In Mansa, the villagers employ men on horseback whose sole task is to chase away stray cattle. The protection money

Amaninder Pal

Tribune News Service

Tamkot (Mansa), July 22

Veer Bhan, 23, is a member of a Scheduled Tribe community that is known for its ferocity. He rides a horse in the lush green sorghum fields of Tamkot village of Mansa district, but nobody objects.

Mounted and armed with a heavy stick, Veer Bhan, along with his two aides, is looking for an ‘Amriki’ sheltering in the nearby fields. The moment he locates it, Veer Bhan will chase the ‘Amriki’ so ferociously that the animal won't dare to enter the village. He is a ‘rakha’ for Tamkot residents.

Sitting at the village ‘thaai’ along with half-a-dozen septuagenarians, Harbans Singh of Thoothianwali village is calculating the amount his village has paid to Satbir Khan, head of another group of ‘rakhas’, whose job is to prevent the entry into the village of stray ‘Amriki’ — progeny of the most popular cow breed Holstein Friesian (HF), selling whose milk Punjabi farmers have earned a fortune for decades.

“Today, ‘Amriki’ is our enemy number one. Every farmer pays Rs 300 per acre per year to ‘rakhas’ to keep ‘Amrikis’ at bay,” he says, adding, “Paying ‘rakhi’ to ‘rakhas’ is the only option to protect our property and produce."

Reminiscent of medieval Punjab, the terms ‘rakhi’ and ‘rakha’ take you back around 300 years, when the feudal warlords were still evolving into misls, and villagers would pay ‘rakhi’ to the feudal lord of their area to protect their property and produce from rival warlords.

Three centuries later, the practice of ‘rakhi’ and character of ‘rakha’ is back in the rural landscape, especially in southern Punjab, but in a slightly different version.

Today, a poor tribesman, instead of a feudal warlord, is the protector. And the plunderer is not a rival feudal warlord, but an ‘Amriki’.

Almost every village of this area is paying lakhs of rupees every six months to persons like Veer Bhan and Satbir Khan to stop stray cattle from entering their fields.

“Villagers have no idea where these stray cattle come from. Once they enter our fields, they neither spare fodder, nor cotton, nor wheat. The only option is that we keep vigil in our fields round the year, which is not practically possible. Therefore, every farmer in our village has agreed to hire a group of ‘rakhas’. If a farmer spots any ‘Amriki’, he informs the ‘rakha’, who chases away the animal up to the village boundary," said Harbans Singh of Thoothiawali village.

Crops on the 2,000-acre land of Thoothianwali are protected by such tribesmen. The village farmers are collectively paying them Rs 6 lakh per annum.

Balwinder Sharma, farmer of Malkpur Khiala village, said farmers have organised committees in each village, whose job is to collect ‘rakhi’ from each landowner every six month. “Our village is part of a cluster of three villages — Malkpur Khiala, Khiala Kalan and Khiala Khurd. The total amount of protection money collected in these villages was around Rs 14 lakh last year. Our village alone collected Rs 4.4 lakh,” claimed Balwinder.

Mahinder Singh Bhainibagha, a leader of the Bharti Kisan Union (Ekta), said the culture of hiring such tribesman is prevalent in villages located in the vicinity of cities.

However, the situation is no different in Joga village, located around 25 km from Barnala town. The village shot to national headlines in June 2012 when a mob of villagers demolished a bone crushing unit where cows were allegedly being slaughtered. Haunted by the ‘brutal’ cow slaughter in the factory, the village had set up a small cowshed after the incident. But just four years later, it is not slaughtered cows but stray cattle and ‘Amriki’ that haunt the villagers.

Gurmeet Singh, the seniormost councillor of the village, said, “The village cowshed is too small to accommodate all the stray cattle. Every farmer of our village is contributing Rs 200 per acre per annum to pay to ‘rakhas’. There is no other option for us.”

The Mansa district administration has set up a large cowshed in 25-acre in Khokhar Kalan village, which, according to farmers, is insufficient to house stray cattle, whose count is increasing each year.

Mahinder Bhainibagha, who has led several protests against stray cattle in this area, said, “The culture of ‘rakhi’ is a new burden on the already debt-ridden peasantry of our area. The only solution to the stray cattle menace is that ‘Amriki’ should be treated as an equivalent to bull, which is allowed to be culled. This will stop the massive reproduction of cows and lower their count.”

Back in Tamkot, Veer Bhan is readying himself for another round of the fields, and womenfolk of his locality pressure him not to get his photo clicked. “Till a few years ago, it was tough for us to make ends meet. But the arrival of ‘Amrikis’ has suddenly increased in the past two years. This has brought fortunes for poor men like me,” says Veer Bhan, apparently unmindful of the change of guard in Delhi two years ago.