India Karuna Collaborative launched to address ‘invisible animal cruelty’

IKC has brought together more than 50 organisations and over 70 leaders from business, science, public health, and civil society who believe that “this invisible population represents a missing and critical dimension in the country’s development story”

Mumbai: With the aim of integrating animal welfare into the country’s climate, public health, policy framework, and economic development agenda, the India Karuna Collaborative (IKC), a first-of-its-kind national platform to address “invisible animal cruelty”, was launched in Mumbai on Wednesday.

Mumbai, Mar 11 (ANI): Co-founder of the Blue Cross of Hyderabad Amala Akkineni, former director of ICMR-NIN R. Hemalatha, trustee of People for Animals Gauri Maulekhi, and others during the India Karuna Collaborative launch, in Mumbai on Wednesday. (ANI Photo) (Sandip Mahankal)

IKC has brought together more than 50 organisations and over 70 leaders from business, science, public health, and civil society who believe that “this invisible population represents a missing and critical dimension in the country’s development story”.

According to IKC, more than 1.5 billion farm animals, including cows, hens, pigs, and aquacultured fish, are embedded in India’s daily economic and food systems.

In his keynote address, Harsh Mariwala, founder and chairman of FMCG giant Marico and mentor to IKC, spoke of building markets and products that make humane choices easier, affordable and mainstream.

“IKC is not asking India to simply ‘care more’. It is asking India to design better so that care becomes embedded in how we produce, consume, regulate and innovate. Over the years, whether in business or philanthropy, I’ve come to believe that purpose is not a slogan. Purpose is a discipline. It changes what you invest in, what you measure, and what you build,” he said.

The organisation seeks to raise awareness, foster collaboration, and shift public and policy narratives toward a more integrated understanding of human, animal, and planetary wellbeing.

The launch event on Wednesday also saw the release of The Interconnected Crisis: Animal Welfare, Human Health, and Climate Change in India, a position paper that established the interlinkages at the root of food systems that have evolved without recognising animals as sentient beings.

“What makes this interconnected crisis so hard to address is that so much of it is invisible by design,” said Motilal Oswal, founder and managing director of Motilal Oswal Financial Services Limited and mentor to IKC.

“We measure the output of milk, eggs, and meat, but we don’t measure pain. And yet, the scale of the pain is staggering: India’s farmed animal population includes hundreds of millions of hens and bovines, millions of goats, sheep, pigs, and trillions of fish,” he added.

During a panel discussion titled “One Health. One Planet. One Economy. One Blind Spot”, Sanjiv Mehta, executive chairman of private equity firm L Catterton India, said that as meat production and antibiotic use continue to rise, the economic and public health costs could be enormous.

“Businesses, therefore, have a responsibility to build supply chains with purpose, applying the same ethics, transparency, and sustainability standards that we bring to brands. Ultimately, a healthy society and a sustainable ecosystem are fundamental to long-term business success,” he said.

Stating that the issue of antimicrobial resistance is not getting urgent attention despite an acknowledgement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Gauri Maulekhi, trustee at NGO People for Animals, who was also a panellist, said that nearly 70% of the world’s antibiotics are used in animal agriculture, largely because animals are kept in intensive, crowded conditions where disease spreads easily.

“From antibiotic-laden feed for farmed animals to practices like sewage-fed fish farming seen in parts of India, antibiotics are increasingly used to sustain industrial food production. While this system keeps costs low, the long-term price is far higher, accelerating antimicrobial resistance and the emergence of deadly superbugs,” added Maulekhi.