On the same day that a bench of Justices of the Supreme Court of India (namely Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta, and N V Anjaria) refused to soften its directions for the removal of stray dogs from public spaces, a Union Minister was elsewhere extolling the virtues of India’s coexistence-based approach to managing human-wildlife conflict.
This paradox is not accidental. It is a precise illustration of a policy contradiction that India has long refused to acknowledge.
Canine, begone
The Supreme Court, in a judgment delivered on May 19, 2026, declined to recall or modify its earlier directions requiring stray dogs picked up from hospitals, schools, bus stands, railway stations, airports, and other public places to be confined to shelters rather than released back to the same locations. The bench dismissed a cluster of applications filed by animal welfare groups seeking to restore the status quo.
The court noted, in language that left little room for ambiguity, that the menace of dog bites had assumed alarming proportions. It referred to incidents in which children had been mauled, elderly citizens attacked, and international travellers bitten in public spaces including airports. The bench invoked Article 21, affirming that the constitutional right to life necessarily includes the right to move through public spaces without the constant threat of a physical attack.
The directions go further than shelter confinement. States and Union Territories have been directed to establish at least one Animal Birth Control centre per district, ensure adequate availability of anti-rabies vaccines, and allow euthanasia for rabid or demonstrably aggressive animals. Officials implementing these directions have been shielded from FIRs or criminal complaints. High Courts have been asked to register suo motu cases to monitor compliance. The message from the apex court is unambiguous: the state has failed, and that failure will no longer be tolerated.
The calculus of India’s coexistence approach
Elsewhere, Union Minister Bhupender Yadav reiterated India’s commitment to what the government describes as “coexistence-based management of human-wildlife interactions”. The language is warm and ecologically conscious, invoking shared responsibility, community participation, and the ancient Indian cultural tradition of living in harmony with the natural world. It is language deployed consistently at forums focused on tigers, leopards, elephants, and sloth bears.
The contradiction embedded in these two simultaneous positions reflects a structural hierarchy in how the Indian state assigns value to animal life. When the animal in question is a charismatic wild species, the coexistence framework applies. Forest communities displaced from tiger reserves are asked to tolerate predation. Farmers on the edges of national parks are advised to build fences and exercise patience. The losses incurred by those who live alongside dangerous wild animals are framed as the price of conservation. After all, every action draws a reaction, whether from a human or an animal.
When the animal in question is a stray dog, however, the calculus changes entirely. The dog, despite being a creature shaped over millennia by human settlement and sustained by human waste, does not qualify for the protections of the coexistence framework. The Supreme Court’s order treats the stray dog population not as a wildlife challenge to be managed through coexistence, but as an administrative failure to be corrected through removal.
There is a legitimate argument for human safety that cannot be dismissed. The court’s observations are grounded in documented reality. The failure of the Animal Birth Control programme, described by the court itself as sporadic, underfunded, and uneven, is a genuine governance deficiency. The state’s inaction has produced a situation in which the suffering is real, the urgency is justified, and the burden of care has fallen on the public.
But the question that neither the court’s order nor the minister’s statement addresses is why the same state that deploys sophisticated frameworks for tolerating dangerous wildlife encounters in forests is unable to apply comparable rigour to managing stray animals in cities. The coexistence vocabulary, when applied to wild animals, is accompanied by dedicated budgets, institutional infrastructure, and international partnerships. The stray dog problem, by contrast, has been handled through neglect, litigation, and now judicial compulsion.
Selective coexistence at play
The answer, perhaps, lies in who bears the costs. Coexistence with wildlife is a burden placed disproportionately on forest-edge communities that lack the political voice to resist it. The demand for stray dog removal comes from urban constituencies with considerably more access to the courts and the press. Policy, as ever, follows power.
India cannot claim to be a nation that values coexistence while applying the principle selectively based on species and social class. If coexistence is a genuine governing philosophy, it must be applied consistently, adequately resourced, and held to account when it fails. If it is merely a narrative deployed at international conservation forums, that too deserves to be said plainly.
