STRAY DOGS AND WASTE MANAGEMENT

• The carrying capacity the ability of a city to support a species is determined by the availability of food and shelter.
• In the absence of these facilities, free-ranging dogs are scavengers that forage around for food, eventually gravitating towards exposed garbage dumping sites.
• Dogs thus congregate around urban dumps, such as landfills, due to feeding opportunities.
• A population boom in Indian cities has contributed to a staggering rise in solid waste.
• Indian cities generate more than 1, 50, 000 metric tonnes of urban solid waste every day.
• According to a United Nations Environment Program 2021 report, an estimated 931 million tonnes of food available to consumers ended up in households, restaurants, vendors and other food service retailers' bins in 2019.
• Indian homes on average generated 50 kg of food waste per person, the report said. This waste often serves as a source of food for hunger-stricken, free-roaming dogs that move towards densely populated areas in cities, such as urban slums which are usually located next to garbage dumping sites and landfills.
• Urban dogs are believed to have a distinct set of traits as compared to rural dogs, as they have "learnt to develop survival techniques in fast-paced, often hostile motorised urban environments", a 2014 study argues.
• Dogs do not usually pose a threat to human well-being and proper management of refuse and a tolerant if not friendly attitude towards dogs can ensure their peaceful coexistence with us.

3. Role of urbanisation

• Cities have witnessed a sharp increase in the stray dog population, which, per the official 2019 livestock census, stood at 1.5 crores.
• However, independent estimates peg the number to be around 6.2 crores.
• The number of dog bites has simultaneously doubled between 2012 and 2020.
• India also shoulders the highest rabies burden in the world, accounting for a third of global deaths caused due to the disease.
• In 2015, a study conducted in 10 Indian metro cities found a strong link between the human population the amount of municipal and food waste generated and the number of stray dogs in the cities.
• It argued, in effect, the present mode of urbanisation and paradigm of development innately promotes urban sprawls, slums, and disparity.
• With the development of cities, managing solid waste has become a daunting challenge and the unconfined and unmanaged leftovers end up aiding the proliferation of stray dogs.
• While there is no evidence to show that a rising population and municipal waste directly led to an increase in dog bites, experts agree there may be a correlation between urbanisation and solid waste production, made visible due to the mismanagement of waste disposal.
• Tepid animal birth control programmes and insufficient rescue centres, in conjunction with poor waste management, result in the proliferation of street animals in India.
• Additionally, most landfills and dumping sites are located on the peripheries of cities, next to slums and settlement colonies.
• Thus, the disproportionate burden of dog bites may also fall on people in urban slums.
• In 2021, 300 people living in Pune's Shivneri Nagar slum.
• In 2020, 17 people, including young children, who lived in Ramabai Nagar, a Slum spread over an area of 120 acres in Ghatkopar East, were bitten by stray dogs.
• A study published in 2016 found that the prevalence of dog bites was higher in urban slums usually located near dumping sites than in rural slums.
• The proximity of residential areas to dumping sites and the rise in dog attacks speak to core issues of unplanned and unregulated urban development, the lack of serviced affordable urban housing for all, the lack of safe livelihood options and improper solid waste management.

4. India Management on the Issue

• India's response to the stray dog menace has relied upon the Animal Birth Control (ABC) programme, through which municipal bodies trap, sterilise and release dogs to slow down the dog population.
• The Second anchor was rabies control measures, including vaccination drives. 
• But implementation suffers from low awareness around the health implications of dog bites, irregular supply of vaccines, delay in seeking treatments and a lack of national policy.