Madurai: At the Vadipatti weekly cattle market near Madurai this Tuesday there is more anger and fewer cattle for sales. Every Tuesday for past 112 years, the four acres of vacant land have been coming alive before dawn with thousands of cattle being brought for trading.
For farmers from thousands of villages in five districts, Vadipatti has been a place to sell or buy cattle for their various requirements. After the Central government ban notification of the sale of cow and camel for slaughter at animal market, the number of cattle brought on Tuesday dwindled drastically that only around 300 came to the market, but among farmers and traders, there was a visible anger over the Centre’s notification.
“This notification is equivalent to killing us. We will not allow any of the BJP leaders in our village,” said a cross-section of farmers who were found searching the traders in desperation to sell their cattle because they have to source money to pay the school fee for their wards.
But many returned home with their cattle as only a few buyers from neighbouring state Kerala visited the market on Tuesday. “It only shows that our Prime Minister Modiji lacks knowledge on cattle rearing and rural economy,” said Muthuraman (55) from Tirumangalam.
He urged the PM Narendra Modi and his cabinet colleagues to personally deal with the cattle at least for a week to understand the problems of rearing with cattle in rural India.
Most of the farmers who have taken the Centre’s decision as a personal attack on their family welfare’ took a vow to show their resentment in the coming elections. “BJP doesn’t have a presence in our villages, but whoever allies with the BJP in the coming elections, they will face the worst defeat in the state,” said Murugesan (64) from Chinnamanur, Theni district.
The farmers also expressed their strong condemnation of the state government for not reacting to the Centre’s decision to safeguard the interest of farmers. “We will wait for a few days, if the state government failed to react, we will stage protest against Tamil Nadu,” said Selvaraj (55) from Natham.
The anger of the farmers is justifiable because for these people cattle is the lifeline of their economy. “Cattle are our only asset which helps to meet the family emergencies like paying school fees for our children or marriage expenditures of our daughters,” said Kuppan (55) from Chellapatti who had sold four of his cows for Rs 80,000 to a trader to purchase jewels for his daughter’s marriage.
Srinivasan (60) Vadipatti also sold a cow to pay the college fees of his grandson. “Cattle are like our family deity, we spent nearly Rs 100 per day for fodder per cow which amounts to Rs 3,000 per month. Due to drought, we are also purchasing water Rs 5 a pot to give water for our cattle,” said Venkateshan from Usilampatti.
“These cattle came to our rescue at the time of the drought,” he added. Stating that they were selling the cattle which suffer either from mastitis, infertility or due to old-age in the market for slaughtering, the farmers asked how it is economically viable for them to spend Rs 3,000 to feed a cow which is non-productive. “Moreover, we don’t want to see our cow dying in front of us,” said Murugan from Natham.
“Using this money, we will again buy a calf and rear it so that it will provide more milk for us. And the milk purchasers will also provide a loan to us only if we have productive cows,” he added.
Cattle trade is conducted across the week in following markets in places- Melur on Sunday; Oddanchatram on Monday; Sempatty on Wednesday; Pudkukottai on Thursday; Thanjavur on Friday and Devakottai on Saturday. Going by the dwindling of cattle numbers at Vadipatti, it seems that the cattle trade at six other markets will soon pass into history.
