Farmer Govind Sharma was facing a dharam sankat (moral dilemma). Stray cattle were eating up his valuable crops. But the farmer’s religious beliefs forbade him from using force to drive them out. After much thought, he decided to walk the middle path: catch the bovines and keep them under custody.
Over the past year, he has caught three stray bulls and put them on a leash outside his house in Gadhi Karmali village in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh. One bull had injured at least four people in the village.
Bulls are generally not used for farming. Mr. Sharma already has a pair of bullocks that he deploys on his 2.5 bigha farm, but he now has to incur an additional cost of over ₹1,500 per month to feed the three bulls. Yet, despite the financial burden, he feels he has a moral responsibility to take care of them.
“God is watching. I put the rope around them, so it is my duty to not let them starve,” said Mr. Sharma. He also has to feed a 10-member family.
And the predicament is not his alone. There are at least eight stray bulls in the custody of the villagers. But dozens of other bulls, cows and calves roam free, posing a threat to the crops. In some cases, they also attack farmers.
Lodh farmer Ram Singh recently received 24 stitches on his lower back after a bull gored him in his field. “Six persons have been attacked in just the past four days. The male calf is particularly aggressive,” said Guru Prasad Sahu, who owns three bighas of land.
No more fairs
Stray cattle entering fields, and eating away and trampling on crops is common in U.P., but villagers claim the menace got worse after the BJP government came to power in 2017. They claim that due to the fear of cow vigilantes, and shutting down of illegal slaughterhouses by the Yogi Adityanath government, slaughtering of cows and bulls has stopped. This has also resulted in the collapse of local cattle markets. Several cattle fairs have not been held since the BJP came to power.
Slaughtering of cows has been banned in U.P. for several decades and the crackdown on abattoirs only concerns buffaloes and goats.
But Ramayan Singh, a marginal farmer, claims that under the previous governments, police allowed cows to be slaughtered illegally for a bribe. “Modi and Yogi have brought an end to all that. We support it. But the issue of stray cattle must also be dealt with,” he pointed out.
Farmers say that after the BJP came to power in the State, and at the Centre, they have found it difficult to sell their old cattle. They claim this is one reason for the increase in the stray cattle population. If one is unable to sell an old animal or get the right price for it, it is eventually left to fend for itself. Such bovines wander into farms.
On the other hand, meat traders say that there is increased stray cattle menace because the sale of bulls and bullocks to other States like West Bengal, where slaughter is legal, has come to a halt after the BJP came to power.
They also attribute the slump in cattle trade to the fear of cow vigilantes who disrupt transport of cattle even if the carriers possess valid documents. After assuming power, the Adityanath government decided to invoke the NSA and Gangsters Act against those slaughtering cows and smuggling the animal.
Poor sales
Shakeel Qureshi, U.P. vice-president of the All India Jamiatul Quresh, said farmers were finding it difficult to dispose of their cattle. “States like Maharashtra, where slaughter of bulls and bullocks was allowed earlier, banned it after the BJP came to power. In times of farm distress, farmers rely heavily on animal-based income but with no avenues to sell, they dump them,” Mr. Qureshi said.
Chief Veterinary Officer of Unnao, P.K Singh, dismissed the view that the cattle menace had any connection with the ban on slaughterhouses. Slaughtering of cow progeny has been banned in U.P. for decades, he said.
The real problem is that the practice of abandoning cattle, ‘ Anna Pratha ,’ [mainly during summer] has spread to the rest of the State from Bundelkhand. “After people have milked a cow, they abandon it,” Mr. Singh said. He also said that the 2012 cattle census, the last one available, in the State had indicated a decreasing trend in population of cows in comparison to 2007.
‘ Anna Pratha ’ is an age-old tradition in Bundelkhand where farmers let loose their cattle, especially unproductive and pregnant cows, to graze freely. The animals raid fields in search of food and water, causing damage to other peasants, who are already reeling under severe losses and are forced to keep desperate vigils all night to save whatever remains in their fields.
Many villagers have put up fences or barricaded their fields. In Sandoli, Unnao, Santram and his grandmother keep a watch against roaming cattle from a machan (a platform in a tree) over their four-bigha field at night, armed with sticks and an axe.
Mr. Santram agrees that the crackdown on slaughterhouses has aggravated the problem, but says farmers have also stopped using bullocks in farms and shifted to tractors.
State Animal Husbandry Minister S.P. Singh Baghel has said that the number of stray cattle heads have increased across the State because it has strictly implemented anti-cow slaughter laws and shut down illegal slaughterhouses.
On March 13, responding to a question by an SP MLA, Mr. Baghel said in the Assembly that the “sudden flood” of stray cattle population was visible now as the gestation period of a cow was 10 months while the BJP government had completed a year. “Now can you imagine at what rate were cows being slaughtered in the State under your rule,” Mr. Baghel asked.
Scheme to tackle menace
To specifically tackle the menace of bulls, the government is running a “Sexed Sorted Semen” scheme based on American and Japanese technology Under the pilot project, chances of cows delivering a female calf are as high as 90-95%.
The project has started in three districts so far, Etawah, Lakhimpur Kheri and Barabanki, and according to Mr. Baghel, recent results have been encouraging.
Out of 240 cattle heads born under the experiment, 220 were cows, a hit rate of 94%. While veterinary officials say that the scheme is costly, the government plans to implement it in other districts as well. A sum of ₹49.5 crore has been alloted for the scheme in the current budget. No data is available for the stray cattle but according to the Animal Husbandry Department, U.P. has around two crore cows and cow progeny.
In a bid to care for stray cattle, the BJP government has allocated ₹98.50 crore under the Kanha Gaushala Evam Beshahara Pashu Aashray Yojna, to set up shelter homes for them.
