Dog bites and rabies cases have been going down. Why is the panic around street dogs on the rise?

By Krithika Srinivasan and V Ramasubramanian

The weeks after the Supreme Court order on street dog removal and the subsequent stay have seen much debate on how street dogs should be managed. Science backs neutering and mass vaccination, while on social media and RWA WhatsApp groups, many people still believe that removal is the only way to reduce their numbers and achieve health goals.

If there is one lesson from the last two decades, it is this: Removal or culling will not work. India stopped culling as an official policy in 2001. Since then, the Indian Livestock Census shows dog populations have fallen dramatically, from 25.5 million in 1997 to 9.4 million in 2019.

Another area of progress has been rabies control. With improvements in human post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP), estimated