How cow became the mother of demigods

Cattle economy

Editor's Note: Once again, the issue of banning cow slaughter has whipped up a stormy debate. On his first day in office, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adiyantah ordered shutting down of two slaughterhouses in Allahabad. In fact, banning slaughterhouses is on top of his agenda. As uncertainty descends on the future of state's meat industry and the large workforce employed by these slaughter houses, there's a need to pay heed to economists when they say that cattle become a drain on the economy when they become unproductive and hence, they should be disposed of.

Below are the extracts from Down To Earth's State of India's Environment 2016 report  explaining the nature of cattle economy and how the rhetoric of cow protection is a recent phenomenon. Traditionally, Indians reared only those cattle that offered economic benefits

In November 2015, the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation imported patented semen from US that elevates the chances of female calves by up to 95 per cent. “Today, the male cattle are of no use,” says R S Sodhi, managing director of the federation, which owns the brand Amul. “Our focus is to produce only female cattle to increase milk production.” But till four decades ago, milk was the secondary purpose of domestication of cows. Then the rural economy was mostly based on barter system, and the shorter shelf-life of milk and its products did not support the economy of milk. Besides, that was the pre-mechanisation era of agriculture, and about 300 million Indians depended on farming for sustenance. They needed bullocks for everything, right from ploughing, irrigating, weeding, harvesting, threshing, transporting and marketing of the produce to running industries like oil-pressing. Dried cattle dung was an important cooking fuel and manure. This led to the evolution of breeds that are suitable for agriculture and transportation and can exhibit a distinct superiority in utilising poor quality feed and are adapted to withstand heat and show better resistance to tropical diseases. Today, India has eight indigenous breeds of cattle that excel in draught capacity (draught breeds), and only three with high milk yields (milch breeds) and six for dual purpose.

Most of the draught breeds are not good producers of milk. Developed in arid and semiarid regions of the country, they are primarily known for their sturdiness, strength, endurance ability in hot and humid climate, and disease resistance. For instance, Hallikar in Karnataka is known for its trotting ability, Khillari of Maharashtra for its speed and power, Bargur in Tamil Nadu for speed and endurance in trotting, Umblachery of Tamil Nadu for strength and sturdiness and excellence in its wet-ploughing, Hariana of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh for its power, Kankrej of Gujarat and Rajasthan for its speed, power and draught capacity, Ongole of Andhra Pradesh for its heavy draught capacity, and Deoni from adjoining areas of Telangana, Marathawada of Maharashtra and Karnataka for both its strength and milk production.

Of the three milch breeds, Sahiwal is the most popular and yields between 1,400 and 2,500 litres of milk in its lactating period. The average yields of the other two breeds—Gir of Gujarat and Red Sindh of Sindh region—are between 1,400 and 1,800 litres.

Changing breeds with shifting demand

The nature of economy of cattle started shifting from “agriculture and transportation” to “milk yield” after farms became increasingly mechanised in the early 1970s. In the past four decades, machines have eliminated draught breeds from fields. The National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data reveals that the number of livestock in rural areas has reduced by 18 per cent—from 169 million to 135 million— during the period (see ‘Declining livestock population...’).

With the concept of intensive farming with the help of machines gaining ground, draught cattle became unproductive and useless, and the focus shifted to high yielding cow breeds. A comparison between the 18th Livestock Census of 2007 and the 19th Livestock Census of 2012 reveals that the number of draught cattle (both indigenous and exotic breeds) has declined by 19 per cent (see ‘As male cattle fall from grace...’) whereas the number of milch breeds have increased by over 28 per cent in just five years (see ‘...Cows gain acceptance’).

“Rearing these productive animals suits the economy of a farmer,” says Sushil Kumar, principal scientist, Central Institute for Research on Cattle, Meerut. This is particularly true when the world faces a severe scarcity of fodder. Less than 4 per cent of the total land mass is being used to feed the world’s 11 per cent of livestock population, he adds. In India, there is a deficit of 64 per cent of green fodder and 24 per cent of dry fodders, shows vision document of the Indian Grassland and Fodder Institute (IGFI).

“The impact is clearly visible. Despite owning the world’s largest livestock population, India’s productivity is quite low. This deficit is largely due to scarcity of nutritious fodders,” says Khem Chand, principal scientist at IGFI, Jhansi.

The shift towards milk economy has given a huge boost to the rural economy. Today, more than 90 million people are earning their livelihood through milk production; 75 million of them are women. “The government policy, favouring mechanisation and usage of chemical fertilisers, further encourages the shift,” says P S Brithal, principal scientist at the National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research, New Delhi.

However, not all is well with the milch breeds. According to World Animal Protection Report, 2010, up to 50 million cows are suffering in dairy farms across India in unacceptable conditions. They suffer from various health problems and have shorter lifespans due to overbreeding, poor housing, confinement and overmedication. A majority of them are abandoned when they stop producing milk. According to the 19th Livestock census, the country has 5.3 million stray cattle. With more than 1 million stray cattle, Odisha tops the list of maximum number of stray cattle, and is followed by Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Gujarat (see ‘States that dump their cattle’, p73). But growing urbanisation and shrinking grazing land make it difficult for them to survive for long. To avoid Hindu religious sentiments associated with cows, most people are now opting for buffaloes that can yield more milk, says Kumar. After all, selling off buffaloes to slaughter-houses after they become unproductive makes more economic sense. Only time will tell if this change in preference will herald another shift in cattle economy.

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Holy cow?

The subject of cow slaughter never fails to arouse passions in India. The usual perception of the situation is this: there are too many undernourished, unproductive cows in India and the lot of the cow population as a whole would be improved if a substantial percentage were ‘disposed off’. The biggest obstacle to this efficient solution is seen to be Hindu religious sentiment which decrees that the cow is sacrosanct.

The controversy about excess cattle being generated by Hindu religious sentiment was triggered off by a paper by economist V M Dandekar in 1964. Dandekar examined the data yielded by the 1961 livestock census for Maharashtra. He found that until the age of three, the number of cows was equal to the number of bullocks; at the adult stage, however, cows were 30 per cent fewer than bullocks. This was not the result of culling but pure starvation: bullocks got good fodder to eat, while cows got only the residues.

Dandekar concluded that the problem of numbers was more fundamental than that of old and stray cattle; he worked out that only 40 per cent of the cows were required to produce the necessary number of bullocks and the remaining 60 per cent ought to be disposed off by a process more efficient than starvation. He finished by stating that it was simply hypocritical religious sentiment that stood in the way of livestock development.

Other researchers picked up the gauntlet. Economist Marvin Harris pointed out that even seemingly useless animals might have a use as producers of milk and dung. Other economists concurred with Harris. K N Raj developed two livestock models, one for a high-income developed economy and another for a low-income developing economy. If religious considerations were a factor then they should have affected the models, created from authentic data, but no such divergence was noted. Raj then wrote another paper in which he pointed out that Kerala had 167 adult cows for every 100 bullocks while Bihar had 67 and Uttar Pradesh 47. If religious sentiment had anything to do with it, Kerala’s predominantly non-Hindu population would have preferred bullocks to cows and Bihar and Uttar Pradesh would have shown less neglect of their cows.

The ban on cow slaughter is one of the Directive Principles of State Policy in the Constitution and has been legislated in all states except Kerala and West Bengal. As studies show, farmers with holdings below 0.5 acres have twice as many cows as they have males, which show that slaughter would affect most the very people who depend on the underfed animals for a living, however meagre. This, legally, economically and logically, cow slaughter is not a feasible proposition—which should gladden the hearts of all those who feel that only their cries in the name of God come between the cow and the knife.

From the State of India’s Environment, The Second Citizens’ Report, 1984-85, Centre for Science and Environment

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'Framing laws on beef eating is draconian and is not desirable in a democratic set-up'

Dwijendra Narayan Jha is a distinguished historian and academic. Jha, who has authored Holy Cow: Beef in Indian dietary conditions, tells Rajat Ghai about the history of beef eating in India and the current political discourse around it

Why is beef in India more in the realm of belief than in the realm of food?

Today, beef is all about communal politics in India. The recent incidences in Dadri, Mainpuri, Nahan and Udhampur, where Muslims have been lynched in the name of beef, testify to this.

Does cow slaughter in India have a constitutional basis?

The Article 48 of the Indian Constitution does prohibit the slaughter of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle. But the provision is only for maintaining or preserving the livestock in the country because they are important for agriculture and other aspects of economic life. It does not say you don’t kill cows. Since the Article is part of the Directive Principles of State Policy, state governments have legislated differently.

In certain states, you can slaughter cattle with a certificate that says they are fit for killing, while other states have stringent provisions against it. Kerala and the Northeastern states do not ban cow slaughter. I don’t think one should read much into the Article 48.

Then why is a culinary practice like beef eating being seen more and more through the prism of communalism?

Let me give you a bit of background. We have copious evidence of Brahmins eating beef in the Vedic period and even in later Vedic times. But in due course of time, they gave up beef eating and started associating it with Dalits.

In the Medieval Period, with the advent of Islam, Brahmins began to assert that Muslims were beef eaters. And since the Hindus have been made to forget that their ancestors ate beef, the stereotyping of Muslims as beef eaters has persisted. The Hindutva organisations are now cashing in on it.

Where do Buddhism and Jainism stand on beef eating?

Both religions criticised the Vedic practice of killing cattle. While Jainism is stricter since it believes in non-killing of all forms of life, Buddhists believe that one can eat any form of meat if he or she has no knowledge of what is being offered. So, the attitude differs. Brahmins seem to have given up eating beef by the time Buddhism had become very weak in India and had begun to decline during the 10th-11th centuries.

You note that the ban on cow slaughter first became a political issue during the time of Swami Dayanand Saraswati. Why did the Arya Samaj, which was a rationalist movement of sorts, had such a stance vis-a-vis cow slaughter?

The time when the Arya Samaj was formed, was a period of glorification of ancient times. And Dayanand Saraswati was a great champion of the Vedas. There are some positive aspects of the Samaj for it played a crucial role in reforming the Hindu society. But this glorification of the Vedas led to some kind of denial of beef eating as the Samaj was anti-Muslim.

It is ironical to see the way orthodox Hindus treat cattle in India. They revere the cow till it is useful and abandon it once it becomes unproductive. It wanders on roads, eats plastic and dies subsequently. What about cattle?

If cattle are not well-kept, they die painfully. But once they become unproductive, they become a drain on the economy. I don’t know how to strike a balance between the two.

What is your take on the current debate on beef eating in India?

Society has become extremely intolerant under the BJP regime. The handling of the beef issue by Hindutva organisations is a clear example of intolerance and an anti-democratic approach. Framing laws on eating or not eating beef is draconian and is not at all desirable in a democratic set-up.

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