Stray Dog Menace

Urbanisation is an ongoing transformation of traditionalistic rural economies to modern commercial or industrial ones. In 2010, India accounted for 11% of the world’s urban population. The United Nations (UN) projects it to be 15% by 2030. In 2011, India’s urbanisation was 31% with nearly 160 million people living in 53 metropolitan cities. At this rate if urbanisation goes on, in 2031, the urban population may reach 255 million living in 87 metropolitan cities and the overall urbanisation level would reach 50% by 2039 (NIUA 2011).

However, providing essential amenities to the growing urban population, in countries such as India, remains largely a hope. The high-speed urbanisation and spread of urban sprawl lead to extensive growth of slums and consequent poverty, unemployment, exploitation, inequalities, misery and low quality of human life. In effect, the present mode of urbanisation and paradigm of development innately promotes urban sprawls, slums, disparity and extensive public health and environmental issues, especially in thickly populated countries such as India. With development of cities, managing the solid waste has become a daunting challenge and the centralised facilities more often fail in delivering the expected level of service. Thus, the unconfined and unmanaged leftovers aid proliferation of stray dogs and other vermin including some of the dangerous vectors.