BOVINE BLIGHT

The lumpy skin disease outbreak has hit Rajasthan hard, leaving in its wake thousands of infected cows, carcasses across towns and villages, and the rural economy in ruins

- Rohit Parihar

A murder of crows circles at a distance, awaiting an opportunity to dive-bomb a cow's carcass lying in a freshly dug-up pit, when the knocking noise of a tractor engine leads to a flurry of activity beneath. Three men rush to the vehicle and help its driver lift and dump two more carcasses-dotted with skin lumps just like the first one-into the large pit. As the sky turns from blue to shades of bronze, the tractor makes a dozen rounds, bringing back more dead bovines to fill up the mass grave. When the number piles up to 20, a JCB machine starts covering the mound with soil that it has excavated from an adjoining site. It's dark by now. The crows have left, and so have the men, leaving behind another gaping hole in the rugged ground. To be filled up tomorrow.

The scene playing out on the outskirts of Santrela village along the Churu-Bikaner highway in Rajasthan has become commonplace across the state, as it fights the most invasive and fatal outbreak of lumpy skin disease (LSD) that the country has ever seen.

A contagious disease caused by a virus that belongs to the same family (poxviridae) as the smallpox and monkeypox viruses, LSD spreads among cattle through vectors such as houseflies, mosquitoes, and ticks (see What is Lumpy Skin Disease?]. Native to Africa, LSD was first reported in India in 2019 and had spread to 15 states by 2021, but mortality was never so high. In 2022, Gujarat reported the first case in April, though the alarm bells started ringing when the disease further spread to Rajasthan and at least nine other states/ UTs in July-August (see Origin and Outbreaks).