Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
rearing in India,' note the FAO. 'There is marked replacement of animal power with mech-
anical power.' An article in the Indian environmental magazine
Down to Earth
warns that
most of India's 27 different cattle breeds had been developed for draught use, but are
now not being maintained or improved. Nonetheless, with almost no technical support for
draught animals, more than 50 per cent of the land is still not tractor ploughed; and the
number of oxen in India declined from 80 million in 1973 to a still significant 65 million
tractors per 1,000 hectares, whereas, if all of India's farmers had a tractor, the figure would
be well over the norm.
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The people who have been hit hardest by the white revolution have been those at the
very bottom who might once have been able to keep a poor cow, but are priced out by the
upbreeding. Kamlabai Gudhe, a Dalit woman from Wardha, Maharashtra, whose husband
died in a wave of farmer suicides in 2006, was given a crossbred Jersey cow valued at over
£200 - but found that its appetite was insatiable. 'This brute eats more than all of us in this
house put together,' she complained. 'And we don't get more than four litres a day from it'.
The animal was given her as part of a heavily criticized scheme promoted by Maharashtra
Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh to distribute 40,000 'quality' cows to people in need.
Vijay Jawandia, a local farming activist, stated that the money would be better spent reviv-
ing the growing of
jowar
(a millet) which, before it was phased out occupied 30 per cent of
the land in the district and provided a substantial quantity of fodder.
52
A frequent alternative, over the last 20 years, has been to give the poor and landless
goats, through government relief programmes and self-help schemes. To an agricultural
economist, the advantage of goats over cows in the Indian context is transparent: there is
no widespread religious proscription against killing them, so they can be sold for meat, and
there is an export market to the Middle East. Yet they browse the commons just like cows,
so they can be given to landless labourers who might otherwise rely on one of those de-
crepit, unslaughterable, unexportable cows, or even, God forbid, demand land. As an Uttar
Pradesh government advice sheet listing the advantages of goat farming puts it: 'No reli-
gious taboo against goat slaughter and meat consumption prevalent in the country … Goats
make a valuable contribution to the livelihood of economically weaker sections of society.
Amongst the livestock owners, goat rearers are the poorest of the lot'.
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Former Indian Minister for the Environment, Maneka Gandhi, writing in 1999, explains
how goats are taking over the niche traditionally occupied by the cow:
Our goats are not grown on farms. In fact apart from poultry no animals are.
People with land grow crops instead. People with no land raise animals. They are giv-
en pairs of goats as part of government relief schemes and self-help schemes. With no
