Cattle Vigilance Related Violent Incidents in India from 2012-22

Animal husbandry contributes one-fourth to the agri-GDP and provides employment to 8.8 per cent of Indian workforce. According to the 20th Livestock Census 2019, India has a cattle population of 192 million, the largest in the world. Article 48 of the Constitution of India under Part IV provides directive to the state to endeavour to prohibit slaughtering and smuggling of cattle, calves and other milch and draught cattle and reorganize cattle husbandry on modern and scientific lines. Social conflicts and violence has been witnessed sporadically regarding the treatment of cattle. Such violence often takes the form of punishable criminal acts, attacks, mob violence, lynching, communal conflicts etc. Studies have also suggested that such incidents disturb the overall harmony within the society and impede several economic and industrial activities, negatively affecting the livelihood opportunities of several sections of the workforce. This paper attempts to study the spatial distribution and temporal trends of violent incidents related to cattle vigilance in the period from 2012-22. The analysis of found that the highest number of incidents occurred in northern India. There is no consistent trend of such incidents although periodic spikes have been observed. Spatial techniques such as the Getis-ord (Gi* statistic), Anselin Local Moran’s I statistic and the Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) technique were used for identification of hotspots of and local clusters of such violent incidents.