Till The Cows Come Home

The politics of militant cow protection plays out in a crisis of abandoned feral cattle adding to the woes of farmers. Governments in several states are responding by throwing money at gaushalas but it’s clearly not enough

- Rahul Noronha

It has been seven months since Kailash Nayak has moved out of his house in Tanda village, Bhopal district, and into a basic hut on his field two kilometres away. The hut provided little shelter against the rainy season, or more recently the January cold, but Nayak has to protect his crops, his paddy and his wheat. The crop—his livelihood— is under threat from herds of stray cows, abandoned by their owners for no longer being productive, no longer being of economic value. The cows and bulls come in their hundreds, Kailash drives them away, waits for them to return, as they unfailingly do, and drives them away again. The cattle come because they need to eat. And Kailash defends his fields because he and his family need to eat too. It’s a story that repeats itself across Madhya Pradesh’s nearly 50,000 villages.

According to the last livestock census, conducted in 2012, Madhya Pradesh has 19.7 million cattle (cows and bulls), the most in any state in India. In MP, there is one cow for every third person. Roaming the highways, eating their way through fields, stray cattle have become a significant problem. “About 50 per cent of the entire cattle population in the state,” says Dr R.K. Rokade, director of the Directorate of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Services, MP, “is in the non-breedable category and could be termed unproductive.” These animals are mostly left to fend for themselves.