Aawara moo,/ Besahara hoon,/ Be-chaara hoon./ Gharbaar nahin, sansaar nahin./ Mujhko kisaan ka pyaar nahin./Aawara moo!

Stray Cattle were singing Raj Kapoor’s sad number, but the Animal Welfare Board of India has hoofed to the rescue. Declaring the Hindi phrase ‘aawara pashu’ too insensitive, it has told all states to refer to them as ‘homeless’ in all official communications. So expect a cow-belting out of a happier version – to udderly cool mooves. While the AWBI has ostensibly cut across caste lines and extended this courtesy to all such animals, OBC equivalents are unlikely to be granted their quota in a hurry. Indeed, they have distinct reservations about ever getting it. Human homeless? Mad or wot? We should be grateful no one has yet suggested that they should henceforth be called ‘strays’.

But truly, such cattle have become the creamy layer, getting benefits denied to humans. Children have been evicted from schools to make way for them. Furious heartland farmers have UPended Right to Education, and been herding them by the hundreds into classrooms to teach them a lesson for causing havoc to their crops. Pathshalas are now gaushalas.

It’s the same forcible occupation of primary health centres. Even more kids may die for want of timely medical intervention because of farmers desperately trying to save themselves from the epidemic of stray cattle sweeping across their land.

Humans can only look on in envy at the funds poured in to provide shelter for bovines driven out by over-burdened owners. For this cowatarian gesture, the UP cabinet cleared a cess on liquor. A mooze tax? Action is also being beefed up against local authorities for not taking the crisis by the horns, and failing to rehabilitate this newly designated category of ‘homeless’.

It’s actually all tail-chasing because it’s not heartless farmers but headless policies on sale and slaughter that are to blame. More absurdly, while fulfilling a sacred duty to the revered ‘Gaiya Mata’, they have forced her into the same predicament as the mortal one – deified but thrown to the wolves.

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Alec Smart said: “Looks like the resort is the last scoundrel of politics.”