The Fight Over Delhi's Street Dogs Is Dividing India

A sudden court order has turned into a test of the country's megacities.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
A sudden order to round up Delhi street dogs is
Dividing India by Dan stromph read by Ramesh Medani. Ritti
Sahai doesn't hesitate when asked how many dogs she feeds
every day in and around New Delhi. The answer is
approximately fifty. There are the dogs that live outside her
office and the ones roaming her neighborhood. They are those

(00:22):
that trot alongside her during marathon training runs, often for
miles at a time, my security, she calls them. And
then at home there are her two pets, Kookie and Cooper.
I insure, irrespective of where I am on the planet,
I feed them or they're taken care of, says Sahai,
a forty eight year old entrepreneur. All they need is

(00:44):
a little pet, a little bit of food here and there,
nothing else. Sahai inhabits a role not uncommon in India,
self appointed caretaker of street dogs. Along with chai stalls,
honking motorbikes and roving cows, street are ubiquitous in New Delhi.
They roam its neighborhoods and patrol its sparks in packs.

(01:07):
They congregate patiently outside restaurants in hopes of cadging leftovers.
They snooze blissfully on its sidewalks and busy roads, sometimes
right in the middle of them at rush hour as
motorized rickshaws carefully maneuver around them. Many are looked after
by neighborhoods or groups of households, occupying a status somewhere

(01:28):
between pet and stray. So it's not surprising that the
Indian capital has been in a state of convulsions since
the Supreme Court this month abruptly handed down and then
just as abruptly walked back a controversial order round up
every street dog in New Delhi and surrounding cities, sterilize
them and place them in shelters within eight weeks, never

(01:51):
to wander the streets again. India Supreme Court has the
unusual power to intervene in matters of public interest if
it decides a problem has gotten out of hand, even
if no petition has come before it. The result can
be out of the blue rulings that sometimes provoke an
intense public backlash. In this case, the pretext for the

(02:12):
court's order was a July twenty eighth article in the
Times of India describing the dog mauling death of a
six year old girl in New Delhi. After the ruling,
dog lovers quickly took to the streets, branding the decision
in humane and logistically impossible for a city that struggles
to provide basic services. Many feared it amounted to an

(02:32):
unofficial death sentence for Deli's canines. Given the shortage of
shelters and the tight timeline to implement the decision, activists
argued that the government should instead follow the National Animal
Birth Control program dating back to two thousand and one
that calls for sterilizing dogs and returning them to their
place of pick up. But the Supreme Court said that

(02:54):
the program was failing and decried the ever increasing population
of stray dogs in uns. It pointed to data showing
that reported dog bites in the city climbed to more
than twenty five thousand last year, up almost fourfold since
twenty twenty two, though activists dispute the accuracy of those figures.
Some citizens have leapt to the Court's defense, labeling the

(03:18):
pro dog faction as elitist and out of touch with
the realities of city living. The dog lovers who cry
horse about compassion are the same people buying foreign breeds
to keep them in luxury houses, which are well looked
after by expensive vets. Indian filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma said
in a post on x after the court's initial ruling,

(03:39):
just tried to tell the dog lovers to take stray
dogs in exchange for their pedigreed breeds. In Neuder, a
city just southeast of New Delhi, also covered by the
court's order, protesters gathered last week outside an upscale shopping
mall to chant slogans and wave signs opposing the dog
round up. Satar Kori, a twenty five year old business owner,

(04:00):
that he and his friends had begun nightly patrols to
protect dogs from pick up crews, though they hadn't encountered
any such cruise yet. Auri said he cares for about
ten dogs with other people in the neighborhood. They're kind
of our family, he said. The street dog challenge points
to deeper problems facing the nation. India may be the

(04:20):
world's fastest growing major economy, but its cities are also
among the most polluted, clogged with traffic, and battered by
flooding and extreme heat. With chronic shortages of electricity, water,
and sanitation. Municipalities from New Delhi to Mumbai and Bengaluru
are sliding into a livability crisis. By some measures, the

(04:41):
problem is just beginning. Most of India's one point four
billion people still live in villages, and urban migration is
expected to accelerate as the economy grows. The World Bank
estimated in July that India's urban population will double to
almost a billion people by twenty fifty. Indian cities will

(05:02):
be unable to reach their full potential if they stay
on their current development trajectory, the Bank said. In New
Delhi rage gave way to relief last week after the
Supreme Court backtracked on its initial order decreeing that street
dogs should be rounded up, sterilized and vaccinated, but then
returned to the sites where they were picked up. It

(05:24):
expanded the new order to cover the entire country. Still,
the reversal was a victory for the city's dog lovers.
Shelters are not a solution, Unbica Shuckler, a trustee at
welfare group People for Animals, said at a press conference
after the court's new order. Shelters are expensive, they're difficult
to manage, and they become hotspots for disease and cruelty.

(05:47):
Shukla helps oversee one of the few privately run shelters
around New Delhi, the Duladi Animal Care Center, on a
quiet plot of government land and Noida, where about one
hundred street dogs roam and open air pens. Some are
recovered from injuries after being attacked by humans or hit
by vehicles. The center aims to rehabilitate them as quickly
as possible and then return them to the streets. Give

(06:10):
us the same resources, give us the same authority, Schuchler said,
we will in one year give you one hundred percent sterilization.