Sheltering stray dogs is impractical when evidence shows India’s animal birth control rules work

The suggestion in court hearings and in recent media coverage that community dogs are a menace has come as a surprise to many of us working in international dog welfare and public health.

After years of measurable public-health progress, human-canine interactions in India appear to be as compassionate and tolerant as they have ever been.

Yet India is now being told it has a growing “dog problem”

This is not to suggest that there are no challenges – until there are zero human rabies deaths, no one can claim the job is done. But the tone of the debate does not reflect the data nor reality.

Rabies deaths and dog bites in India have declined substantially over the past two decades. A study published in The Lancet: Infectious Diseases in 2025 found that rabies deaths had fallen to around 5,700 per year in 2022 and 2023 as compared to 20,000 deaths per year reported in 2003.

The same study reported a dog bite incidence of 5.6 per 1,000 persons in 2022 and 2023, which is approximately three times lower than the incidence of 15.6 per 1,000 persons reported in 2003 using the same community survey methodology.

The Lancet study also called for accelerated action in India to reach the goal of eliminating rabies infections by 2030. The infection is caused by the rabies virus and transmitted through bites from infected dogs.

There are two key factors to consider.

First, there has been an apparent retreat from implementing the Indian government's Animal Birth Control Rules – capturing community dogs, sterilising and vaccinating them and then returning them to their habitats.

Second, there is a growing – misplaced – conviction that creating shelters for dogs on a large scale is a viable alternative to animal birth control measures.

The work of our organisation Humane World for Animals India in cities such as Vadodara, Dehradun and Lucknow over the past nine years has shown that sterilising 80% of the local stray dog populations led to a noticeable reduction in complaints about dog bites and aggression on helplines.

Similarly, Abodh Aras of the Mumbai-based The Welfare of Stray Dogs wrote in Scroll in August that consistent sterilisation has led to a stable and decreasing population of non-rabid street dogs in the city.

There is certainly a larger conversation to be had about the risks and fears arising from dog bites on passersby but abandoning the proven method of animal birth control in favour of sheltering is impractical and unsustainable.

I empathise with citizens demanding greater action. Nobody wants to fear being bitten by community dogs or rabies, to watch public money being wasted or see animals suffer. But sheltering is being presented as a false solution.

Shelters are governed by a harsh arithmetic of “input” and “output”. Intake into shelters does not stop when animals are rounded up for the first time. Dog populations rebound rapidly through breeding, immigration and abandonment: remove some dogs from the street and others soon take their place, overwhelming shelters quickly.

It also explains why culling is endless and ineffective, and demonstrates how animal birth control measures disrupt this cycle of continual replacement through sterilisation and return to prevent rebound.

The United States offers a sobering lesson in shelter economics. It spends over $3 billion a year on more than 4,000 shelters, serving around six million animals each year. Despite the dedicated efforts of staff and volunteers, over 600,000 dogs and cats are killed annually to make space for more animals relinquished by owners or offloaded by authorities who have removed them from the streets.

Britain is no better. The country has a history of the mass killing of stray dogs, like in the mid-18th century in London. This legacy lingers on in some Commonwealth countries where culling laws persist.

In India, too, the mass killing of stray dogs was regarded as the only viable solution until the introduction of animal birth control rules in 2001. These rules aimed to reduce population size by limiting birth rather than increasing death and followed the epidemiological principle of herd immunity, using the vaccination of dogs as the most effective weapon against rabies virus.

The Animal Birth Control Rules, 2023, strengthen the existing framework while also addressing concerns raised by the Supreme Court.

India's animal birth control measures have inspired similar animal-welfare movements worldwide.

South Asian countries like Thailand, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh follow animal birth control measures, like in India. Bhutan has gone further, with royal leadership and an army of youth workers taking the lead, by claiming to have sterilised and vaccinated 100% of the country's community dog population.

Bhutan had previously tried to shelter stray dogs, which proved expensive and cost the lives of the animals. Culling dogs sporadically also clashed with the country's cultural emphasis on non-violence. The country turned to animal birth control, implementing it nationwide with success.

Where animal birth control is implemented professionally and at sufficient scale, it works.

In India, the challenge lies not in the method but in its inconsistent execution. In some Indian cities, animal birth control is applied reactively, in response to isolated complaints, or ignores entire neighbourhoods.

Other Indian cities have shown that animal birth control measures can reduce dog populations, dog bites and human rabies deaths when implemented comprehensively.

Like in Jaipur, where the efforts of an organisation called Help in Suffering have halved the community dog population since 1996, establishing herd immunity and significantly reducing rabies. A 2013 study found that in Jaipur, dog bites had also declined by more than half over the previous decade, not only because of lower dog numbers but because sterilisation reduces aggressive behaviour.

Seasonal bite analysis showed that many incidents were associated with mothers defending puppies from perceived threats and that widespread sterilisation sharply reduced these situations.

Evidence, ethics, economics

Putting away all stray dogs in shelters ignores the scale, cost and consequences of such an exercise. In the US, the minimum cost of sheltering and adopting a dog starts at around $380, or Rs 34,000, and it rises steeply with length of stay, behavioural and medical needs.

In contrast, most Indian municipalities spend less than Rs 2,000 per dog to sterilise, vaccinate and return a community dog, like in Lucknow, where the municipal corporation got 11,527 dogs sterilised and vaccinated between January-October 2025, paying about Rs 1,250 per dog.

Attempting to shelter India's vast population of community dogs living in public institutions such as schools, hospitals, and temples, is logistically and financially unfeasible, and risks leading to immense animal suffering.

India stands at a point where evidence, ethics and economics converge. The animal birth control framework, imperfectly implemented in some places yet undeniably successful where taken seriously, offers a proven, culturally-aligned public health intervention.

Sheltering is an illusory alternative: financially prohibitive, operationally unmanageable at scale, and unavoidably cruel.

The path forward is not to abandon animal birth control but to professionalise it by ensuring consistent city-wide coverage, sufficient intensity, rigorous monitoring and accountability from municipal authorities.

With political will and proper execution, India can strengthen and surpass the successes already achieved in India and abroad, protecting both people and animals, while staying true to the compassionate principles that inspired animal birth control measures in the first place.

Elly Hiby is the director of the International Companion Animal Management Coalition. Views expressed here are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of ICAM.

Source: Scroll
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