Supreme Court extending Madras HC order staying cattle trade restrictions is good for India
In a heartening development, the Supreme Court has extended the Madras high court order (of May 30) suspending the Centre’s new cattle trade for slaughter restrictions dated May 23 to the whole country. The Centre is supposed to “revise” the rules and get back by August end, and until then the fresh notifications have no merit.
On May 23, the Centre had notified that the sale and purchase of cattle from animal markets intended for slaughter would be banned, and that the animal markets themselves, the capillaries of cattle trade, would be banned within 25km of state border and 50km of international border. In addition, the filing of the Livestock Trade Regulations under the Prevention of Cruelty against Animals Act, 1960, meant that the cattle and bovine animals were being singled out for protection, when even the Constitution allows for animal slaughter for dietary purposes.
Of course, several states refused to implement the new cattle trade rules, particularly West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and the Northeastern states, citing several objections. Moreover, the Rs one lakh crore meat industry was hit hard, the beef exports dropped, and India’s poor farmers were saddled by the old and infirm cattle as the new rules took effect.
Also, this seemed to legitimise the cow-related vigilantism and lynchings that have been going on for a while now, and the country came to a tipping point when 16-year-old Junaid Khan was killed on a train after accused of being a “beef-eater”.
There have been exhaustive reports on how the twin diktats of notebandi and “bazarbandi” had hit India’s dairy farmers hard, and farmers from Marathwada, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu have paid the price for these anti-informal sector, anti-poor, anti-agriculture moves from the Centre.
It is the small landholders and landless farmers who own a chunk of the country’s livestock, and the cattle trade restrictions meant that the debt cycle would now spiral out of control. Data journalism portals such as IndiaSpend have documented how the restrictions affected India’s poorest and how arbitrary and thoughtless the diktat was, crippling livestock markets.
Moreover, the beef ban and cattle trade restrictions were heavily dipped in the ruling BJP’s Hindutva agenda, which it is hardly trying to disguise under the veneer of development anymore. The worst affected are Muslim traders and Dalit workers, as the crackdown had deeply impacted the meat and leather industry.
Shoe factories, tanning industry in Kolhapur or Kolkata had been pushed beyond the edge, never facing a crisis of raw materials like this. Slaughterhouses, which the government wouldn’t sanction and which are caught in bureaucratic muddle, saw closed shutters, rendering thousands jobless, robbing hundreds of traditional profession. In addition, workers at meat and leather factories, mostly poor Muslims and Dalits, were now out of jobs, and hadn’t another source of income. Even the international press was compelled to call out the Modi government’s highly targeted cattle trade restrictions, saying that the state was damaging the “secular, tolerant” bedrock of a buoyant economy.
With the economy nose-diving and communal incidents spiking, the SC decision to extend Madras HC order comes as a ray of hope. It has asked the petitioners to return with grievances if they find the Centre’s “revised rulings” wanting. We hope the Centre comes back to its senses and revokes the rule 22 of the notification imposing trade restrictions on animal markets. Animal welfare and human welfare can very well go hand in hand.