Blue Bull in China Shop

One man’s prized bull can be another man’s pet peeve. Why else would have some genius come up with the expression “bull in a china shop”?  Now there is this prized bull, the perfect Murrah specimen Yuvraj, whose semen costing $3000 is perhaps the most expensive in India. Then there are those bulls who are sold off cheaply over gau matas for their lack of udders and end up becoming raw hide, protestations notwithstanding.  And now we have the blue bulls or blue cows, whichever way you like them, raising their holy heads and a ruckus.

Seriously speaking, I am all for the rights of the underprivileged, the voiceless, the weak and the downtrodden and this includes both the human and the animal species. I believe I am humanitarian at heart and would not willingly hurt someone defenseless.  Perhaps herein lies the crux. In this debate over man versus animal, predator versus prey, human rights versus animal rights, there is a huge moral dilemma. It is not so easy as taking the decision to give up eating chicken, fish, rabbit or egg and turning into a 100 per cent vegetarian, moved by the plight or sight of the PETA ads – Imagine if this were your leg piece, anyone? These are voluntary decisions, within individual control. Here, undoubtedly, it is man, the primate, who as king of the jungle is inflicting harm on lesser and weaker members of the larger family. In the evolved animal kingdom, where the concrete jungle has made rapid inroads into the green world, this analogy extends to the even more ferocious species, being poached and slowly turned extinct by rapacious and heartless human hunters.

However, the human world is a bit complicated. While the hunters and poachers are generally the poor tribes and people who live close to the land, the actual responsibility lies with the rich and the powerful for whom the forests are being stripped bare methodically. Highways, dams, roads, power projects, skins, metals, charms, weeds, medicines, wood…the world encroaches into the deep recesses daily with a looming question – are we balancing the benefits?

Apparently not! Apart from the human protests emanating from various quarters, time and again, there have been reports of ‘adventurous’ excursions of inhabitants of the forests into our world. In search of food and water, they are as scared as the humans they visit. From being rare sightings, these visits have now become quite frequent and in addition, ruthless and damaging. If there are man-eating leopards, boas and cobras being sighted in and around Delhi, monkey menace is ubiquitous across most of north India, and Vaishali district in Bihar has been in the news for the Neelgai menance. They come in hordes destroy crops, kill farmers and after unleashing mayhem vanish. There is no compensation, no ex gratia payment, nothing. Once affluent farmers, who had mortgaged their souls under recurrent bad monsoon, are now trying to get free ration under BPL card. The plight of those already under the BPL is best left unsaid.

Where human life is fragile, the raucous debates on the blue cow issue surely sound like a horde of bulls unleashed in a china shop, treading on many tender, bleeding and bruised souls.