For a very long time, humanity believed that the precondition for speeding into modernity was to tame or wield control over the environment and the non-human animal. And for a very long time, they succeeded, causing such calamitous conditions that the Earth was propelled into the Anthropocene, an era that was named for the massive human impact on our climate and our ecosystems.
And for a very long time, there was no other perceivable way to exist, especially in an urban environment. Resources were thin and communities had to narrow their lens to survival. We didn’t have the wherewithal to debate questions of animal welfare, when we were scrabbling to fill our own stomachs adequately.
But along the way, something changed. Societies grew ever more prosperous, and in so doing, widened their window of welfare. There is an entire body of knowledge now that looks at sentience and questions human exceptionalism. But this was all abstract until the culture of pet ownership took firm root, especially during the pandemic. As a result, some amount of financial capital is being joggled loose for the purposes of animal welfare — and it is arriving in the form of technology, corporate money, and community infrastructure that would have been unthinkable a generation ago.
A fair number of urban Indians now believe that we have a responsibility towards animals of every ilk. The question is far larger than vegetarianism and veganism (an already fraught subject in a country riven with caste and class prejudice).
Through environmental laws, nature reserves, sanctuaries and shelters, we have begun to deliberately curtail some of our domination of the environment.
A sliver of this benevolence appears to be extending to our free living canines and felines, with citizen-funded animal shelters and NGOs (admittedly always starved for funds) cropping up around the country. WhatsApp groups are formed with a view to bring together like-minded citizens who care about strays and animal adoptions. And technology is playing a part equally, with Mumbai’s Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation rolling out QR-coded reflective collars for vaccinated and sterilized stray dogs.
In the same vein, Delhi-based Aseem Gupta’s venture, Marshi, developed a patented microchip for free living dogs that tracked their health and location. And now a plethora of citizen-created apps have entered the playing field. Emergency response has gone digital through platforms like Jeev, which lets users upload photos and live GPS pins of injured animals to alert nearby rescuers and vets, and Let It Wag, which connects rescuers with foster homes and crowdfunds emergency surgeries. PawPew has built an AI first-aid guide to walk untrained bystanders through critical care before professionals arrive.
Disproportionately though, the burden appears to fall on to the individual. Corporate social responsibility, mandated by the government of India, still allocates only the skinniest of amounts — roughly 1.5%, or about ₹315 crore out of ₹30,000 crore.
Anant Ambani’s (extremely controversial) sanctuary is apparently his pet project. And the Tata Group of Companies has folded animal welfare into its CSR to some extent. Amongst other things, the late Chairman, Ratan Tata, an enormous dog lover, constructed a climate controlled room in the Tata head office in Mumbai, for strays to come and go as they please. One of his indies, Goa, became quite the Internet darling for a while. Another Tata property, the Taj Bengal, is famous for taking care of Thumki, a community doggy, who has become a part of the hotel’s ethos.
Taken together then, the trajectory appears to be shifting. With more wealth comes more welfare, and the collars, microchips, apps, and CSR line items point to the same underlying force: as India gets richer, it is choosing to spend some of that wealth on animals it once could only afford to ignore.
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