Will Indian cows disappear because of protectors?

"It's 4.30 pm on December 26. Despite the cold weather, a group of farmers is guarding the gate of the village secondary school at Saipur, a village situated about 30 km from Aligarh town. The villagers have locked up around 100 stray cattle in the school building." "The village has 600 bighas of agricultural land on which we are trying to grow wheat," said Chandra Mohan (55). "More than half the crop has been damaged by stray cattle. This has happened although we guard our farms at night." Earlier older cows would be sold for Rs 4,000-5,000 for slaughter but ever since that has been banned by the BJP government cows are let loose when they stop giving milk to save money on feeding them. Even the price of cows producing milk has dropped from Rs 40,000-50,000 to Rs 15,000-20,000 because of the danger of being beaten up by 'Gau Rakshaks', which means 'protectors of cows'. Gau Rakshaks believe that cows are holy animals and their urine and dung have healing properties. They have formed an organisation whose members can be alerted on social networks if they suspect cows are being transferred. People have been killed. Protests started in Aligarh where farmers locked cows in schools, health centers and government offices. It costs at least Rs 100 per day to feed a cow, so when one stops producing milk, the farmer releases her onto streets because he cannot sell her for slaughter. As usual officials resorted to threats of violence. "The villagers have to cooperate, otherwise we will be forced to take strong action," said SDM AK Sharma. If people are looking at starvation they are unlikely to be impressed by threats. There are over 1 million stray cattle in UP alone, some have been killed by angry farmers. Building shelters for millions of stray cows will need a lot of land and money, which will worsen the fiscal situation of states. Farmers are gradually shifting to buffaloes which produce more milk and maybe safer to keep. Will cows gradually disappear from India? Farmers have been protesting against fall in income and rising debt. Normally, politicians are happy when retail inflation falls because then they can pressure the Reserve Bank to reduce interest rates but they are worried because the present benign inflation figures are because of deflation in the prices of food crops. With general elections looming the government is working overtime to conjure schemes to please farmers, but it is no use paying higher Minimum Support Prices if there are no crops to support. Political parties are competing to waive bank loans to farmers which is already increasing bad loans in banks. Poor, innocent cows. If only they could teach some ethics to our politicians.