Prime Minister Narendra Modi's sudden focus on the stray cattle menace earlier this week, when polling in Uttar Pradesh was about to enter the fourth phase of the seven-phased Assembly election, has raised many an eyebrow.
Many are left wondering, "Why that comment now?" After all, the menace is not new to UP. It has been visible ever since Yogi Adityanath became chief minister in 2017. His strict enforcement of the ban on illegal smuggling and slaughter of cows led to self-appointed vigilantes who chose to put the 'holy cow' tag even on other bovines, including buffalo, although the animal did not enjoy the same legal protection as the cow.
The economy around bovines suffered a blow. Instead of selling their cattle to slaughterhouses after outliving their milking utility, owners started abandoning them on highways and open fields far away from their villages. The cattle would stray into farms to feed on crops.
While the problem continued to grow over the past five years, Yogi Adityanath failed to come up with any comprehensive solution other than giving paltry financial incentives to people offering to keep the stray cattle in cow shelters. An annual budgetary allocation of Rs 300-450 crore was made for the purpose and what followed was a mushrooming of cow shelters across the state.
The problem is more acute for small and marginal farmers, who do not have the resources to hire labour to protect their crops from stray cattle at night. Unlike farmers in Western UP, who are relatively more affluent, poorer farmers in the vast poverty-ridden Purvanchal and Bundelkhand regions were compelled to sit on guard through the night or lose the food grain meant for their own consumption.
Sure enough, that was the reason for Prime Minister Modi to suddenly turn his attention towards the issue while addressing a rally in Bahraich earlier this week. Modi said he had found a solution to the problem of "chhutta jaanvar" (stray cattle) and added that the plan would be rolled out soon after the conclusion of the current election on March 10.
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"We are serious about the problems faced by farmers due to stray cattle," Modi said. The PM said he understands their problem and has found a solution. "Once the election model code of conduct ends and a new government formed on March 10, we will implement all those new schemes under Yogi ji's leadership," he said.
Ground reports from several parts of the Purvanchal region, where the remaining battle of the ballot is to be fought over the subsequent three phases, suggest that the stray cattle menace could mess up with the BJP's hopes of staging a return to power in the country's most populous state.
Interestingly, the realisation about stray cattle menace becoming a significant poll issue appears to have dawned somewhat late in the day in the same manner as the delayed realisation on the three controversial farm laws that were rolled back by the prime minister himself, but after much damage was done.
Dev Prakash Rai, a well-known farmers' leader from Mau in UP, believes that the stray cattle issue could easily trample the BJP's expectations in Purvanchal. "If he actually has a solution up his sleeve, what was the prime minister doing all this while," asked Rai. "Poor farmers of this area have been suffering for five years," he said.
Rai said Yogi Adityanath's solution to send stray cattle to cow shelters has proved futile. The pittance the government doled out in the name of upkeep of the abandoned cattle is not only grossly insufficient but even a large part of that is also pilfered away due to rampant corruption in the animal husbandry department.
According to Rai and others, more painful is that the cattle in these so-called cow shelters are not only known to suffer physical injuries because of sharp barbed wire fencings but several starve to death, following which carcasses are stealthily buried. "It is a matter of shame that despite all this, Adityanath proclaims himself a saviour of the cow," Rai said.
Meanwhile, the top BJP leadership feels that its welfare schemes like "free rations" and direct money transfer of Rs 6000 per year to farmers would offset losses on account of stray cattle. Now that Modi has promised some "magic solution", the BJP leadership is confident it would overcome the cattle menace threat to the party's electoral prospects.
(Sharat Pradhan is a journalist and an author)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.
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