Where they are completely offthe mark, though, is in blamingthis on evil slaughterhouse own-ers and meat export with a con-niving Centre.

The real ‘culprit’, instead, is theIndian farmer. Soundspreposterous?

Well, a dispassionate analysiswould reveal it is the farmer’s ra-tional choices that are leading toincreased ‘buffaloisation’, reduc-ing the cow in the process to littlemore than a venerated gomata.

Farmers traditionally rearedcattle for three main purposes.

The first was for draught – thecow being the mother of bullocksthat ploughed the farmer’s fieldsand pulled his cart. The secondwas for dung used both as ma-nure for fertiliser application andas fuel. The third was for milk.

With the advent of tractors, die-sel engines and electric motors,the estimated share of draughtanimals in the total power de-ployed in Indian farms has drop-ped from around 53 per cent in1971-72 to just above 5 per centnow.

Likewise, with crop nutrient re-quirements increasingly beingmet by chemical fertilisers — andonly 10.9 per cent of rural house-holds using dung-cake as cookingfuel, going by the 2011 generalCensus — the second reason formaintaining cattle has also beenundermined.

Cow economicsAs a result, the utility of cattle forfarmers is today largely restrictedto being milk-producingmachines.

That explains why despite over-all cattle numbers falling, theadult females within them —namely cows — have gone up from64.36 to 72.95 million between1992 and 2007.

But even as milch animals,there is competition to cows frombuffaloes, which produce milkwith twice the fat content andhigher price realisation.

Roughly 53 per cent of India’s

total bovine milk output in 2011-12came from buffaloes. Even withinthe balance 47 per cent from cows,nearly 54 per cent was accountedfor by cross-breds containing ge-netic material of ‘western’ cattlestock such as Holstein Friesian,Jersey and Brown Swiss.

Indigenous desi cattle — thetrue Holy cows — produce justover a fifth of the country’s milk.

That being the case, the choicebefore farmers is essentially be-tween exotic cross-bred cattleyielding more milk and buffaloesthat give milk of higher value –both not particularly holyoptions.

Buffaloes have an added advan-tage of being reasonably gooddraught animals, especially in thecurrent context where most till-age and field operations are any-way performed by tractor-drawnimplements.

To the extent animal draughtapplication is limited to carryingload, buffaloes even score overtheir bovine cousins. A singlemale buffalo can easily lug 25quintals over 10-15 km, whereascattle bullock cannot do beyond15 quintals or so.

Buffalo nationNo wonder, the share of cattle inIndia’s bovine population has de-clined from 78 per cent to 65 percent since Independence. The fallis sharper in respect of milch ani-mals (see chart).

Moreover, the all-India figuredoesn’t tell the whole story.

While buffaloes make up 34.6per cent of the country’s total bo-vines, the proportions are higherfor Haryana (79.3), Punjab (74), Ut-tar Pradesh (55.8), Andhra Pra-desh (54.2), Gujarat (52.4), Rajas-than (47.8) and Bihar (34.8).

Most of these are states wherethe cow is specially revered. Onthe other hand, the buffalo per-centages are just 3.2 in Kerala, 3.8in West Bengal and 4.6 in theNorth-East states – which have noblanket laws prohibiting cowslaughter!

The irony of more buffaloes inthe Hindi heartland — the so-called Cow Belt — is best exempli-fied by Mathura. This district ofUttar Pradesh houses Gokul andVrindavan, the holy sites of LordKrishna’s early life centeredaround cows, milk and gopis.

In the 2007 Livestock Census,there were 722,854 buffaloes inMathura, as compared to a mere141,326 cattle.

Such outnumbering of cattle

clearly has nothing to do withslaughter houses. The blame, if atall, should go to Mathura’s farm-ers who, through their markedpreference for buffaloes, have en-sured there aren’t enough cowsfor slaughtering in the first place.

A rational solutionIf the gomata has to be saved, thefocus ought to be on incentivisingfarmers to keep cattle. By using itas a political tool to target famil-iar enemies, the Sangh Parivar isonly hastening the process ofbuffaloisation.

The buffalo wins hands down inthe farmer’s calculations becausethere is no religious taboo on itsslaughter. Farmers typically selltheir buffaloes after 5-6 calvingswhen milk yields start tapering.These animals — and bulk of theyoung male progeny — head to theslaughter house.

There is no such flexibilitywhen it comes to cows. The morestringent the laws prohibitingslaughter, the less inclined farm-ers are to rear cattle. Why ventureinto it when there is no viable

mechanism for disposing animalsthat have stopped giving milk orhappen to be male? The farmer isultimately under no obligation toshoulder the cultural burden ofsaving the gomata without anycompelling economic rationale.

The gomata surely deserves pro-tection, but not so much for reli-gious reasons as the need to con-serve precious germplasm fromour finest indigenous cattlebreeds: Sahiwal, Tharparkar,

Rathi, Red Sindhi, Gir, Kankrej andOngole.

These valuable animal geneticresources are now getting lost,thanks to a combination of ran-dom breeding (most of our desicattle are ‘nondescript’, having norecognisable pedigree or breedcharacteristics), unregulatedslaughtering and growingbuffaloisation.

It would hurt to know that thebest breeding tracts and orga-nised farms for the Sahiwal andTharparkar cattle are today foundin Pakistan.

We must move to a system thatenables culling of unproductiveand undesirable cattle, both froma farmer’s as well as organisedbreeding/genetic upgradationperspective.

This, along with a policy ofstrict licencing and regulation ofslaughterhouses, can allow theWhite and Pink revolutions to co-exist. Far from being in conflict,they are mutually beneficial.

If only those shedding croco-dile tears for the gomata under-stood this.

It is unfortunate that the cowhas once again taken centre-stage in political discourse,with insinuations that a Cen-

tre-promoted ‘pink revolution’ isendangering India’s cattlepopulation.

In recent poll campaign speech-es, the BJP’s prime ministerial can-didate Narendra Modi claimedthat those owning slaughter-houses and exporting cow meatare being given subsidies and taxbreaks.

The country, according to him,wants a Green and White Revolu-tion, but the government in Delhiis only interested in a Pink Revolu-tion: “When animals are slaugh-tered, the colour of their flesh ispink”.

A different meatI don’t know whether cow meat isbeing exported illicitly from In-dia. What is going out officially atleast is only buffalo meat, with11.08 lakh tonnes of shipments in2012-13 fetching $ 3.2 billion. Thelatter figure would have touched $4.5 billion in the fiscal just ended,making India the world’s No. 1beef exporter.

All this is, however, meat frombuffaloes, not cattle.

If cow meat isn’t being officiallyexported, can those doing it clan-destinely be benefiting from fiscalincentives? Quite unlikely.

The wrong targetModi and the Sangh Parivar maybe right about depleting cattlenumbers. The country’s total cat-tle population did fall from204.58 million to 199.08 millionbetween the 1992 and 2007 Live-stock Censuses.

What Pink Revolution?Rather than protecting the cow, the Sangh Parivar is only hastening the process of ‘buffaloisation’

HARISH DAMODARAN