Sterilize, Vaccinate, Protect

Srinagar's streets have long struggled with stray dog menace. The municipal estimates vary, but even conservative figures suggest tens of thousands of dogs roam the city. Rising number of dog bites, some of them fatal, have made this an urgent public issue. The Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) has now launched an ambitious plan to sterilize and vaccinate over 21,000 stray dogs in the next 16 months.

This campaign deserves both praise and public cooperation. For far too long, the debate around stray dogs has swung between extremes, calls for mass culling on one hand and blanket inaction on the other. Neither approach is humane, scientific, or effective. What the SMC is attempting under the Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules, 2023, is a middle path grounded in experience: controlling the population by sterilization, protecting public safety through vaccination, and returning the animals to their original locations rather than dumping them elsewhere.

Sterilization is not a quick fix. It does not“remove” dogs overnight, but it steadily reduces their numbers and prevents the uncontrolled breeding that fuels the problem. Vaccination, meanwhile, addresses the most dreaded fear, rabies, which SMC rightly clarifies has not been detected among Srinagar's stray dogs. These facts need to be understood and repeated, because public panic often thrives on misinformation.

Unfortunately, mistrust between citizens and civic authorities has slowed such initiatives. Recent resistance to sterilization teams, fueled by baseless rumors that the dogs were being killed for meat, shows how badly transparency is needed. SMC's decision to digitally track operations through a mobile application is a welcome step. Every dog caught, sterilized, vaccinated, and released is recorded, reducing any scope for malpractice and reassuring citizens that no cruelty is being done in the shadows.

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