Fed on diet of plastic, won’t be cowed down

Jug Suraiya 

Even as a new generation of eco-warriors, like 16-year-old Greta Thunberg of Sweden, wage a pacifist war against man-made climate change and environmental degradation caused by garbage, mainly non-biodegradable plastic, India’s growing army of self-styled gau rakshaks feels that it has a unique solution to the problem of garbage that is choking the rivers, and lakes, and oceans, and burying its hills and mountains.

Two gau rakshaks talking about the sarkari move to ban the use of plastic:

1st gau rakshak: Everyone’s saying that plastic, particularly single-use plastic, or SUP, is one of the world’s biggest pollutants, and is one of the single biggest threats to the global environment.

2nd gau rakshak: I know, I know. I was reading in the papers just the other day that India alone daily generates plastic waste which in size and weight is equivalent to six elephants.

1st gau rakshak: Wow! Six hathis? That’s one heck of a lot of plastic!

2nd gau rakshak: It is, indeed. And the thing with plastic, they say, is that it’s very long-lasting and has an in-built shelf life of thousands and thousands of years.

1st gau rakshak: Yikes. So shouldn’t we be doing something about this plastic menace threatening the world?

2nd gau rakshak: We are doing something about it.

1st gau rakshak: We are? How?

2nd gau rakshak: By protecting and propagating our Indian cows, who have naturally evolved to become the most efficient garbage disposal species ever and thrive on a staple diet of plastic in all its forms. 

1st gau rakshak: They have?

2nd gau rakshak: You bet they have. Why do you think single-use plastic is called SUP? It's because our cows sup on it all the time.

1st gau rakshak: Hey, you’re right. All the cows past their best-by milk-giving date that I’ve seen hanging around the streets in our towns and cities seem to eat nothing but plastic bags and wrappers, and stuff like that. Do you think they do that because nobody gives them anything else to eat?

2nd gau rakshak: Nah. Plastic is their preferred form of diet. In fact, their digestive tracts have probably become so used to the stuff that eating anything else, like grass or fodder, would make them sick.

1st gau rakshak: So what you’re saying is that we should encourage more and more of our gaumatas to become plastic vacuum cleaners gobbling it all up as fast as we produce it?

2nd gau rakshak: Exactly. And we should even go a step further and help other countries not-so-fortunate as ours to train their cows, maybe through cross-breeding, to become like ours and solve their plastic problem as well.

1st gau rakshak: That’s a great idea. Maybe we could charge these countries royalties, or special fees, for training their cows, and earn much-needed foreign exchange to help bridge the national fiscal deficit.

2nd gau rakshak: Yep. Thanks to our gaumata, plastic pollution will never, ever cow us down….