Unsung Indian Scientist for Ronald Ross's Success

A BITTER TRUTH ABOUT CATTLE REARING AT OUR FARMLANDS

14TH JAN2019

This is the time when our nation is celebrating Lohari in Northern India and Pongal in south. This is the time when our village youth are readying themselves with JALLAKUTTI. Makar sankarati will be celebrated tomorrow with great fun fare as Prayagraj is celebrating Kumbh during this period..

Let me clarify in the beginning that what so ever i am writing it has no political links and i will write only scientific facts , as per my memory. This writing is coming from my heart after seeing many TV channels and their reporting how our cattle are made vagabond and it appears there is no caretaker of cow herd except our congested Goashala. But strangely i could not see any buffalo in the herd. Why it is so ?

As we all know that Agriculture development and domestication of  animals occurred simultaneously..There may be a controversy whether our Sindh valley civilization developed separately or was linked with  Masopatamina civilization but domestication of Bison, a forest animal resulted in development of cattle. At that time our all economy depended on Agriculture , so we preferred a cow who can give milk and its males may be used for Agriculture. Therefore, through out India , a dual purpose cow or cattle breed was developed. The importance of cow was well recognized by the visionary Lord Krishna who gave due recognition to the cow in our society. So much so that he gave second name  as GOPAL ( those who rare cow) to his title . We are all well versed with his taking village cows for grazing and preventing the ladies to sale butter prior use to their family members.

It gives us two important observations of those days. The first was there was no or very negligible cost in raring a cow in the village as it mainly depends on grazing. Its importance was narrated by Krishna to their fellow members by asking them to worship "GOVARDHAN' a hillock that provides feed and fodder to our cattle . The second observation is that mostly this dairy job was carried out by ladies or gopi.

Importance of bullocks in the agriculture field can be judged by depicting his elder brother BALRAM  with PLOUGH OR HAAL. Perhaps this whole story tells the importance of oow in those periods  Importance of cow increased  so much  in the society that they started worshiping cow as their mother- the individual who provides all to our children.Cow was giving milk,butter, bullocks used for ploughing fields while their dung was used for preparing manures.

This feeling of treating cow as mother is re-generated in modern period where great changes has occurred on real ground.

 Time has changed a lot . The most important fact is that cow has not remained main source for carrying Agricultural activities. Instead of bullocks ,we have now tractors which are present in big farms while small farms may also take them on hire and carry the tilling work in shorter time. Instead of cow manure we are having chemical fertilizers . Again bullock carts have been abandoned and rtractors or alike mechanical vehicles are used in the village for transportation.

Another important fact is ban of selling these cattle or their slaughter by any one particularly in north India. Perhaps for this reason our villagers are no longer interested in keeping cattle in their house hold. If Government of India is interested to maintain importance of cow , it has to do some new innovations . Looking to the bitter truth where every thing depends on freebies , one has to think how we can bring back economic importance of cattle in our society.