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CATTLE-PRESERVATION:
'MUST' FOR INDIA'S AGRICULTURE
*A note presented by
Shree K.
C. Shroff Chairman of Excel Industries for the consideration of the
national-seminar
continued....from Page2
As regards the burden of
maintaining old and decrepit cattle, which will constitute
roughly four to five percent  of cattle-population in case of
total ban, the nation must gladly accept it in order to save
the remaining 95% of the useful ones. Further, these cattle
are not in reality a great burden, since they require much
less fodder and continue to give dung and urine as valuable
manure.
The Directive of the
Constitution and solemn pledges given for cattle-protection
must be respected. Any delay or complacency is going to do
incalculable harm to our nation.
(This note was presented by
K.C. Shroff, chairman of Go-Vigyan Bharti at the inauguration
session of the National Seminar on 19th Sept., 1998.)
During the last 45/50 years, the reserve army of the
unemployed has swelled into crores and crores of people, and
the increasingly larger and larger proportion of people are
now working in unproductive, joyless, alienating jobs. The
disguised unemployment has spread in every activity and sector
of/the economy. The inequalities of salaries, wages, income,
consumption, property and wealth have increased too much and
the goal of social justice has now been happily abandoned.
In short, as accurately put
by Schumacher, Development has resulted in Turing subsistence
into hunger, marginal employment into unemployment, meager self-sufficiency into dependence, rural simplicity into urban
squalor, and contentment into civil strife. The mass
unemployment, mass poverty, mass migration, mass refugees,
social and economic dualism and not the coveted mass affluence
characterise the Indian economy today. There has been a loss
of peace within and with- out and the violence stalks the
people everywhere like the gargantuan beast of prey.
Alternative development
Paradigm
The dismal, disastrous, utterly miserable failure of
Development has prompted a search for An Alternative
World-View, or An Alternative Life -View, or A Paradigm Shift,
or An Alternative Model of Social Order (Development). Among
various suggested alternatives, the promising one is known in
the intellectual circles as the "Preservationist
Communitarian Ecocentrism " or "Deep Ecology"
which favors decentralised socio -economic system and which
accepts the intrinsic value of Nature and which recognizes the
rights of non-Human Species. This alternative is also called
as "Religious - Humanistic Ecological Concept of man,
Society and Nature."
The case for cow protection
rests on the fact that it is a powerful symbol and an
infallible means of such a "Paradigm Shift". There
is an intimate connection between the present state of Indian
economy and the society on the one hand, and our failure to
protect the cow, her pregnancy, and all animals and birds on
the other.
The fabulous cattle wealth of
India came to be first neglected during the British Raj and
more so after the Independence. During the past many years,
the cattle or livestock economy has be- come increasingly
characterized by more and more export of cattle feeds, the
sale and smuggling out of country the best specimen of the
renowned Indian breeds of animals, ever increasing exports of
livestock and their derivatives such as meat, skin, hides,
bones, horns, hooves etc. The post independence policy has
flagrantly violated the Constitutional Commitment to ban the
cow slaughter. On the contrary, the policy has encouraged
greater and greater slaughter of the cow. >>>
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