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Why stray cattle in UP is bad news for BJP

As the morning mist starts lifting from Sunwara village, nestled between the Chambal ravines and banks of the Yamuna not too far away from the Uttar Pradesh-Madhya Pradesh border, a bleary-eyed Ashok Kumar prepares to leave for home. The farmer, belonging to the backward Lodh caste, is just through with yet another round of guarding his crops from ‘

gaiyya’ (cows) even as the ‘ chowkidari’ debate in the country has somewhat subsided post Pulwama .




As a youngster from the joint family arrives at the farmland to “relieve” Ashok of his “ chowkidari duty”, the 65-year-old rues the nights he has been spending in the open for the last few months in this riverine village thanks to the menace of stray cattle . “ Poori raat rakhwali karni padti hai. Naek aankh lag gayi to gai fasal saaf kar deti hai. Kutta jaisi neend le li to le li! (It’s a dog’s life. I have to be alert. If I sleep even for a few minutes, cows will devour the entire crop).”

This story is playing out across the villages of UP. And with the harvest season less than a couple of months away, coinciding as it is with the peak of election campaigning in April, the stray cattle menace has emerged as the biggest farmers’ issue that’s resonating all across. Described in the local parlance as a “ vikral samasya (gargantuan crisis)”, the issue has engulfed every farmer, cutting across castes and communities.

The genesis of the problem, almost every farmer says, is the clampdown on illegal slaughterhouses enforced by the Yogi Adityanath government, coupled with farmers’ inability to find a buyer for the bovines and lack of cow shelters in villages. Farmers estimate that this has resulted in a nearly three-fold increase in stray cattle population in the last two years.

Curiously, the problem hasn’t just acquired political overtones, but has also brought about a societal change with the outlook of a large section of Hindu farmers, hitherto known for their reverence towards “ gaiyya”, changing drastically. A farmer mercilessly thrashing a cow just after it has finished devouring the former’s crop is a common sight in UP’s farmlands these days.

Explaining the “transformation” in society, Mahavir Singh, a Rajput farmer from Sahjadpur village in Mathura district, says: “Earlier, Muslims would take cows and bulls to the slaughterhouse. But today, Yogiji has created a situation where it’s the Hindus who are torturing bovines by thrashing them. We even shoo them away by pouring kerosene so that the fire scares them. What other option do I have if cattle finish my standing crop? Won’t my children die of hunger?”

Such a reaction from someone belonging to Yogi’s own caste — which had solidly backed BJP in 2014 Lok Sabha and 2017 assembly polls — should ring alarm bells for both the UP CM and BJP. It’s not just Rajputs, even Jats and non-Yadav OBCs — who had also overwhelmingly backed Modi-Yogi in the last two elections resulting in a historic landslide for BJP — that this reporter spoke to say the issue could force them to rethink their political choice at the hustings.

“The rural vote will certainly not go to BJP this time. In 2014, barring Yadavs, the OBCs voted en bloc for Modi. But not this time. In some places, up to 70% of the crop has been destroyed,” says Rajjan Lal Pal, a farmer from the Pal-Baghel community (non-Yadav OBC) from Dawoodpur village in Bharthana, Etawah.

Bantu Yadav, a farmer from Salempur Nagla village in the Firozabad Lok Sabha constituency, has a terse, prediction: “BJP ka haar ka karan hoga gaiyya (The cow menace will be BJP’s undoing).” Explains Saura Singh Yadav (72) from Gudayun village in the same constituency: “ Na vote kabu mein aa raha hai na gai kabu mein (BJP has lost control over stray cattle and votes).”

A large section of farmers feels that the Yogi government’s strict rules for bovines have proved to be counter-productive. While most ruralfolk still consider it a “sin” to slaughter cattle, it’s also common now to find sections of villagers reminiscing about the “good old” pre-Yogi days when farmers didn’t have to bother about cattle destroying their crops, thanks to “ chori-chhipe katai
(illegal slaughter)”.

Says Narendra Pal Singh

(75), a Jat farmer from Nagla Basua village in Fatehpur Sikri Lok Sabha constituency, “Government should relax the slaughterhouse rules a bit. Cattle are anyway being tortured and thrashed by farmers.”

Prof Badri Narayan of GB Pant Social Sciences, Allahabad, said economic problems of the farmers are changing the perceptions they earlier had about cows. “They are now realising that the very cow is now damaging their crops. So they have to find a solution.”

However, notwithstanding the anger in the rural areas, the silver lining for BJP is that villagers consider Yogi as the man responsible for the crisis, and not PM Modi.

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