Farmers, angry villagers and bulls in schools and government buildings have been locked in unusual scenes over the past few months across the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Some have wondered whether the cattle crisis will affect the chances of re-election of Prime Minister Narendra Mudi.
India's farming communities face a "cattle crisis", where restrictions on the sale and slaughter of milking cows and old-fashioned vengeance by right-wing Hindus have forced farmers to abandon unproductive cows.
Cattle have destroyed vast areas of wheat, legumes, sugar cane crops and other crops, while hundreds of cows have died of disease and malnutrition or road accidents. Farmers in India's largest agricultural states, such as Uttar Pradesh, Where most remain awake until late to protect their fields.
Farmers suffered loss of crops and financial loss. Livestock also attacked three local residents nearby, and in another fatal incident, a cow crouched a woman.
India has long suffered the problem of cattle, which one can usually see in cities and countryside on the side of the road, but the problem has reached a new peak, and the Bharatiya Janata National Hindu Party, which belongs to Prime Minister Narendra Mody, the protection of cows priority of the In order to obtain Hindu support, but this move eventually led to a violent reaction from farmers.
In Uttar Pradesh, as in most Indian states, it is forbidden to slaughter cows, but it is always possible to find illegal massacres that allow farmers to sell their cows if they stop producing milk. Attacks by Hindu "cattle protection" groups on trucks transporting livestock, where Hindus intimidate traders and disrupt trade.
Between 2015 and 2018, 44 people were killed in such attacks in India, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.
Farmers, who can not continue feeding their cows after they have stopped milk production, end up releasing them secretly, leaving them stranded away from their farms. The "agricultural squeeze" caused by farmers' confrontation of rising costs and falling crop prices is a major issue in the ongoing general elections in India.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, which lost the winter elections in the main states where agriculture is the mainstay, is trying to restore this important base of voters. The devastating livestock crisis is affecting a large number of India's more than 260 million farmers .
Uttar Pradesh is a politically vital state, with 80 deputies out of 543 members of the Indian parliament. Priyanka Gandhi of the Indian Congress Party, the main opposition party, reviews the issue of livestock crisis prominently in the rallies of its election campaign.
The first phase of the Indian parliamentary elections, which began on April 11, amid efforts by Moody to win a second term, and extends the vote over six weeks, ending on 19 May.
• Forty-four people were killed between 2015 and 2018 by attacks by cattle protection groups on cattle trucks.