-The Telegraph New Delhi: Amid cow vigilantism, a professor of economics specialising in agrarian issues today wondered aloud whether those demanding a nationwide ban on cow slaughter had thought about its fallout, more so as a beginning had been made with the restrictions on the sale of animals for slaughter at cattle markets. A calculation by professor Vikas Rawal of the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning at Jawaharlal Nehru University's School...

-GovernanceNow.com The cost of maintaining our 5.3 million stray cattle comes to about Rs 30,115 core per year A lot of debate that we witness in the media on the cattle question these days suffer from the disease of speculative utopian imagination of a ‘cow-nation’ and relentless abuses for those beef-eating ‘others’.   Political debates over the question of our bovine stock has mostly been heavily polarising and mindlessly simplistic, notwithstanding exceptions like veteran...

-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...

-Livemint.com There is a growing risk that inflation may spike in the coming months The sharp drop in prices of farm products over the past few months has not just upset farmers across the country, but also seems to have complicated the task of India’s monetary authorities. The minutes of the last meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) show that the committee is divided...

-VillageSquare.in The problem of male cattle in India, the world’s largest Milk-producing country, remains in limbo even as farmers grapple with latest government regulations that severely restrict cattle trade and culling Alpesh Patel, a small farmer in Mogari village of Anand district in Gujarat, owns three crossbreed female cattle and earns supplemental income by selling Milk to the nearest dairy co-operative. He strives to keep his herd efficient for Milk production by...