Salman Sultan,
Leo Count Tolstoy beautifully describes the reason for Napoleon’s loss in the battle of Waterloo. In his epic ‘War and Peace’, Tolstoy attributes integration of significantly smaller events leading to the defeat of celebrated war strategist like Napoleon Bonaparte. Waterloo situated near Brussels is a plain with a prominent mound. In a battle field it is advantageous to have a vintage point on some height from where not only one has a bird’s eye view but it is easier to rain down bullets. The reason for Napoleon’s late arrival at Waterloo, thus losing the advantage of securing strategically important position on top of mound, has been attributed to heavy rainfall. The slush formed due to rain was so slippery that Napoleon’s cavalry slowed down and this sluggish movement was further compounded by indisposition of his soldiers. Suffice is to say that as per Tolstoy one should not just think of major events but integration of seemingly small events as the cause of Napoleon’s emphatic loss in the battle of Waterloo.
It may not be out of place to think of smaller events, instead of much publicized major factors, which resulted in a significant slowdown of our economy. To illustrate this point one can cite an official decree for the closure of slaughter houses. All of a sudden all meat shops selling buffalo, mutton or chicken were shut down for wants of license. Of course, all these shops were being run in unhygienic conditions with swarm of flies hovering over raw meat. It was imperative to have shops with proper screening and clean environment. However, the way this order was thrust upon unsuspecting seller and buyer of meat was inexplicable, to say the least. In my humble opinion, government should have provided easy term loan to meat shop owners for necessary renovation thus facilitating procurement of proper license to run their shops. Enquiry revealed that fifty thousand to one Lac was spent by these shop owners.
As a matter of fact, buffalo meat is not only cheap but provides the much needed protein to poor people who cannot afford to have the luxury of mutton, chicken or even vegetables. Even two pieces of buffalo meat in a lot of gravy can suffice for a small family. When sale of all kinds of meat: buffalo, chicken, mutton and fish, through shops were proscribed, clandestine availability through conniving Police officials was not ruled out.
I remember going out to buy mutton in the State of Tamil Nadu with my non-Muslim Kerala neighbor, who invariably insisted on getting the hind leg with visible official stamp on the raw meat. Earlier, this has been practiced even in U.P. A Sanitary Inspector supervised the slaughter of animals in an official building after checking the health of animals. He then proceeded to stamp the skinned animals thus declaring them safe for human consumption. Though, probably, such buildings still exist in dilapidated condition but Sanitary Inspectors don’t bother to go through this worthless exercise (in their opinion) and are contented collecting their commissions or ‘hafta’. For buffalo meat such supervision in slaughter house has been reported and one only hopes that now all animals/birds are slaughtered under the watchful eyes of Sanitary Inspectors.
Another very important factor affecting rural economy was the restriction on sale of Cattle. Agrarian economy depended on healthy cattle through timely replenishment. Though Machines have made Cattle plough redundant but still they are being used in villages in addition to their being source of dairy products. Farmers, in particular, small ones greatly suffered not only due to Cash crunch as a result of ‘Notebandi’ but also official decree proscribing market sale of cattle. How severely poor Farmer has suffered due to poorly conceived/implemented government orders can be evidenced through recent spurt in Stray Cattle on our roads/streets. The menace of Stray Cattle is the direct outcome of their being a drain on meager resources of poor Farmers.
A detailed survey of all these seemingly small factors is a must for conclusively pinpointing reasons for Economic slowdown.
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