KM Mitali, LL.M, Galgotias University, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh
ABSTRACT
Mahatma Gandhi has once said “If someone were to ask me what the most important outward manifestation of Hinduism was... I would suggest that it was the idea of cow protection”.
The cow in India is protected under Article 48 of the Constitution which states that the state must impose the prohibition on the slaughter of cow and cattle. It has been estimated that India has population of 193 Million cattle out of which 145 million is of cows and rest 48 millions is of bulls. Due to such huge no. of cattle population, India is the global leader of Milk production. It may seem that cattle in India are protected, but they are tortured on daily basis. As long as cities are more crowded, even cow friendly policies and cow protection laws due to their poor implementation have led to an accelerate rise in the number of stray cows. In order to that cows themselves become the victims of road accidents, even when the cows dies, there is no solution for their dead bodies. So, the question arises that where are these stray cows coming from. The major reason behind the abandonment of these old cows is ‘Dairy Industry’. The cows in the country are being constantly victimised by ‘Dairy Industry’. When they stop producing enough milk after 3 or 4 years they are left abandoned on the streets. In fact, ever year the so called Dairy Industry impregnate cows artificially and this is not even a natural process. When she gives birth to the new-born calf which is outrightly useless for them, they don’t want to spend the money to take care of old cows or younger calves, so they abandon them on the streets. Hence, we can clearly say that a complicated situation exists in our country especially in respect to the cows. On the on hand, the largest community of the country i.e. Hindus worship them and consider them as ‘Maata’ while on the other hand they let them live in the streets in the extremely dark conditions to rely upon garbage to survive.
Keywords: Cow Protection, Milk Production, Cow Slaughter, Abandonment, Dairy Industry
