Delhi's stray dog crisis grows as poor waste control and weak sterilization let numbers rise. Once man's best friend, can dogs and people find balance again?

New Delhi

Delhi is home to an estimated one million stray dogs, creating a complex urban ecosystem where humans and animals coexist. Recent rabies cases, including the death of a young girl, have intensified public concern and debate over the dangers posed by street dogs. However, official figures indicate that rabies deaths are significantly lower than often reported in the media.

Experts highlight that poor waste management, climate change, and changes in urban development have contributed to the growing stray dog population and related issues. While the World Health Organization supports sterilisation and vaccination as humane solutions, implementation in Delhi has faced challenges. Local initiatives, such as community-based sterilisation and feeding programs, are showing promise, and new regulations aim to improve oversight and promote coexistence between people and animals.

Delhi’s stray dog dilemma: rabies, reform, and coexistence

In India's capital, Delhi, the human population coexists with dogs, monkeys, and other animals. A fragile urban ecosystem that is close to crisis. Why? The main issue is the masses of stray dogs, numbering an estimated one million. As they merely try to survive, they pose a danger to humans. In July 2025, a six-year-old girl died of rabies after being bitten by a dog in Delhi. The case sparked public outrage and a media storm and unleashed renewed debate on the dangers of street dogs. The facts are actually different from what is being portrayed in the media. Now, their numbers, they say that there are 20,000 deaths due to rabies. The parliamentary figures say that the deaths due to rabies are about 56 in the entire country. Now, of course, every death is a problem, right, so we're not trivializing this. Humans and dogs did once peacefully coexist here, a balance that Asher Yasodosh wants to restore. He advises authorities on animal welfare and runs a shelter on Delhi's outskirts where dogs roam freely. For him, animals aren't the problem, part of a long shared history, one that has been positive for millennia. Delhi's canine population has grown sharply in recent decades. Once people respected and fed them, valuing how they kept rats out of temples and pests out of neighborhoods. But Delhi mushroomed. Its human population grew tenfold over the last 50 years. As new, anonymous neighborhoods sprang up, the bond with dogs shifted. Once friends, they came to be seen as threatening packs and potential disease spreaders. Generally, a dog bites because during mating season, when males are fighting over females, so they get really aggressive at that point in time, and generally when a human passes by, humans can get bitten as well. Once a female dog has puppies, again, she tends to get aggressive because she's protecting her puppies. Another factor is human-caused climate change, which has been turning up the summer temperatures in Delhi. The resulting heat stress affects dogs too, weakening their immune system and making them more aggressive. Then there is the urban ecosystem. When stray dogs are hungry, they might resort to eating birds or hedgehogs. In Delhi's poor garbage management doesn't help either. The city generates over 11,000 tons of unsegregated solid waste every day. Dump yards are like open buffets for stray animals. Even if it is very toxic and full of plastics and inappropriate food, it will still be a source of food and you will continue to have dogs milling around waste hotspots, around garbage vulnerable points, and as a result, no plan around dogs will ever work if you cannot manage your waste. Waste dumps act as feeding grounds for the strays, but are also a hotbed for rodents and other pests as well as monkeys, all scavenging for scraps. Bringing dogs elsewhere as a quick fix only heightens the risk of rabies exposure when other carriers then move in. If you relocate dogs, like a lot of people say remove these dogs, if you remove them then these wild animals or dogs from outside that are going to come will not find these dogs to protect us. They will instead come and bite us, so the instances of rabies would actually go up. Rabies is one of the biggest fears linked to stray dogs. It's a zoonotic disease spreading from animals to humans. Rabies poses a real lethal threat when people do not get treatment after being bitten. While rabies is almost nearly always fatal, it's 100% preventable. So as soon as a dog bites, I think there are some protocols that have to be followed. The first thing is you need to wash the wound in running water for 15 minutes with soap and then you need to obviously go consult a doctor, get immediate post-bite vaccines and do whatever the doctor suggests. So don't take it lightly. How can the urban ecosystem regain its old balance? The WHO backs a so-called animal birth control programme as the only humane and effective way using sterilisation and vaccination. But in Delhi, it's poorly implemented, limited by too few trained staff, poor hygiene and weak oversight. The result has been a careless, badly administered programme which has not achieved full efficiency and it has caused enormous cruelty to dogs who are taken, operated under less than perfect conditions, suffer broken stitches, intestines that fall out, early releases. In the north of the city, one animal birth control centre is trying a different approach. In a local NGO neighbourhood, VOOF sterilises up to 300 dogs a month and maintains a registry to monitor the animals' vaccination and health. This is what we need. People counting their local dogs, people who live in the area should be included in a census. And now it's so easy, as I said, with technology. So that's the role we are trying to play, bring in caregivers to the programme and also improve the programme at the state municipal level. Neighbourhood VOOF joined forces with a local cafe to launch Feeding Forward, a programme that distributes surplus food to street dogs. The idea is to reduce both waste and animal aggression, boosting public safety and public sympathy for the dogs. Regular feeding builds trust towards humans, which in turn makes sterilisation and vaccination easier. In September 2025, the authorities introduce new rules, designated feeding spots, mandatory registration and a monitoring body for sterilisation programmes. In the long term, it's about co-existence, with that precious urban ecosystem depending on humans taking care of both the dogs and their own responsibilities.

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