How this backward district in Haryana has borne the brunt of stringent cow-related laws
“How do you fit a veterinary doctor, fodder and a water tank inside a pickup van?” asks Nooruddin, sitting at a tea shop. The 50-year-old former goat keeper now marks buffaloes with colour at the animal market in Firozpur Jhirka for Rs 200, twice a week. Supplementary earnings working at a butcher shop take his monthly income to nearly Rs 3,000. That’s a fifth of what he used to earn a year ago.
“If the government has a problem with cows, calves and oxen, why is it strangulating our jobs?” says an angry Nooruddin, who has to commute 35 kilometres to reach the market from his village, Rehan Tappar in Haryana’s Nuh district.
Stringent legislations in states after states have left the livestock economy in a lurch; they have criminalised the livelihood of cattle traders and cattle keepers. This Mewat area has been one of the worst-hit.
Fifteen of the 20 incidents of killing over cow vigilantism in the last two years were related to movements of cattle. While perpetrators of murders are yet to be brought to justice, at least 53 cases regarding transport / movement of cattle have been lodged in Haryana in the same time, according to People’s Union for Democratic Rights.
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