The Indian Street dog crisis and multispecies coexistence in tropical urban futures

Nishant Kumar 

Cities in the Global South struggle with human-animal coexistence conundrums, e.g., in South Asia, old and new collide: people raise livestock informally and feed free-ranging animals within heterogeneously developed, juxtaposed patches. Digital economies boom amidst threats from waste piles linked with zoonotic diseases and conflicts, exemplified by the free-ranging dog crises in India. Humanity’s oldest companion now suffers between compassion and rising conflicts. Dogs still scavenge, guard, breed, disperse, and die on streets shaped by traffic, garbage, ritual feeding, and uneven care. Indian Courts, attempting to address the problems, have overlooked the root cause—food subsidies. Sterilisation, shelters, fencing, or removals cannot succeed when urban landscapes provide food subsidies to animals without corresponding responsibility. Episodes of reactive management must yield to urban planning, acknowledging that multispecies communities in shared living spaces are complex and interconnected. I suggest making compassion accountable to public health, animal well-being, and urban ecology.