Create infrastructure
Build and upgrade the physical means of rescue: shelters, ambulances, mobile clinics and helplines that answer when someone finds an injured animal.
Founder
Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
Founder and chairperson of People for Animals. She started the organisation and built it into India’s largest animal welfare body, with hospitals, shelters, mobile clinics and members in every part of the country.
Compassion without action is evilSmt. Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
Watch
Her, in motion.
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26Animal hospitals
90+PFA units across the country
60Mobile units on the road
1M+Lives touched
In her words
A circle of love around all life.
Her argument starts with self-interest, not sentiment. Every species, from bees to elephants, holds up a shield around human life, and the quality of our own lives rests on theirs. Eat them, exploit them, breed one kind while wiping out another, and the damage lands back on us: as each species goes, our own world gets poorer. Her invitation is simply to join the circle of care around all living things.
People for Animals turned animal welfare in India from a quiet cause into an organised, assertive movement. Its members are lawyers, film actors, business leaders, civil servants, teachers and students. The work runs from shelters and ambulances through to fighting cases in court, training judges, police officers and bureaucrats, and publishing material that teaches people how to care for animals. Its wins have come in courtrooms, in research laboratories, and at racecourses, temples, circuses and zoos.
PFA is now counted among the strongest animal groups anywhere in the world. When the first International Animal Welfare Directory was assembled, its British publishers asked PFA to write the foreword. In 2001 the first Padma Shri awarded in this field went to a PFA member, Dr Norma Alvares.
What she set out to build.
The strategy behind the organisation, and the target it still works towards: an animal welfare centre in every district in India, of which there are now about 800.
Influence policy
Work as a pressure group for legislation that protects animals and the environment, rather than waiting for it to arrive on its own.
Make the law bite
Take direct action through PFA units nationwide, so that animals are protected in practice and offenders actually face consequences.
Educate and sensitise
Animal welfare groups in schools and colleges, training for lawyers, police, the judiciary and civil servants, and published guides on animal care.
Advance the movement
Work alongside Indian and international welfare groups, fund initiatives that deserve it, and open real career paths in animal welfare.
Change what we eat
Make the health, environmental and economic case for plant-based choices, and find and promote alternatives that use no animals at all.
Rapid Response · the app
Someone is already close.
An animal needs help. One tap, and the closest people know.
- SOS
- For what can’t wait. Hit and bleeding. A feeder under attack. Everyone nearby sees it at once.
- Ask the district
- For everything else. A blood donor. A foster for a week. A vet you can trust.
Free, always. English and हिंदी. Your name stays yours. An independent community initiative by RapidResponse Labs, not affiliated with any government authority.
Carry it on
Compassion, then action.
The organisation she started runs on gifts from people who will never meet the animals they help. A single gift covers food, treatment and a place to sleep for an animal who had none of the three this morning.