Sanitation role of Indian street dogs quantified
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2012:
NEW DELHI–-The Supreme Court of India on September 3, 2012 weighed the ecological and public health role of street animals in a case brought by the nonprofit organization Safai Karmachari Andolan on behalf of the poorest of the poor.
Describing itself as “a national movement committed to the total eradication of manual scavenging and the rehabilitation of all scavengers for dignified occupations,” Safai Karmachari Andolan extracted data from the 2011 national census to show that of 2.6 million public dry latrines still in use in India, 1.3 million discharge illegally into open drains, 794,000 are cleaned manually by humans, and 497,000 are cleaned entirely by animals– mostly dogs and pigs. Read more