In a country where the majority of the population reveres cows, it's not absurd to find that there's a new India beef ban put in place in one of the overpopulated country's states; however, the move has left thousands of people in the region unemployed, as it destroys an entire industry.
The India beef ban actually comes from a much older law, originally from the 90s that states its premise as a conservationist one instead of religious. The bill was originally passed in 1995, but it hadn't become official since, waiting for the local President to assent to it for 19 years.
According to Indian Express, President Pranab Muhherjee has just give his assent to the India beef ban, officially called the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Bill, a law that was passed during the BJP-Shiv Sena rule back in 1995, which extends a former prohibition to slaughter cows to bulls and bullocks.
According to BBC, 80% of the population in the country follows Hinduism, a religion that reveres cows, for which there's an India beef ban or restrictions in a lot of the country's regions; as such, most of the beef sold in India comes from water buffaloes, a species that's not considered sacred.
This is the hardest India beef ban in recent history, and now anyone that's found selling beef or in possession of it could be fined 10,000 rupees (around $160) and potentially be failed for up to five years.
In the area, beef trade is controlled by Muslims, who make only about 15 percent of the population of the country - and India has, according to NPR, become one of the top beef exporters in the world, right after Brazil.
Seemingly, the new India beef ban is just the first step, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi has complained in the past about the country's meat exports and expressed a desire to ban cow slaughter altogether in the nation.
