Ecologically, the cow has been central to Indian civilisation. The integration of livestock in farming has been the secret behind India’s centuries-old sustainable agriculture systems. Farm animals sustain our soils by providing soil fertility. They sustain the agrarian economy with renewable energy. As K.M. Munshi, India’s first minister of agriculture after Independence, and a dear friend of my late parents, wrote: “The Mother Cow and Nandi are not worshipped in vain. They are the primeval agents who enrich the soil — nature’s great land transformers — who supply organic matter, which, after treatment, becomes nutrient matter of the greatest importance....
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