Free-living dogs and public health in India: What are the connections between public debates and everyday people-dog interactions? ROH-Indies Working Paper 1

The recent years have seen much controversy around street dogs in India, with increasingly polarised debate in public platforms about their impacts on human health and wellbeing, and about how they should be controlled or managed. ROH-Indies has been investigating the intersections between people, street dogs, and health to understand why there is so much polarisation despite a vast corpus of knowledge on rabies and its prevention, and on dog management.

Our ongoing research suggests that achieving health at the society-street dog interface requires a fundamental shift in approach that takes into account the multidimensionality and the contextuality of people-street dog interactions.