Cost of saving cow: Industry bleeds, farmers suffer

Across the country, especially in rural areas, there's simmering unease bordering on panic. Farmers no longer think freely about buying or selling cattle. People, especially from the minority communities, can't easily think about meat of any kind. Truckers are worried about transporting cattle, even buffaloes. Dalit leather artisans live in terror. All this because of small vigilante groups taking upon themselves to prevent "cow slaughter" through violence, although in most cases this turns into attacks on minorities and Dalits on unfounded reasons.

This isn't just infringement of individual rights, although that is important. The so-called "cow protection" vigilantism is taking a toll on the leather and meat processing industries, destroying livelihoods of nearly 8 lakh Dalit leather artisans, among the most oppressed sections of society, and also snatching valuable nutrition from vulnerable tribal communities of the Northeast.

It's hurting farmers because they can't sell their cattle, forcing them to pay for its upkeep. In fact, they're finding it difficult to dispose of corpses of fallen (naturally dying) cattle. All this is pushing up the numbers of stray cattle, which stand at 5.3 million. They face a slow death due to starvation and, increasingly, from eating plastic in urban waste dumps.

India has a unique and ancient system of collection of raw hides and skins from fallen cows, buffaloes, sheep and goats.

There are over 8 lakh flayers spread across the country who flay hide from carcass, preserve it and sell it to middlemen. Flayers come from traditional leather working castes, extremely poor and socially stigmatised. The periodic work of flaying brings in much-needed income.

"Because of sporadic violence, often targeting leather workers, flayers now face a severe shortage of work, besides the threat to their lives," says D Raghunandan of the Delhi Science Forum, who has worked with leather artisans for over three decades. "The attacks and rumour mongering on cow slaughter have a direct and damaging impact on the Dalit and farming communities," he adds.

At the other end of the value chain, the leather industry, a big foreign exchange earner, is in crisis. Leather goods exports will be affected as supply of raw hides falters.

Between April and August 2015, the industry exported $2,654 million worth of goods, 8% lower than exports for the same period in 2014.

The meat processing industry, which mainly exports buffalo meat, is seeing a sharp decline in production since last year. It was worth Rs 29,000 crore in 2014-15.

A neglected but key aspect but key aspect of the beef scare is the damaging impact it may have on nutritional levels of the poorer sections. NSSO estimates say over 5.2 crore Indians eat beef-buffalo meat.

Most of them are in the Northeast, in Bengal, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Assam. They are tribals, Dalits, Muslims and Christians. Any attempt to set up obstacles to their access to beef or buffalo meat would damage their nutritional intake.