A not-so-new villain on the block is the street dog, also known as the stray dog, the community dog or the free-ranging dog. Several reports in recent months have focussed on instances of children being mauled by packs of dogs. On July 28, two Supreme Court judges took suo motu cognisance of dog bites mentioned in a media report and called them “very disturbing and alarming”.Take another example of the recent accounts of dog attacks in Kerala. The state government has just sanctioned euthanasia of sick and injured dogs following rabies-induced deaths of three children in April and May. Invoking animal husbandry laws, this new order – which the Kerala high court has stayed for the time being – is not without the risk of potential misuse.Here’s a statistic to consider: According to the National Crime Records Bureau data, in 2022, India reported 28,522 murder cases.Good sense dictates that the state and citizenry do not rush to identify and persecute potential murderers. A person who is a murderer is not a representative of the whole population.Incidents of dog bites that have been in the news are indeed tragic. But how does a democratic country with justice as one of its core founding principles deal with the surge in human-animal conflict?Yes, dogs are not the only enemies. Hostilities with cows, monkeys, snakes, cats, elephants, leopards, tigers and many more animals are also on the uptick, thanks to reasons ranging from the extensive loss of wildlife habitats and rapid urbanisation to the rise in both human and animal populations.Should a civilised nation take recourse to inflicting suffering on any creature increasingly labelled dangerous and inconvenient?First, there is an urgent need to examine the imposition of these labels. Dogs may bite in response to a perception of an imminent threat. Some of their driving impulses are to protect their food, their young ones or even their territory.Be that as it may, not all dogs bite. In a report published in Scroll in October 2023, Keren Nazareth of the Indian branch of the Humane Society International, an animal welfare organisation, referred to data from her team’s on-ground assessment of dog bite complaints.“We found that in Lucknow, out of 1,322 dog bite complaints received between April and August in 2023, only 83 were based on actual bite cases,” she said.Dogs have lived alongside humans for centuries. Several scientific studies in recent years have found that the connection between dogs and humans precedes agriculture. Dogs are an integral part of the human landscape.In India, they have lived as successive populations for thousands of years. Paintings in the Bhimbetka rock shelters in Madhya Pradesh, which date back at least 12,000 years, clearly depict bonds between dogs and humans.In small towns, big cities, bazaars, villages, bus depots, suburbs, the edge of forests and even places of worship, dogs can be seen cheek-by-jowl with their human neighbours in all forms of human habitation.Humans have been and continue to be their primary providers of food. For generations, dogs have subsisted mostly on scraps and leftovers from human consumption. Their domestication process shows they depend totally on human generosity.But it is not just food that dogs need from us. In a research article published in the Journal of Experimental Biology in 2017, scientists from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata state that “free-ranging dogs prefer petting over food in repeated interactions with unfamiliar humans”. The IISER scientists arrived at the conclusion that dogs tend to build trust based on affection, not food.Humans, too, especially those who belong to marginalised groups such as people without homes, need street dogs in their midst. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many single women in urban and rural settings tend to these animals by providing them food and medical care. In turn, vulnerable persons get companionship and safety from their canine friends.A widely circulated social media post last year recounted how a street dog in Mumbai saved a woman from being sexually attacked by an assailant.Admittedly, India has seen an increase of almost 70% in dog bite cases between 2022 and 2024.There is no doubt that the issue requires urgent attention. However, a discussion on dog bites is incomplete without a robust conversation on the cruelty meted out to the canine residents of our neighbourhoods.Street dogs often suffer unspeakable violence. Many are thrashed, their puppies poisoned, some are even sexually assaulted. There have been cases where people have thrown boiling water on them, while some have been thrown off high-rise buildings.Neither state governments nor Union ministries have undertaken any research to inquire into the scale of brutality that people heap on dogs.Many would like India to adopt street dog laws prevalent in Western countries. But everything coming from the West need not be the best practice. Most of the over 4,000 animal shelters in a resource-rich country like the US are facing a space crunch, thereby exposing their inability to house all unwanted animals, mostly dogs. Such an approach that puts pressure on an already scarce asset, such as real estate, is untenable.Additionally, street dog laws in the US are built on the cruel foundation of the needless killing of homeless dogs. According to one estimate, that country euthanised as many as 3.34 lakh unowned dogs in 2024.Do we want to replicate the enormity of this injustice and loss of life?It is true that an increase in dog populations in our country and their forming into aggressive packs needs to be seriously addressed.Critics say that the animal birth control (ABC) law, which instructs municipal authorities to sterilise and vaccinate street dogs, has failed. But a law is only as good as its implementation. For example, despite the enactment of the landmark Protection of Women Against Domestic Violence Act, many women in India continue to face cruelty in their marital homes. Should we then clamour to scrap the law?ABC is often flouted by municipality after municipality – the primary agencies supposed to carry it out. Civic bodies put the activities of their veterinary units last in priority. Their reactions to complaints are often populist and knee-jerk. Sometimes the authorities illegally remove dogs from their original areas. They have been accused of even killing large numbers of dogs just to appease angry residents.With inadequate budgetary allocation, untrained staff and sketchy monitoring of municipal facilities, how is ABC expected to yield results?Citizens need to take an active interest in the doings of their municipal bodies and hold them accountable for conducting ABC programs in the prescribed format.Moreover, new ideas are required to more efficiently train the dog-catching staff of civic bodies. The fresh training would help them accurately map dogs in their wards. Also, they should be able to lure the canines successfully into vans meant to take them for sterilisation surgery.Meanwhile, veterinary pharmacologists need to develop animal birth control medicines that could, alongside ABC, help reduce street dog populations.Also, authentic anti-rabies vaccines should be mandatorily available in every nook and corner of the country. Raising awareness about the immediate first aid after a dog bite, which includes washing the wound with soap and water, is equally paramount.We need to find solutions that are not predicated on fear and panic. Even if there is a dread of certain animals among large sections of our society, it can be moderated by the understanding that the animal, too, has the right to exist. The fear of the animal cannot rationalise injustice. One of the most just traits of a civilised nation is to look out for someone who is much lower in the power hierarchy.Therefore, our governments and judiciary must realise that these much-misunderstood and maligned creatures are also worthy of their protection.Anjali Lal Gupta teaches at the Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad.