BJP effect: Beef is vanishing from India’s Bengal, forcing diet changes

Kolkata, India – It’s 12pm on a weekday, and the lane in the city’s Tangra neighbourhood facing the sole bovine slaughterhouse in Kolkata is empty. Run by the city’s municipal corporation, the colonial-era building in the capital of the eastern Indian state of West Bengal looks like a fortress with its giant iron gates locked from the inside.

A peek through a gap between the gates reveals schoolboys running around and playing in the vast empty campus. “Those boys scale the walls and enter the slaughterhouse ever since it got shut down in May,” says Mohammad Mehmood Alam, manager of a roadside eatery opposite the facility that mostly caters to daily wage labourers, taxi and autorickshaw drivers. He’s still getting used to the desolation, he says.

“I don’t think this government will let this reopen any time soon,” Alam says.

On May 13, the West Bengal government issued a notice on bovine slaughter in the state, only four days after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was declared the winner in the state legislature elections that saw the end of the 15-year rule of the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress party (TMC). The TMC is nationally in opposition to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP.

The document mentions strict compliance with the West Bengal Animal Slaughter Control Act, 1950, stating that cows, bulls, bullocks, calves and specified buffaloes cannot be slaughtered without a certificate declaring the animal fit for slaughter.

Such a certificate can be issued only if the animal is above 14 years of age, unfit for work or breeding, or has become permanently incapacitated because of age, injury, deformity, or an incurable disease. The notice also states that certified animals may be slaughtered only in a municipal or locally designated slaughterhouse and prohibits slaughter in open public places.

Sales down, beef stew gone

The notification was issued just as Eid approached in May, and the impact was immediate, with restaurants and markets across the city and state reporting an acute shortage of beef. But the effects have outlasted Eid. More than three months later, beef remains in short supply in a state where the meat was widely relished.

That’s because the certificate that traders and suppliers need to show, establishing that a specific animal meets the conditions for slaughter, isn’t the only bottleneck holding up beef trade in Kolkata.

All meat suppliers also need licences authorising them to practise their trade. And the renewal of these licences has been in limbo since the dissolution of the city’s municipal corporation in June, after outgoing mayor Firhad Hakim resigned. Kolkata’s next civic elections are scheduled for December.

Alam’s friend Mushtaq, who is sitting next to him, is among the affected meat traders. His licence is due for its annual renewal.

He laughs cynically and says none of the six generations before him, all natives of Kolkata who made a living by supplying beef, had to suffer this fate – not under any of the past governments.

“It [the renewal of his licence] was halted because of the elections, but they’ve not said anything to us about when they will be renewed. I haven’t made a single penny for more than three months now,” says Mushtaq.

There’s a giant wok of beef bhuna cooking near the entrance of the eatery, and in a smaller one right outside it, pieces of fish rest in a bubbling curry. During “better” days, both woks would have beef cooking. “We only sell the bhuna now,” he says. “Earlier, we’d make a chaap, a stew, but for those, you need better quality beef, not the kind you have been getting in these last few months.”

Prices, however, have risen as supply has dried out. A plate of bhuna now sells for 120 rupees ($1.25), up from 100 rupees ($1.04) before the restrictions came into effect, while buying a kilogramme (2.2lb) in Kolkata costs anywhere between 350 and 500 rupees ($3.66-$5.22), as opposed to the 200-250 rupee range before May.

“But sales have gone down by a good 50 percent,” says Alam. That’s because he just doesn’t have as much beef to sell and can’t trust the quality as much as he used to – and because many customers are now scared of being seen eating beef in public, under a BJP government, he suggests.

He says he misses a group of young men – mostly Hindus – who would visit his establishment regularly for a plate of beef stew. “And we’ve almost entirely stopped having beef at home, too,” his voice dips further. “Maybe once a week, down from nearly five to six times before. We’re just having vegetables and cheap fish now. Maybe chicken. We can’t afford mutton.”

Bengal’s beef history

West Bengal has historically been among India’s major beef-consuming states. According to government data, 10.4 percent of rural households and 7.9 percent of urban homes in the state reported consuming beef or buffalo meat. In an Indian context, where the cow is held sacred by many Hindus, that’s among the highest beef consumption rates in the country – alongside the neighbouring state of Assam, and Kerala in the south.

Among Muslims in Bengal, two-thirds consume beef, according to government data. Christians, sections of Dalit communities, and some Indigenous communities in West Bengal also eat beef as part of their regular diets.

The law laying down conditions that an animal must meet before it can be slaughtered isn’t new, but its enforcement has only now become stringent, after the BJP came to power in the state.

Officially, the Tangra slaughterhouse isn’t shut, either: An official, refusing to disclose his identity, opens the small green door along the campus boundary wall and cranes his neck out to see who knocked. “Come back later; the head officer isn’t in today,” he says.

On asking what he does in the office these days, he says: “We just come, spend a few hours and go home.” There’s no clarity on when business might return to normal, or whether it will at all, he says.

Some, like Alfaz Laiq, a Kolkata-based businessman, say they saw this crisis coming. In April, as the state held the elections that saw the BJP come to power, Laiq shut down his dairy business in the district of Burdwan in central West Bengal. He sold his retired cows to butchers and meat suppliers at discounted rates. “If I’d bought a cow for 100 bucks, I sold it for 30 bucks, which is far below the rate at which it would usually go for,” Laiq says. “That’s still better than dealing with the headache” of the harassment that the BJP government has subjected cattle traders to since coming into office, he adds.

Laiq fears that it’s only a matter of time before beef becomes a relic of the past in Bengal’s diet.

“I am someone who used to have beef for breakfast but have completely stopped bringing beef,” he says. “Carrying beef has become more dangerous than carrying drugs in Bengal now.”

In the past, BJP governments have introduced or brought into force strict restrictions on beef consumption in several states. Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Haryana, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka all have laws restricting cattle slaughter.

Rajasthan, Gujarat, Haryana and Uttarakhand also expressly prohibit the sale of beef or beef products. Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh prohibit the possession of beef obtained through illegal slaughter of cattle. Maharashtra prohibits slaughter of cows, bulls and bullocks and possession of their flesh, while Karnataka primarily prohibits slaughter and the sale or transport of cattle for slaughter.

Laiq has now moved on to buying and selling goats, farming, and earning money by leasing out his farmland in Bengal.

In the Muslim-majority neighbourhood of Park Circus, a row of beef shop owners refuse to speak about their business except to regular customers. Owners and managers of five such shops selling beef say their businesses have incurred losses of 30-40 percent since May. “All of these shops in this row were shuttered for the first two months. We have only been able to reopen them in the last month – month-and-a-half,” says one of the shop managers.

“Supply has been erratic, prices have gone up, so sales haven’t been great either. And frankly, the quality of meat has changed as well. It’s not a good time at all,” says another shopkeeper.

Amid the tightening of regulations on cattle slaughter and declining quality of supplies, at least a dozen restaurants in Kolkata have reported discontinuing their beef dishes in the past three months.

Among them is the iconic Zam Zam Restaurant. The restaurant chain’s director, Shadman Faize, says they couldn’t compromise on quality, so they had to remove all beef dishes from their menus at all three branches in the city. “Yes, we have lost customers and are continuing to incur about 40 percent losses. We have even had to lay off staff, but it is what it is,” Faize says. “Hopefully, people will love our other dishes just as much.”

Only a stone’s throw away in the commercial district of Park Street, Olypub  – an institution of the city that dates back to 1947 – has for decades been famous for its beef steak. Now, though, it no longer offers that all the time.

“We haven’t taken it off our menu; we just don’t have a regular supply of beef any more, so it’s available only when beef is available,” a member of its management, who requested anonymity, says. “There has never been a situation like this in Kolkata before.”

When Al Jazeera asked Smita Pandey, the commissioner and administrative head of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), when the Tangra slaughterhouse would resume operations and when licence renewals for beef traders would be issued, she said: “The issue is related to the Animal Resources Development Department.”

But Nikhil Kumar Shit, director of animal husbandry and veterinary services under the state’s Animal Resources Development Department, said the KMC – under Pandey – was the authority in charge of the slaughterhouse and licences.

“I am not aware of the fact that the Tangra slaughterhouse has not been operational for a while now,” he said. “Usually, the fitness certificates are issued by the KMC and a veterinary officer working with the KMC. I am not really aware of anything beyond this.”

The uncertainty over the future of beef in West Bengal hangs over other parts of the state, too.

In the city of Baruipur, within the district of South 24 Parganas, just beyond the limits of Kolkata, the local market has been running out of beef by 11am since May. “Some days, there is no beef at all,” says Sayed Saifulla, a resident of Baruipur who works as a hairdresser at a salon in Kolkata.

Until May, he says, beef was the one meat whose price did not fluctuate much, even if the cost of fish and mutton would rise. Now that’s changed. Beef prices have soared, too.

“We had beef almost every day for all our lives,” he says of his family. “Now it’s come down to once or twice a week.” Even with that compromise, the family’s weekly spending on food has gone up 20 percent – from 5,000 rupees before May to 7,000. “Our earnings aren’t going up the same way, are they?” he asks, rhetorically.

In Malda, a northwestern district where more than half the population is Muslim, a resident, requesting anonymity, says beef is now only being sold through secret networks. “If you know someone who has a cow, you can ask them to give you some beef,” he says. “So they slaughter the cow in the dead of the night and come and deliver the beef to your doorstep.”

According to him, the fear of being caught dealing with beef is palpable in Malda. “But it’s not easy for the poor Muslim to give up on this meat,” he continues. “So now, they’re risking their safety and their lives to keep eating it.”