The number that explains everything
A female dog, left unsterilised, can produce two litters a year. Each litter averages six to eight pups. Factor in her female offspring doing the same, and the arithmetic becomes staggering within three to four years. The WHO has estimated India's stray dog population at roughly 35 million, the highest of any country. Municipal corporations have run culling programmes for decades. The population kept climbing. The reason is biological, not bureaucratic: killing strays does not suppress reproduction in the surviving population. It accelerates it. Fewer dogs competing for the same food territory means surviving females breed faster and at higher rates. The only intervention that actually bends the curve is sterilisation, and that is where rescue organisations have quietly built something the government model structurally cannot.
