Manu Joseph: Why the poor remain unseen casualties amid India’s raging dog debate

Awaiting the order are two warring sides. One group of people believes that stray dogs belong on the streets, with humans, free and fed by their lovers. The other group seems to despise stray dogs but I think their real bone to pick is with dog-lovers. They want the dogs removed from the roads, and for this they have discovered a sudden and uncharacteristic love for India’s poor, who are the primary victims of dog bites as they are fully exposed to Indian street life.

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Most civilian wars in societies across the world are between these two kinds of people. 

Those who stand for values, who have moral clarity on the matter because they will face no consequences, and who are thus able to say all the right things, which are easy to defend on camera. 

And the other side that is practical, and wants to live in a convenient way and for which they know that some values need to be compromised. They cannot easily argue their moral ambiguity  in public and have to deploy the plight of the poor. 

But what they believe in is usually what many people say privately. They want stray dogs gone but do not want to be directly responsible for that because they don’t want to pay a price for it in the afterlife. The second group might well be most of India. The first makes most of the noise.

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The stray dog issue has appeared in Indian courts for years, with the victories mostly going the way of stray dogs. But a few days ago, a Supreme Court bench on its own accord took up the matter of the dangers of stray dogs, especially deaths from rabies, and ruled that all strays, probably a million, in the National Capital Region must be taken off the roads and put in shelters, which do not exist today in sufficient numbers. 

The problem is that if stray dogs do have a right to life, then they belong on the roads. As in, they are not meant to be in shelters with hundreds of other dogs—that would be a brutally feral world. Another bench heard an appeal and, at the time of writing this piece, was yet to announce its decision.

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By the standards of conflicts in Indian middle-class society, this is one with useful consequences for the poor. Usually, Indians waste a lot of emotion on useless things, by which I mean issues that will not improve the abysmal quality of life in India.

The issue is morally complex. Guardians of stray dogs deny the scale of the problem. They say the numbers of dog bites and rabies deaths are exaggerated, and that stray dogs don’t attack without reason. But this is unlikely to be the view of most Indians. Dogs are a danger, especially to children, disabled and the old. Like people, they are endearing when powerless. But, at the slightest whiff of an upper hand, as in the presence of a scared child, they are beasts. 

Also, Indians have died from dog bites despite being administered the anti-rabies vaccine. This could be because of the inconsistent refrigeration of vaccines. So, if you are a person who has to walk home down narrow lanes, especially at night, or go on a bike, there is a real fear of death upon the sight of half a dozen dogs sitting peacefully at a road junction. It really is not about the chances of dog bite, but about the miasma of a reasonable fear.

Seen this way, stray dogs don’t belong on the roads. But then, seen from the point of view of dogs, they belong out in the open. To an extent, they have better lives than house pets that are locked up most of the time and whose only luxury is that they are fed well. I have seen house dogs moan in envy, perhaps, at stray dogs.

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The government has failed to do the humane thing to reduce the population of strays—sterilization. In any case, sterilization works best for pets, or on a small scale, and not for a city-wide reduction of the canine population.

Besides, the government can barely fix roads; we cannot expect it to do difficult things, like finding humane ways to keep the number of urban dogs down. This leaves us with inhumane solutions, like dumping them all in something that we call a ‘shelter’ for our own comfort.

As of now, stray dogs are protected by exemplary laws. This has angered people. I feel many developed a greater anger for stray dogs chiefly because of their annoyance with the moral swag of some animal activists.

Usually, when a moral idea irritates people, only politicians speak for them. So, in the past few days, politicians have raged against dogs. Some, like Rahul Gandhi, had the courage to take a political risk and say that “voiceless souls" are “not the problems to be erased." He said, “Blanket removals are cruel, short-sighted, and strip us of compassion. We can ensure public safety and animal welfare go hand in hand."

But there is no such solution, especially a short-term solution. In any moral debate, it would be very lazy not to factor in the incompetence of Indian local government officials. Sterilization is, therefore, just not practical.

I feel that nothing will come of this issue immediately because India rarely solves its difficult problems. So the dogs are safe for now. And the core of the problem will continue—the poor will pay a price as one segment of the country’s elite fight for the meaning of being human.

The author is a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. His latest book is ‘Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us.’