but don’t know what to do. Here Deepak Sharma of India Pups tells Pet Problems Solved all about the dogs of India – the good, the bad and the ugly!

Dogs in India – The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Teams of nurses and even foreign vets stand by, offering state-of-the-art healthcare to a lucky few pets whose owners can afford it. In a country where millions survive on less than $2 a day – Acupuncture, blood filtration, kidney cleanses are available for dogs in India.

There are dogs who often live better than most of India’s human children. Roam around in major Indian cities and you will find 24-Hour pet hospitals, dog spas and an abundance of dog supplies. You are left wondering, that if spread out evenly, what could this massive imbalance of funds do for all the rabid, diseased, or simply homeless strays in the country?

The pampered pet dogs are but a small minority. And even within this small segment of dogs who find a home – mistreatment is rampant. Plenty of regions have a culture where dog fighting is considered a sign of toughness, where a beaten dog is a liability to be put down. There are others who find nothing wrong in chaining up a dog all day, feeding it scraps and neglecting all health problems. Dogs who become too much of a hassle are left on road to fend for themselves.

To put it mildly, in a country where human rights is a relatively new concept – animal rights is tragically a laughing matter. This is true for both pets and stray dogs. However, we will focus on the plight of stray dogs in this article, for this is where the situation is even more grave.

Rules: Absent, confused, and never enforced.

Every major country in the world maintains different rules regulating domestic pets.

Take the United States – though millions of domesticated animals are ‘humanely’, painlessly ‘put to sleep’ annually, strict animal abuse and cruelty laws are maintained with harsh punishments for violators. Cases of animal torture seldom make the news, and perpetrators are labelled mentally disturbed when they do.

Other countries maintain animal shelters, offering millions of homeless dogs a last chance at adoption before they are put down. Sometimes stray dogs are even lucky enough to land themselves in strict ‘no kill’ shelters, but most don’t. (One would wonder why large-scale breeding continues unchecked while so many completely healthy and perfectly socialized animals are put down simply because there is no room for them, but such is the nature of human greed).

This is not the case in India. Definition of animal care laws and their implementation is the first hurdle where India falls woefully short.

India is estimated to house over 30 million stray dogs, and the number is growing. In this case, ‘stray’ doesn’t mean homeless, sheltered dogs. Stray dogs represent (often feral) animals allowed to roam the streets freely. Outrageously inhumane acts of violence (a painful example) and torture are considered commonplace in many areas, people often encouraged to eliminate the stray ‘pest’ who has become a nuisance.

Though animal cruelty and torture is illegal throughout the country, the penalties that most violators face are ridiculously low. According to the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, transport of any animal in any manner that may cause unnecessary suffering is punishable by up to INR 100 and/or up to three months in jail. This may seem harsh to some until you consider that not only is INR 100 the equivalent of $1.54 in US currency. And even this petty amount will likely go in the policeman’s pocket. Rampant corruption makes sure that such cases are never registered, let alone the culprit being punished.

Similarly, A 2001 law forbade the killing of dogs in India, leading to a massive buildup in stray dogs countrywide. The law is mostly on paper though, because local municipalities give out tenders to contractors to catch & release stray dogs in other locations. The contractors find it easier to simply kill the dogs and the authorities turn a blind eye. Their only concern is to make some money out of the whole exercise.

In several areas, vigilantes are being encouraged to ‘eliminate’ these unfortunate pests by the hundreds, despite the laughable punishment they may face. It isn’t at all uncommon to see mobs beating animals to death in some areas. Suffice to say, animal torture and abuse is far more common than any dog lover would want to believe.

According to the New York Times, no country on earth has as many stray dogs as India.

The apathy/ ignorance continues in government as well: A member of the Punjab Legislative Assembly proposed in June 2012 sending strays to China — where dogs are sometimes eaten — after more than 15,000 people in the state reported being bitten last year (HARRIS, GARDINER) .