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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Battle over cattle -Himanshu Upadhyaya

Battle over cattle -Himanshu Upadhyaya

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published Published on Jul 5, 2017   modified Modified on Jul 5, 2017
-GovernanceNow.com

Banning cattle slaughter, like demonetisation, may deliver political gains but will hit the rural economy hard

More than a century ago, a team of officials from Brazil toured some villages of Kheda district, in central Gujarat. They had come to procure breeding bulls of the famous Kankreji breed, notes Bhailal Patel, a charismatic institution-builder who was also the first leader of opposition in Gujarat assembly, in his memoirs. It was of course a different India the Brazilians encountered. Cattle in those days were sold and procured without the paperwork to prove that the purchase was being made for purposes other than slaughter. It was a time when nutritionists had started calling milk a complete food and it was creating a niche in the food basket of people.

Not that there were no animal rights activists around then and prevention of cruelty against animals was an unheard-of phrase. On the contrary, there were several of them – the first Society for Prevention of Cruelty against Animals was founded in Calcutta in 1861 by Colesworthey Grant, and there exists a memorial for her in front of Writers’ Building – but they lobbied the government for ensuring the welfare of animals without the nefarious intent of interfering with people’s dietary choices or imposing vigilante ideas on minorities that derive their livelihoods from livestock.
 
If one looks carefully in the archives, even as a cow protection movement took roots in north India, livestock experts within the British establishment and commissariat were debating questions such as ‘What good does a cattle show do in India?’ They considered whether to impose an embargo on the export of live animals of certain breeds of cattle or not. The Indian branch of the Humanitarian League started publishing several documents that focused on vegetarianism and cow protection. However, the drumming up of hysteria around cattle slaughter and vigilantism had not surfaced without sane voices articulating checks – be it Ram Mohan Roy writing in defence of beef-eating or MK Gandhi articulating a non-fanatic version of championing the cause of the cow in his Hind Swaraj.
 
On May 23 this year, the ministry of environment issued ‘Rules on prevention of cruelty to animals (regulation of livestock market)’ with the purported aim of regulating animal markets. When one reads the rules – notwithstanding the lame efforts from union ministers to issue clarifications – one is left with the feeling that these are drafted by overzealous persons with misplaced notions of what constitutes the welfare of livestock and livestock owners.
 
Clause 22 has been the one that has come under close scrutiny, and not without reason. With a single stroke of the pen, it seeks to restructure all the animal markets in the country where animals are to be traded exclusively for “agricultural purposes” and not for slaughter. Notwithstanding finance minister Arun Jaitley’s clarifications, please read clause 22 along with the clause 2 (b), which contains a very expansive definition of what all places are construed as ‘animal market’ – it even includes “any lairage [that is, where cattle may be rested on the way to a slaughterhouse] adjoining a market or a slaughterhouse”!
 
The overzealousness is also visible when one read clause 2 (e) that states, “cattle means a bovine animal including bulls, bullocks, cows, buffalos, steers, heifers and calves and includes camels” (emphasis added). The inspiration for making sure that all these animals that clause 2 (e) defines as cattle must be traded at animal market exclusively for ‘agricultural purposes’ is said to have its origins in the directive principles of the Indian constitution. The deceit becomes obvious when one reads the directive principle and finds no mention of buffalo and camel there.
 
So, why were camels and buffaloes added in the definition of cattle? The camel population of India is concentrated in Rajasthan and one district of Gujarat. Camels are critically endangered in parts of Jammu and Kashmir. Their numbers have been declining: there were 10 lakh head in 1992, but the number shrunk to 4 lakh in 2012. In 2014, Rajasthan declared camel the “state animal” and a year later promulgated the Rajasthan Camel (Prohibition of Slaughter and Regulation of Temporary Migration) Bill. However, Ilse Köhler-Rollefson, a prominent expert who has worked among Rajasthan camel breeders and herders, points out that “this does not provide a solution to the key issues behind the crisis”.

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GovernanceNow.com, 21 June, 2017, http://www.governancenow.com/news/regular-story/battle-over-cattle


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