Need for Jallikattu - Bull taming sport of TN

When I was a small boy, on the second day after Pongal, i.e. on the 3rd of Makara (as per Tamil almanac), we used to have a celebration of the cattle helping the farmer in the fields and also giving milk to the family which was and continues to be an essential nutrient. The cattle will be taken to the rivers and given a bath and brought back home. After extensive polishing with a soft brush/cloth, the cattle will be decorated with turemeric, kumkum, sandal paste and garlanded with flowers and also with a garland made of a plant called Netti. This plant used to grow on the river banks. The people used to cut it,dry it and color it to make lovely colorful garlands. The cows and bulls will have a sumptuous feast made of cooked rice, jaggery and will be fed with bananas. The cattle will be worshiped as demigods as they provide enough nutrients and also help the farmer in his cultivation activities. The dung and the urine of the cows and the bulls will be collected along with the waste hay in a pit at the end of the house to prepare a good manure which will be used at the time of ploughing the land for cultivation. Then on the next day, the boys and young men in the village will assemble at around 3 PM in the village streets. First a bull called a temple bull (கோவில் மாடு) will be let lose from the temple premises at the western end of the street. The entire village will be assembled in the streets either on the Thinnais or on the streets to witness the event. The temple bull will be allowed to go without any one trying to capture it. Then one after the other the bulls from the houses will be brought out and let out (after removing the ropes tied to their noses and also the neck - மூக்கணாங்கயிறு மற்றும் தும்பு). The young men will try to capture the bulls and the bulls will be running helter skelter to escape. Slowly during my youth I learnt that this is a major tourist attraction and done professionally with lots of prize money on the bulls. There are many persons in central and western part of the state who reared bulls only for this purpose. The Kangeyam town is known for the bulls which are reared for this sport. The Kangeyam bulls also known for their ability to work hard and also the uncastrated bulls were used for mating to produce the best bulls and cows. This was during the days of my school and college days. Slowly the work culture absorbed me into the world of its own. Now in the last few years, I read that the association called PETA called for a ban and was awarded one by the highest court of India. What this PETA is doing is an extensive damage to the local cattle variety of India and especially South India. The Kangeyam bulls, Nandyal bulls and the Punganoor Cows are all highly priced possessions which are being reared with utmost care and love. I had seen a young boy of about 3 or 4 controlling the ferocious bull very easily and it followed him everywhere like a domesticated dog. Be that as it may, the decision to ban this sport has a very serious repercussions to the local cattle variety. If this sport is not there, the young male calves will be sent to slaughter house for meat and hide and the young female calves will have no local stud bull for mating. This over a period of time will erase the entire local cattle population. Once upon a time India did have five times the number of humans as cattle. Possessing cattle was considered wealth. Even in scriptures, there are enough references to cattle, where the kings donated cows to the brahmins for their upkeep and rearing as the milk and ghee made of the milk from the cattle were used in the daily chores of the brahmins. Now with the local cattle on the threshold of extinction, it is for the government of the day at the center and the state to act with alacrity to save them. When the same PETA in Spain objected to their matadorian festival bull fight,the government of Spain dismissed the charge and no court of the country came to the help of the PETA. The bull fight continues even today in Spain. Forget it being a national sport. The cattle breed is to be saved from extinction and this Jallikattu is one form of keeping the male calves alive.

Native Oils and Cattle - A similarity

We used to buy sesame oil and ground nut oil for use at home. We used to buy coconut oil for any medicinal purposes or for grooming the hair. Or at times,the tenant cultivator will bring the yield of sesame from the field. So we used to get the sesame dried in the open terrace and then take it to the oil press (old wooden one with a bull turning the mortar and the pestle remaining more or less motionless). As a young boy and also later a young adult I used to sit on the long arm to which the bull is yoked when the oil merchant used to put the dry produce (sesame, groundnut or coconut) into the press to extract oil. he used to put a little bit of jaggery into the press if it is sesame. He also used to have a small torch made of a stick with cloth tied around at one end and lighted. This he used to stick it into the press and he used to say that this would extract more oil from the produce. I graduated from the formal collegiate education in the mid 1970s and the hunt for a job started. Once I landed a job in a reasonably big city (Bangalore those days was not even comparable to present day Coimbatore in terms of size and population but climatically the best of places all round the year), the question of the oil press and the sesame, groundnut or coconut oils were totally forgotten. In the fag end of 1979,once I joined the bank, there was no turning back to the country oil press or the oils produced with a very high quality and the smell from the oil press.

The early part of 1980s saw the advent of the new types of oils extracted from various oil seeds and also rice bran. This onslaught was taken further with the advent of TV in almost every home post 1982 Asiad games. Slowly the sesame oil,ground nut oil and coconut oil lost shelf space to Soybean oil, Sunflower oil, Kharadi oil, cotton seed oil, rice bran oil etc. The TV adverts were targeting the gullible audience hitting them with ideas that the native oils like sesame oil, groundnut oil and coconut oil are not good for health and may be the reason for all cardio related diseases. This produced the mass hysteria among the population who immediately switched over to the imported palmolein, sunflower oil, rapeseed oil, cotton seed oil, soybean oil etc. Once the market for these oils are firmly set now the goodness of the earlier native oils are being propagated with refined oils being marketed locally or imported. We as usual, fell for this gimmick and now buy the refined variety of the same oil that we were using unrefined for ages till about 1970s.

The early part of 18th century saw export of some of the cattle from India to the Americas. These cattle were from some of the best breeds which could withstand the tropical extremities of climate. These cattle were imported into the Americas both in north and in south. The variety came to be known as Brahman possibly due to the very high cattle ownership with Brahmans in the early part of 17th century. These cattle have a peculiar hump in their back and also produce a very nutritious milk which the scientists claim is A2 (these classifications were not known until very recently to many of us) which contain some of the best nutrients for growth. This milk is suitable for babies and also for aged and infirm. How the people of India were keeping the cattle? They used to worship the cows, use the bull for all the labour and also for mating for reproduction. Once upon a time not long ago, the cattle population was far in excess of the human population of the country. Slowly the west started the same strategy that they adopted for oil with the cattle. They are slowly killing the local cattle by adopting first increasing the meat and leather exports from the country, then using their agent PETA to get a ban on the local cattle sports. There is a ban on the cattle cart race and also the bull taming (jallikattu). The same western countries and their businesses and also their agents PETA do not want and also could not do anything with the bull fighting in Spain where the Matador kills the bull in the arena or the water buffalo racing in Thailand. These countries' local cattle do not pose the threat to the Jersey cows that the Indian cattle do. The corrupt politicians do not understand the agenda behind these actions of these agencies and they get carried away by the colour of the greenbacks shown to them. Otherwise, what is the need for the MOS in charge of environment at that point of time who was a politician from TN to grant permission to PETA in the first plac. The irony is his party is now fighting the party in power in central government on the same issue of bull taming.

Agitation in TN and state finances

When the agitation was going on for Jallikattu in TN, I was one of the votaries for the same and I sincerely felt that there is a concerted move by the vested interests to kill the local cattle population and increase the jersey cattle population. The agitation took totally a different turn and direction in the last two/ three days leading one to suspect that the age old separatism is rearing its head in Tamilnadu. Otherwise, there was no need for such blatant and open derogatory posters against the CM of the state and the PM of the country. It is high time the political masters understand the undercurrents in such agitations and take appropriate actions in time to nip the same in the bud so that such anti national sentiments do not get propagated so openly.

Now there is another move in the state; to ban all the soft drinks being made and marketed by MNCs in the country. It is rolling back to 1975 when Coca Cola and IBM were thrown out of the country and it took 16 long years for the government to woo them back into the country. Though the soft drinks do not subscribe to the health of the country, it generates, employment, revenue and add to the GDP of the country. This cannot be wished away. There is an argument that the soft drinks majors take away the foreign exchange out of the country and also the exchange rate of the Indian Rupee is very much skewed thanks to these.

Let us look at a similar scenario. Almost all cars in the country, except Tata and Mahindra, are manufactured by MNCs. Two of the most popular brands, Maruti and Hyundai apart from Honda, Ford, Skoda, Volkswagen etc. are the market leaders and the Indian brands are nowhere near them. If the people stop buying these MNC cars, then the value of the Rupee will go up substantially as the royalty transferred by these companies on the sales will come down with the reduction in sales of the vehicles. Isn't it so? Can we extend the same logic to other things from our morning paste for brushing out teeth, to morning cup of tea or instant coffee, to noodles, medicines etc.? Will we not be able to increase the value of the Rupee substantially going by these logic? What will happen if these companies either in automobile manufacture or in FMCG have a serious reduction in sale? They will reduce the workforce. Isn't it? Then it will increase the unemployment. Will not affect other areas? YES; of course; it will affect.

Let it be aside. Let us look at a totally different picture that has emerged recently in the last five to ten years in the state of TN. The parties had vied with each other to provide liquor at every street corner by opening outlets owned by a corporation set up by the state. The revenue and the profit had crossed all reasonable estimates in the last count. What has been done in the last decade with this very high ever increasing revenue? The parties who came to power tried to overdo the other by providing freebies to the BPL public. It is just not essentials like rice, lentils, and provisions etc. It reached such proportions, everything that a middle income person in the country can think about from his hard earned money, be it a fan, mixer grinder, television set etc., was made available to the BPL public totally free. Even after all these high revenue from liquor sales the government coffers were filled with loans and today the TN government is reportedly sitting on a quantum of close to two lakh crores in loans carrying varying rates of interest payable to different agencies. What economic activity started in the last decade to increase the revenue to support the government is a moot question that I leave it. One of the major auto makers who set shop has taken his expansion plan to Gujarat. The greenfield airport planned for Chennai is still in paper only. No further action seen on that. The area surrounding the original site identified is now filled with residential buildings. This will jack up the cost of acquisition of land for the greenfield project. No new industry has come to the state despite tall claims made by the parties in power in the last decade. Forget about industry. Even in drinking water management the state had done nothing in the last decade. When the city of Chennai was marooned last year, it was expected that there will be plans to improve the water storage for long term solutions. But it was not to be. The very next year the state is going around with a begging bowl to the neighbouring states for water. There had been little done to improve the water management like de-silting the lakes, tanks, water storage dams etc during lean season and use the storage for maximum storage during better seasons. These ideas seem to be alien to the executive and also to the political class in the state. Among the states,if a survey is done, possibly the state may find itself somewhere in bottom regarding the corruption index. When no new major economic activity is started in the state in the past decade, no industry has invested either for expansion or new capex, existing agricultural economic activity is given go by, the state is on a sliding board with every inch is accelerating the downward slide.

In this bleak economic scenario if the fringe elements as stated earlier have a free run in the state, then the day is not far off when the state will be comparable to the BIMARU states, three out of four in that are already out sickness and show exemplary growth both economically and socially.

Budget & expectations

Once more an annual event had happened without much fanfare. All armchair experts made their own demands on the social media as to what is their expectation from this annual tamasha. Some has made their statutory or mandatory noises for or against this exercise looking at it from which side of their piece of bread is buttered. The persons who were saying that an increase of 100 in price of lentils is exorbitant but a reduction in tax to the tune of 15000 is too little. That is the irony of this annual exercise. Some say that the budget lacks imagination. Some say that Modi does not have economists or taxation experts to support him prepare the budget. Every one seem to forget that the exercise is done by the bureaucrats who have been doing it for many years; the colour and content differ based on the priorities of the party in power in that year and also the compulsions of the party based on the happenings, The CEA (Chief Economic Adviser) to the government is a seasoned economist and the MOF has many stalwarts who had been shaping the budgets for the past many years. The persons at the top level in Secretary or Jt. Secretary are getting changed or transferred. But the lower level people who actually work on the budget in the budget team remain more or less the same and who are in the know of things about the macro economics, taxation or law. There were a few comments doing rounds in the social media about what are likely reactions from many quarters of politics, business, finance,media etc. from yesterday (31/01/2017) morning. Most of which are standard and there was absolutely no change in the reaction from such sources except a few words here and there. Otherwise the sum and substance was the same. With election in a few states around the corner, you cannot expect a budget to be devoid of attention to rural areas, more sops to the populist schemes, enhanced allocation to poverty alleviation programmes etc. The one thing that stand out like a sore thumb is the 5% tax for the first slab which could have been avoided by increasing the base slab to 4 lakhs and retaining the tax at 10% for the first slab from 4 to 10 lakhs ( or even tinkering with the slab itself). This way the salaried would have felt relieved. With the introduction of GST around the corner during the next fiscal, there had been not much of change in respect of various duties and taxes. The DeMon effect could have been rewarded a little more by giving some more sops to the common man both salaried and non salaried. Why keep the agriculture out of the income tax when slowly the country has moved away from agrarian economy to industrial economy beats me. This has paved the way for Singhs, Pawars, Patels, Gandhis, Badals and name any one to declare their entire wealth as income out of agriculture and get it totally exempt. What agriculture activity done by these politicians can be explained to common folk for them emulate these political bigwigs to reap similar benefit of income from agriculture. By keeping a significant segment of income generation and a major component of GDP out of income tax, the country and the government have opened a way to evade tax on any amount of income either legally or illegally. No one can be wiser.

Media and highlighting Negativity

We as a nation rejoice in negativity. The press is no exception. For them if the dog bites a man it is no news whereas if it is the other way around then it is a hot selling news. With the satellite TV channels telecasting news 24 hours and competing with each other with about a dozen or so main channels and about a hundred or so minor ones catering to regional requirements, everything from a stray dog menace in a corner of the country to the shooting of the naxals or terrorists become breaking news for all channels irrespective of whether it is seen across the globe or otherwise. The speeches of the principal campaigners in the on going elections to the largest state in the country has thrown such negativity that one CM of the state is calling the PM of the nation as a donkey and another ex CM of the state is expanding the name of the PM in a highly derogatory manner. The prince in waiting, he can be compared to Prince Charles forever waiting for the post of PM of the country, is blabbering his way. The most attractive campaigner of all, albeit with the image of her grandmother in her make up and hair do, is also not far behind. There was a thread in the face book that the PM should not stoop so low in his campaign and leave such repartee to the second or third level campaigners.

In this context, if you look at what is happening around, one leader says he would visit a jailed ex MP in his cell. I don't know whether he meant he would be visiting him him in jail or he also would join him. In another thread there was a news item that the jailed lady from TN in a prison in the adjoining state is looking for ways to get back to the state though as the guest of the state prison department. There are lots of conjectures as to the reason behind such move. In the last month or two, the MSM including the TV channels had been busy with airing the highly negative news of what is happening in the state. Everything is speculated from money changing hands, to arranging women for the interested ones, liquor, food, a few kilograms of gold etc. Do anyone in his/her sane mind will be taking a side in a tussle just for these things overlooking the fear for his life. The media and the social media commentators very conveniently forgot that the other side is equally bad and was part of the larger group until yesterday. It appears to be a case of sour grapes or if you want to say apples,be it so. The power hungry persons behind these moves have wrought unthinkable distortions to the social and moral fabric of the state in the last two months. The fabric is almost at the point of getting torn completely thereby the state will fall into a bottomless abyss getting out of which will be a Herculean task for the future generations to come. The state was hailed as one of the stellar states in respect of social schemes, education both in local language and also in English, best higher education standards, industrial development etc. This was about a decade or so back. But today sadly the state can claim no such victories or trophies to take home. Repeated assault on social and moral fabric had rendered the state in producing people with education who can not be employed. Unemployable technical graduates galore.

Agriculture which is the backbone of the country in the last many millenium has given way to the industrialisation and is now relegated way below. There is no plans to improve the agricultural activity in the country or in the state which boasts of highest agri output (though in the years of adequate monsoon). Here if an agriculturist dies,may be due to any reason, then this news is picked up to project it as the failure of the policies of the government. If a person has died of heart attack in the hot sun, the prime time TV channels demand an apology from the PM of the nation holding him responsible for that. The recent failure of three successive monsoons in the state had seen that there is a crop failure and also the agriculturists who had gone ahead with planting had found the crop withering due to lack of water. The team from the center and also deployed by the state government had visited and also examined the claims of the people. The TV channels lost no time in showing the dead crop, dried lands, parched tanks and dry dams as visuals. The failure of the administration to store the water in surplus years had not been questioned by any one. All highlight only the negativity of the present.

Jai Ho Negativity. Long Live Negativity.

Students in the crossfire of political ambitions

There had been lots of posts in the Facebook denigrating the memory of the fallen soldier by calling his daughter many names. She herself had downgraded the sacrifice of her father while fighting the terrorists in J&K. The students are being used a pawns in the political one-up-manship by the vested interests. The current imbroglio in the capital where one person has called for freedom for Kashmir. The media and the left leaning politicians call this as FOE provided for in the constitution. If a person can call for seceding from the union and the same is hailed as his birth right to express his opinion, then where are we heading. The non stop coverage by the electronic media of the events that are unfolding in the capital in the student unrest is nothing short of blowing things beyond proportions. The social media has taken the debate to further low. Are we living in a civilised society where opinion of an individual can be countered with reasoned arguments or where the opinion of an individual is countered with muscling the person with threats.

If you look at the events that are unfolding in the DU and also in J&K in the last few months culminating in the Ramjas College incident, you will be able to discern a pattern emerging from the same. The political class who seem to be facing oblivion in the present times want to be in the lime light and to make their presence felt. The only tool that they can use against the present administration is the same tool by which the present administration came to power. The students who are tech savvy and who can be easily moulded into the thinking of the political class and also ignited to carry on the fight as a proxy for the political class. The student agitation of mid 1960s in TN sowed the seeds for transformation in the ruling set up and the dravidian parties came in to ruling class. The call of JP Narayan and the rise of student power saw the change in the government in the center in mid 1970s. Similarly the student power saw the enactment of a law in TN to support the jallikattu, the bull taming sport. Now the situation appears that the marginalised political class and the media are instigating the student community in the capital so that there will be an uprising against the administration. The unfortunate victim in this political chess game is people like Gurmehar Kaur the daughter of the fallen hero.

Water Woes of Tamilnadu

Tamilnadu boasts of having the second longest coastline among all states in the country. There is a large population of people depending on the sea for their livelihood. The entire state in alternate years is facing a natural calamity of one or the other. In one year there is an excess rain leading to water flooding everywhere and the fear of the slums on the river banks in the state capital Chennai going under water. In another year the people of the state have to walk miles like in the deserts of Rajasthan to fetch water for drinking. There is a fight in every street corner to get a pot of water from the water tanker. The water tanker makes the appearance once every week in some places and it is the tanker driver who determines which area and which street in that area to be given water. The main river in the state Kavery from being a seasonal river has become permanently dry. To add to the woes of the people along the river banks, there is indiscriminate sand mining going on in the river beds from Erode in the west to Kallanai in the east and even further eastwards. This has resulted in the ground water going down in many areas in the river banks. Where water was available in about 50 feet, now the people have to dig borewells to the depth of 150 feet to get water supply. The river bed resembles a bush country in some African state.

The government is not serious about solving the water problem. The politicians are busy vying with each other to make money and trying to upstage the other. The government can think about sending a team of experts and bureaucrats to Israel to study the water management in that country. In 1945 when Israel became a nation in the promised land carved out by the British from Jordan along the Mediterranean Sea, the nomadic Arab population of that area sold the Jews, who migrated from Europe to that area, the lands that no one else would buy. All swamp lands and water starved lands were sold to them by the Arab. Today with their ingenuity Israelis have converted the semi-arid region into a greenery and produce all fruits, vegetables, grains that the population require. They are surrounded by enemies on all sides. Their efforts do not go only to protect themselves and producing war machinery; they also spend their effort to produce what they require for their sustenance locally without depending on imports. 

If no serious efforts are taken to address the water problem in a few decades from now, the state will be like a sub-Saharan country. Presently the state is begging for water from other neighboring states. The political class and ordinary citizens are raising their voice if a neighboring state builds a check dam or even raise the height of an existing dam within their state across a river which feeds the river flowing through the state of TN. To what end. The neighboring states work to alleviate the problems faced by the people those states. Except filing a case in the SC or orgetting the final decree of the SC published in the gazette of the GOI, or making demands for setting up of a Kavery Water Tribunal what constructive work had been in the last four to five decades by successive governments for a long-lasting solution to the water problem in the state. Why not follow the model of Israel which is almost half of the state in terms of size and having a coastline on the sea? Why not set up Desalination plants along the coast every 50 odd kilometers and pump the water inland to use in agriculture and for drinking? Why not switch over to drip irrigation and less water intensive crops? When the state is reeling under water crisis almost every alternate year why permit MNC cola companies to draw water from semi perennial rivers for their cola plants thereby denying the due water supply for drinking and irrigation purposes? Is it not high time to shut down the water intensive leather tanning industry?