Cow Dung Capitalism (2016)

You'd have to be careful about doing this in the US, because I understand that, unfortunately, a lot of cow dung is contaminated with Grazon and other herbicides. People will get cow dung to fertilize their gardens, and accidentally sterilize them instead. Granted, given that it passes through the cow's digestive tract it'd probably pass through yours too, but I still wouldn't want to ingest large quantities of herbicide. This is all tragic and stupid, obviously. What could be a fertilizer is turned into a toxin.

>The cow—a symbol both of religious reverence and communal vigilantism— whose value in a modern economy, irrespective of the politics around it, one would assume should decline as increasing numbers adopt urban lifestyles far removed from an agrarian culture, is finding itself the fount of a new form of business.

Sounds like Christmas.

Someone will always find a way to make money of someone's beliefs (and it's easier if they are political and / or religious beliefs). So I am not at all surprised that someone enterprising has found a way to monetise some Hindus obsession with cow dung and urine ..

In some Northern states , Cow is urine & dung are holy .. people suspected of holding cow meat/eating cow meat are murdered.

So, "Bull Shit Capitalism" got lost in translation on its way to India.

no idea how i grew up in an indian household and didn't know about this

This post is five years old.

Side note but beef production is one of the mostly costly foods in terms of water and carbon consumption so any kind of cow protection is welcome in my opinion

Cow vigilantes exist because some folk are smuggling the cows and the poorer farmers cannot afford protection and risk losing their livelihood. So they setup vigilante groups to protect them from the smuggling market.