From Haryana to UP, rural India reeling under snowballing stray cow menace

The first of a three-part series on the effects of rural India's burgeoning stray cow population

Scythe in hand, a young labourer in a village in Panipat, Haryana, chases stray cows away from the paddy field she’s working in. “My employer has told me to hit, cut or maim any stray cow trying to ruin his crop,” she says. 

Over 650 km away in Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh, Chandrashekhar Patel, a farmer, is installing a blade wire fence around his fields to ward off stray cows. “It costs Rs 70,000 and is so deadly that it rips open the skin of any animal that brushes against it,” he says. “But I have to do it before cows destroy