RE: Delivering and Naming The First "Crypto" Calves at the County Fair - (First Steps Video Included)
Dear @hungryharish, I'm also from the same country. But I see all those words like cows being part of farmer's family or gau-mata etc. as empty words. No where the life and liberty of these animals is respected in the country. Today India is one of the largest beef exporter, milk producing (and consuming) and leather producing country in the world.
Cows are enslaved & tortured all their lives, artificially impregnated and milked in captivity. Male calves are still slaughtered. Prevalent Hindutva philosophy of India has successfully implemented ban on slaughter of cows in most of the Indian states. But it's funny that Hinduism is not against dairy consumption. People don't get that you can't get dairy without slaughtering these animals.
The strict ban on slaughter has resulted in the increased number of stray cows on the road. No one wants to feed and take care of unproductive animals. These stray animals lead to increased road accidents. India is also the world leader in terms of number of traffic accidents and road fatalities.
The situation has worsened to the extent that many States don't know how to handle these stray animals. Gaushalas are already overburdened. Resources in the country are insufficient to provide the required fodder to growing number of animals. People have started protests against this in UP, Punjab etc..
In fact, Hindu fundamentalists in Punjab are now actually advocating slaughter of cow. Read more about it here:
This is partial truth. In my city the cows roam on roads and all the shop keepers feed them before they start businesses. Do you think , if there is no dairy consumption...cows will be in to extinction. As I am said in above comment, the torturing of cows done in industries and where they kept in huge number for dairy.
The farmers are best and they take care cows passionately. The thing you have said for leather is mostly from north India, in South we don't encourage this. As much as for hindutva, cows are considered as mother because the children after mother's milk raised by cows/buffalo's milk. That's an association between the cows and people.
Also it's depend on individual, can't generalized.
Do you know what happened to horses in Britain after introduction of motor vehicles? All the horses are abandoned on roads and most of them starve till death.
Religion aside, the this a business and I advocate for fair,compassion and good treatment for the cows rather than seeming as products/milk machines.