Assam Budget seeks to control cattle population

Govt. to ensure 90% calves are females

Assam’s Budget for the 2021-22 fiscal aims to control cattle population through artificial insemination to ensure that up to 90% of the calves born are females and 10% are males. The proposal follows the tabling of the Assam Cattle Protection Bill, which seeks to ban the transportation of cattle and sale of beef within 5 km of temples and other religious structures of non-beef consuming communities, as well as in areas of mixed populations. Presenting a ₹566.2-crore deficit Budget, Assam’s Finance Minister Ajanta Neog said the government has proposed a scheme to control the birth of scrub bulls up to 20% by procuring “high-genetic merit sex-sorted semen”. The plan is to increase the number of hybrid female caves born in cattle and buffalo farms for higher milk yield. The proposal for the current fiscal is to cover 50,000 cattle and buffaloes with 1.25 lakh doses of sex-sorted frozen semen sourced from genetically superior bulls. In the Budget, ₹100-crore has also been earmarked for the Indigenous Faith and Culture Department that would be set up with three directorates — Archaeology, Museum, and Historical and Antiquarian Studies — to be subsumed under it. The department is viewed as a bid to revive the indigenous faiths that the BJP-led government said have been facing threats from conversion by mainstream religions.