Divine comedy in bovine policy: Cows, elderly can live together
NEW DELHI: A dog may be a man’s best friend, but the cow is actually it for old people — that’s the message from Delhi’s development minister Gopal Rai , who said on Wednesday that the state government is modernising a cattle shelter in South-west Delhi’s Ghummanhera and adding an old-age home to the facility where “cows and senior citizens will co-exist, taking care of each other.”
Rai was speaking during the release of Delhi’s draft “Animal Health and Welfare Policy, 2018,” a first for the state. The cow-shelter-and-old-age-home isn’t part of the policy, special development commissioner Kuldeep Singh Gangar clarified, but an “experimental” one.
There’s another experimental project — injecting chips in animals to facilitate their identification.
“There is a big crisis of identification of animals in Delhi, be it pet animals or strays. We plan to inject pets with microchips which will help us rescue lost or abandoned animals,” Rai said, adding that the government plans to change the name of the animal husbandry department to “department of animal health and welfare.”
The policy also includes so-called cow hostels where cattle owners will get to keep their animals, perhaps even rear them there, all for a small fee.
Animal rights activist Gauri Maulekhi, who is also an adviser to Union minister Maneka Gandhi, however, called the move “odd”.
“The policy has several loopholes as the main implementing agencies are the municipal corporations,” said Maulekhi.
“The concept of cow hostels doesn’t make any sense as there is no limit as to how long an owner will be able to keep his cattle. These hostels will be no different from the existing dairies which are in a mess,” she added.
Responding to questions on how the policy will be implemented, minister Rai said the government is going to hold more consultations with the Municipal Corporations of Delhi and the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), which is the primary land owning agency in the national capital.
The policy recommends controlling the population of monkeys through birth control, and mandates 24x7 veterinary services. It also aims to make Delhi free of rabies without setting any timeline for the goal. “A veterinary hospital that will be operational round the clock will be inaugurated at Tis Hazari on January 16. Apart from this, the government will increase the number of veterinary hospitals in Delhi from 76 to 272 – one in each ward,” the minister said.
Delhi isn’t the first state to focus on cows. Several states have announced policies aimed at bettering the lot of cows, considered holy.
In MP, in September, then CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan of the BJP announced the creation of a cow ministry. In the run-up to elections in the state, Congress leader and current CM Kamal Nath promised a cow shelter in every panchayat. UP announced a cess to take care of abandoned and old cows.
Rai cited the old and the abandoned. “When a cow dries up, people leave her and she ends up in a gaushala (cow shelter). Similarly, humans too are abandoned and sent to old age homes, even by rich families.
So, we have decided that the unit in Ghummanhera will be a joint gaushala and old-age home,” he riffed.
Experts appreciated Delhi’s pro-activeness in framing a policy for animals, but said the government may have gone “a bit too far” with its plan on cows.