The cow, India's icon: Who'll pay the price?

So is “the cow” (including bulls) a living deity, like the Ganga or Yamuna, to be revered as a “mother”, or just another productive asset like a buffalo or a goat? This debate dates to the Constituent Assembly sessions in the late 1940s. Hindu traditionalist members wanted complete protection for the cow as a fundamental right. This was stolidly opposed by realists like B.R. Ambedkar, who saw it as a veiled attempt to deify upper caste brahmanical practices, to the detriment of the poor — for whom the cow means a source of milk, meat and leather. Modernists like Jawaharlal Nehru thought it would blemish the liberal, secular character of the Constitution. A consensus was urgently required. Clever drafting by Dr Ambedkar pleased all by inserting an ambivalently worded Article 48 (on working towards prohibiting cow slaughter) in the Directive Principles, that are not legally enforceable. Therein lies buried the knotty, seven-decade-old problem of what the cow means to Indians. Neither modern education nor “development” has diminished the demand for prohibition of slaughter. Educated, well-off Hindus, across castes, are avid supporters. Higher incomes enable more people to “Sanskritise” — fashion their customs by emulating brahmanical practices. Vegetarianism is a “luxury” in desperately poor India, as is substituting cereals with vegetables and lentils.

The clamour to save the cow will increase as ever more people are economically capable of “assimilating” themselves, culturally, into  upper castes. Beef is already an “inferior” food eaten mostly by the poor. Rather than amend the Constitution outright to reflect this demand, devious bureaucratic means have been adopted to achieve the same effect, whilst hiding behind the economic usefulness of the cow. Nine state governments — Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat — ban the slaughter of cows and bulls outright. Seven states — Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur, Sikkim and Kerala — allow slaughter. Others permit slaughter of animals who are no longer productive — usually more than 15 years old. The varying levels of “protection” are directly related to Hindu upper caste political dominance in a state. The only exception is J&K — a Muslim-majority state, which bans cow slaughter. In more normal times this would be an example of our “syncretic” culture. The Centre has chipped in by banning the export of beef and cows, thereby minimising the incentive for cow slaughter.

The Centre promulgated rules on May 23, 2017 under a Central law, Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960, which ensure cattle markets are not used to purchase “bovine” animals for slaughter. The rules are onerous. They require multiple certifications, declarations and identity verifications. They will ensure all sale/purchase of “cattle”, which includes buffalos and camels, would end in cattle markets. Curiously, a convenient “out” remains available. Direct purchase from a cattle owner doesn’t attract these rules. The net result will be trading will move to one-on-one sale or purchase, or to large commercial dairy farms — now facilitated by the agricultural land leasing policy. These will be informal cattle trading hubs, without health certification to ensure meat quality. Ironically, as the Niti Aayog and agriculture ministry are striving to make agricultural markets efficient, the trade in dairy animals is being driven underground. Perversely, the new rules are being touted as the fallout of a July 2016 Supreme Court order, that was intended primarily to stop the flourishing cross-border traffic of cattle into Nepal and Bangladesh.

The loud protests by West Bengal and Kerala and muted noises from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are as farcical, playing to the dalit and Muslim votebanks. Surely, this farce played out repeatedly, since 1948, should end now. Why not have a referendum to establish the extent of support for cow protection? Seth Govind Das suggested this in 1948. The cost would be around '50 billion, equal to the cost of a general election. The outcome, as in Brexit, is by no means certain. If the existing 190 million (2012 data) indigenous and hybrid cows are to be cared for after their useful life, for say an additional five years (underestimated), the annual cost at a daily spend per animal of Rs 50 is Rs 1.1 trillion. This is four times the spend in 2017-18 on medical, public health, welfare of SC-ST, backward castes and minorities and social security — spread thinly across around 400 million of India’s income-insecure citizens. It’s more than half the spending on defence. Maneka Gandhi and animal rights activists will be delighted, but it’s impossible to fund a pension scheme for cows publicly. Cow retirement homes run by the private sector on viability gap funding basis will create around one million jobs. But there is no free lunch, even for spiritual or emotional fulfilment. So how many of the 280 million Indian households would be willing to pay an additional Rs 4,100 per year for protecting the cow?

The 1.5 lakh hectares of land to house the “retired” cows can be found. But the additional water resources — far exceeding the needs of 200 million humans — would be a challenge. The retired, unproductive cows will increase methane emission, which are worse than carbon dioxide, by an estimated 0.6 per cent, even as we are struggling to reduce carbon emissions. Of course, it may never come to this absurd end. Farmers won’t buy cows if they can’t sell them for slaughter. Bulls are redundant in mechanised farming. Buffalos are more productive milk producers. “Nandi” clone bulls and milk white cows might become like racehorses or elephants — the treasured preserve of rich people and temples. And this is how it should be. If the suggestion by Justice Mahesh Chand Sharma of the Rajasthan high court (now retired) “trends” sufficiently, the cow could become India’s third national animal, alongside the other “big two” —tiger (de jure) and Gir lions (de facto). Welcome to India’s new-age action safari.