What is the ABC Programme?

The Animal Birth Control (ABC) programme is India’s national approach to managing stray dog populations. Run by municipal corporations, it sterilises and vaccinates stray dogs against rabies, then releases them back to their original location.

The programme exists as a humane, non-lethal alternative to culling — sterilisation reduces population growth over time, and rabies vaccination directly addresses India’s roughly 20,000 rabies deaths a year, about 36% of the global total.

The programme’s biggest operational gap isn’t policy — it’s identity. Once a dog is released, there’s no reliable way to tell it’s already been sterilised or vaccinated. Field teams often can’t distinguish a treated dog from an untreated one, which means resources go toward re-catching dogs that don’t need it, while others are missed entirely.

This is the gap Muzzl’s biometric identity system is built to close — giving every dog registered under the ABC programme a permanent, verifiable record any smartphone can read.