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Holy cow! Look what they're talking about

By Tavleen Singh

There are moments when politics in India acquires a surreal quality and we are currently in the throes of one such bizarre moment. How else to explain the current obsession with cow slaughter and beef-eating at a time when the world edges ever closer to war? The story, for those of you who may have been following cricket or the impending war instead, is that the Congress Party in Madhya Pradesh suddenly and quite inexplicably decided to charge the Prime Minister with being an eater of beef. Gau hamari mata hai, Atal Behari khata hai. This is the sort of stupid accusation that is best ignored but the Prime Minister chose to answer it. So, his government was ordered to launch a counter attack in the form of a terse press release from the Ministry of Commerce. ``Export of beef is banned. The prohibition is listed as item 02021: all consignments of meat are subject to pre-shipment inspection.''

In case this was insufficient defense of the Prime Minister, his
party also leapt into the act with Vijay Kumar Malhotra coming forth with the theory that when Hindutva hero, Veer Savarkar, suggested cow slaughter was a good thing he meant foreign cows only. God knows what he meant but he should have been talking of Indian cows whose plight is so pitiable that the poor creatures would be better off dead. European cows, on the other hand, live better than most human beings do in India. At the India
Economic Summit in Delhi last November, an economist drew
attention to the fact that cows in Europe lived on two dollars
a day, twice as much as Indians below the poverty line get
to spend.


Now, there is something that our two main political parties
should be discussing. With nearly half our population living in
desperate poverty it would be interesting to know what excuses,
explanations and ideas our politicians have to offer. With what
face do they tell us that we are on our way to being the world's
next economic superpower when so many of our countrymen
continue to live on less a day than European cows? What is
worse is that most of them are as illiterate as European cows as
well and yet we never hear our political parties discuss the
shambles in our education system. In recent times, there has
been much hysteria over ``saffronization'' of education again,
oddly enough, on account of beef and cows. Dr Murli Manohar
Joshi, that leading champion of the Indian cow, deleted from
history textbooks all references to Brahmins eating beef in
ancient times and secular hysteria rose across the land. Fine.
But, why do we never see similar rage over the disgraceful state
of the Indian school system? So appaling are conditions in our
schools that to have a classroom is a luxury. Most rural schools
do not have this luxury and if they do they are usually reliant
on the services of a single teacher who often finds no time
for the mundane business of teaching.

For things to improve we need to spend at least twice as much
on education as we currently spend but I cannot remember the
last time there was a serious debate in Parliament on this issue.
For that matter, when did you last hear our politicians discuss
the shaming state of Indian healthcare? We have government
hospitals in which it is not unusual to find stray dogs and cats
wandering about the wards, not to mention rats so large they
have been known to eat newborn babies. And, if you wander
into smaller towns and villages it is not unusual to find health
centres and hospitals so filthy that to enter them is to risk your
life. According to one recent survey, Indians spend more on
private healthcare than almost any other people, but can you
remember the last time there was a debate in Parliament, or
even a public discussion on this subject?

What is it with our politicians that they find so much time to
discuss cows, religion and temples and so little to discuss
education, healthcare or our desperate need for such fundamental necessities as electricity and drinking water? Speaking of water, there was a truly surreal moment recently when everyone panicked over the quality of bottled water in India. The government responded with remarkable speed and last week
the Consumer Affairs Ministry withdrew certification to eight
brands of bottled water on grounds of unsafe quality. What
makes the exercise truly surreal is that nobody, least of all
the Minister of Consumer Affairs, appears to have noticed
that the water that ordinary Indians get through their taps is
of such dubious quality that only the foolhardy or the
desperately poor dare drink it without first filtering or boiling it.
Certainly, if analysed, it would be declared unfit for
European cows.

To return then to cows for whom we see so much concern from
both Congress and BJP, can we expect that their lot will improve
in the near future? As things stand, to be an Indian cow is a
fate worse than death. With cow slaughter banned, when cows
grow old they are simply abandoned so clusters of them can be
seen seated sadly on busy streets in every Indian city. Most
die such slow painful deaths that if it was possible for them
to have a say in the matter they would almost certainly vote
for lifting the ban on cow slaughter. Perhaps, it's time to
seriously consider Savarkar's views on the subject, he was
after all the man who invented the idea of Hindutva.


27 February, 2003