Revisiting ‘Surplus Cattle’ and ‘Sacred Cattle’ Discourse: Why a History of Cattle in India Needs to Move Beyond This Framing?

As argued in the introduction, academic writings on cattle by economists have remained occupied with the notion of ‘surplus cattle’ for many decades now. During early years of the twentieth century, papers written about cattle development in India repeatedly used two phrases, ‘surplus cattle’ and ‘sacred cow’, so much so that a large part of livestock economy literature even in post-independence India, including economic and anthropological works, continued to grapple with the ‘problem of numbers in cattle development’.