Declining Number of Cows in India

Declining Number of Cows in India

Published on web at: 2011-09-15 13:26:09 +05:30. Section: A View Point section.
A View Point
By AQEEDATULLAH QASMI
Several movements have been launched the country over to protect cows. Many demonstrations have taken place against the killing of cows and demands are being made for their safety. A lot of voices have been raised in favour of cows’ preserve, which is considered an asset in India coming to an end. This is a fact that the number of cows is declining. But the question is: what is the reality behind it?
No one seems to be interested in knowing the reality. Some people have got the issue only to demonstrate on roads, to raise the voice against it, and also to create disharmony in the society and nothing else. Only demonstration is enough for them; they don’t hesitate to kill human beings for the sake of protecting animals. They are giving more importance to cows than to human beings. They are only sloganeering against the slaughtering of cows, which are being used for eating purpose. They are not trying to identify the actual reason behind the ever decreasing number of cows. According to them, beef-eating people are alone responsible for decrease in the number of cows in India. For them the cow is a deity and slaughtering a cow is a sin and wicked act.
This is not very old history that cows existed in large numbers in India. Cows had been having very much importance for Indian citizens. There were many uses of cows for Indians that cannot be had from other animals. Cows were domesticated particularly for the purpose of milk. The cow’s milk has much fruitfulness and utility that cannot be achieved with other animal’s milk. At the time when the cow’s milk was considered useful, strengthening and nutritious to human beings, people used to give much importance to domesticating cows. They kept cows to get milk for themselves and for their family members, particularly for children. At that time the selling of cow’s milk was considered a misdeed.
The cow-dung was used as fuel and manure. India is an agricultural country. The dominant feature of this society is agrarian; therefore, calves were used for ploughing the land. There were enough grazing grounds for animals to graze in the primitive Indian society. The cow is a gentle animal that becomes happy at grazing green grass. Because of much free land and large pastures, rearing of cows was easy in that period. There were not much difficulty in domesticating cows, and the owners were not much worried about grazing cows. The cow is a very sensitive animal, too. If she is tied with a cord at a single place, she will lose her health.
Today the condition has been changed. The purpose of cow-owners is lesser to drink milk than to sell it. They use milk for business purposes. They take much interest in selling buffalo milk as it proves more fruitful because of its intense liquid density in comparison to cow’s milk which has low liquid density. Today milk is used for making tea and preparation of sweets, curd, cheese and ghee. That is why buyers and sellers both give importance to buffalo milk. Besides, buffalo milk is more profitable than the cow’s milk. The adulteration of buffalo milk with water is easier than that in cow’s milk.
In modern times many substances are used as fuel. Scientific technology has given so many stoves, gas and electric stoves for cooking which are precious gifts to human beings. For the production of gas new technologies are being used. Natural gas is also exploited. Electricity and coal fuel is the better substitute to the cow-dung fuel. In spite of that buffalo dung is also used as fuel in a better way.
The importance of calves has been reduced in modern times. It is the era of machine, and tractors and power tillers have taken the place of bullock-cart and manual ploughing with bullocks respectively. Earlier buffalos had replaced the bullocks for transportation of goods, but now tractors, trucks, motor trolleys are freely used for this purpose because of latter’s having more capacity and faster transportation. Chemical manure has reduced the importance of animal-dung’s manure. It is also proved that the chemical manure is more result oriented.
The development of science and technology has made the barren land, which had been used as pastures for cattle, fertile and agriculturally useful. Population increase in villages and cities and the construction of new buildings and flats has also reduced and ruined the facilities for grazing. In this situation it is difficult to look after and cater to the needs of animals and the cow is the major victim of it. Cattle owners are worried about where and wherefrom they will feed their animals. They cannot keep their cows tied at a single place. That is why they leave them wandering and roaming at roads and in the evening they re-capture, gather and tie them for protection. They feed them little husk, fodder, etc. and make out milk from them two times a day in the morning and evening.
Cows in cities are wandering in a very poor and unhygienic condition; they eat plastic bags from waste bins and drink water from drainages. Sometimes they block the traffic on roads and create trouble and traffic hindrance; some other times they come into collision with trains on the railway track. This is the destiny of cows; that is why they are in danger. The Delhi High Court issued a stern order to the authority and administration of Municipal Corporation that they are bound to restrict and control cows wandering on roads.
Human beings raise animals for their uses. If there is no utility of anything, they will leave them. They even forget their old parents if they turn ‘useless’! They bring up some animals for meat, milk and some other animals to be used for transportation, communication and ploughing. That is why the animals which are not useful to men are used for meat purposes. And it is better to kill them with honour and eat their meet with dignity instead of leaving old and retired animals to roam on roads here and there without any care and let them die at public places, totally uncared for. Their bones and skin are also useful even after being putrefied on roads.
Goats, sheep, and chicken are raised more for cooking purposes than for any other uses. It is the wonderful system of nature that the things which man uses in abundance are produced proportionally in greater quantity. And the things which are not used or whose utility becomes lesser and lesser are disappearing from the earth. The reason may be that people stop caring about such things.
Generally it is observed that buffalos, goats, sheep, and chicken are being used in greater quantity for eating purposes; that is why the production of such animals is in larger proportion. In the past when men were caring much about cows, and they were much in use by human beings, the production of buffalos was less in those days. Today the importance of buffalos has increased in comparison to that of cows. So cows are being reduced in number and disappearing from the earth.
This situation is enough to open the eyes of those who show too much love for cows and are against eating of beef and thus raising voice against it. Still today the production of cows is in larger quantity in those states where slaughtering of cows is not practically banned in comparison to the states where slaughtering of cows is totally banned. If they really love cows and want to increase the productivity of cows, they will have to increase the use of cows in their day to day life, either by making out milk from cows or by slaughtering them for eating purposes.