Killing Men to Save Cows

The current session of Parliament has been dominated by opposition protests about lynchings by self-styled ‘gau rakshaks’. There are no official statistics on the numbers of beatings, lynchings, deaths or injuries caused by these vigilantes in the name of ‘cow protection’, because the government doesn’t distinguish between such incidents and other beatings or killings. Data journalism portal IndiaSpend is one of the few publications keeping a running tab of incidents as reported in the media. There has been plenty of verbal condemnation of the violence, from the Prime Minister down. But has there been enough action to back up those words?