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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 Page3
It is being
erroneously believed that the cattle are not a wealth, that
they are only a liability, a dead weight, and therefore, they
are only fit to be slaughtered on a mass scale. The rapidly
increasing number of abattoirs is being set up in the public
and private and private sectors, and in the name of earning
foreign exchange, communal harmony, and secularism, the
suicidal policy of killing the livestock en mass is being
pressed by the State and the other vested interests. ,
All this needs to be reversed
if the poverty-sticken condition of India is to be improved.
The foundation of the Alternative Paradigms of traditional
agro -industrial civilization, Arcadian culture, ruralization,
Gram-swarajya, Hind-swarajya, Samyayoga is the protection and
the service of the
cow Environmental Protection
or Sustainable Development depends on cow protection. Cow
protection will also prove as a powerful means of the
elimination of corruption because in a cow-based decentralised
economy, there will neither be an opportunity nor the
temptation to misappropriate the mind-boggling sums of money
such has Rs. 50,000 crores in five years.
Mere Economics Criteria
are not Sufficient
It is erroneously argued by
some that in a secular country, the issue of cow protection
should be considered primarily from the economic point of
view. The perverted logic is presented that majority of cows
are unproductive and a burden on poor farmers on account of
high cost of fodder, that the ban on cow slaughter has led to
the increase in prices of mutton and chicken which has
increased the prices of vegetables. While presenting such
arguments, it is not verified whether cow slaughter has been
really banned and why, say, fodder prices have gone up?
One ought not to make a case
for both the cow slaughter and banning the cow slaughter only
on the basis of the so called
"Economic truths" or "economic criteria".
The protection of cow is not merely an economic issue, it is
one of the solution to the civilizational impasse. Where the
life of crores and crores of sentient beings is involved, to
advocate cow slaughter merely on economic grounds is to commit
the blunder of adopting an anthropocentric i.e. man-centred
position or view- point. The position that something which has
no economic case has no case at all is untenable. The case for
the justice to the backward people, the independence of women,
communal harmony, the end of corruption is not a mere economic
case. The protection of cow is at least as important as these
issues and the case for it, as the case for them, remains
strong, whether or not it is backed by economic
considerations. In fact, if there ever was a strong case for
anything, it is for the protection of cow because it is a
multi-dimensional case encompassing economic, ecological,
ethical, religious, and cultural aspects.
Having said this, let it be
emphasized that the cow protection has a very strong case even
within the framework of conventional or mainstream economics,
let apart in terms of mata-economics or holistic economics or
biononomics. The price stability, low budgetary deficit,
favourable balance of payments, raising the standard of
living, low rate of growth of money supply, etc. are the goals
of conventional economic policy, and the protection of cow
will certainly help in a big way in achieving such goals. Let
us illustrate this by briefly discussing only three issues
namely, subsidies, unemployment, and food and
nutrition.
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