Sunday, December 28, 2008

Are we really Jain (vegetarian) ?

I have seen most of us Jains opposing abattoirs (slaughter house) by protesting against government policies using various means like online petitions, news paper reports, silent morchas, etc. I am not particularly against this practice but do you ever wonder why government is doing something or not doing something before opposing the steps of government.
I have tried to analyse this situation a bit.
The first table (2005-06 data) shows that India exports 1.5 billion dollars worth of Marine products and more than 1 billion dollar (second table) worth of livestock products. So in all, 2.5 billions of dollars of exports is something we rate as Non-vegetarian.

Now, if u see from the 3rd table, it is clear that India has net imports of 10 billion (i.e imports is 10 billion dollar more than the exports) and amongst this, 7.5 dollars is due to petroleum products (7.5 billion more of petroleum imports than petroleum exports).
This is the kind of consumption that India has when it comes to petroleum and its related products.
Now, assume India stops all of these slaughterhouses, that means India's balance of payments is more negative by 2.5 billion dollars. Do you have any idea how much loss does that mean when it comes to India's international trade (things like increased trade deficit,etc.. don't want to get too technical here). But it simply means that we are selling less than what we are buying, and this means loss in terms of business.
Well, by this time, you must be cursing me on the point that I am supporting slaughterhouses.
What I intend to convey by this blog is that other than all the steps mentioned above against government , we must also reduce our usage of
petroleum products. This predominantly involves 'Judicial use of personal vehicles'. I know the use of cars is sadly regarded as social status in our society, so I don't intend to say that Stop using cars. But find alternatives whenever possible (I cant think of ways that we can do that, but comments section is open for that).
So if we really think that we are vegetarian, we must first reduce the use of petroleum products, which can have cascading effect on the stoppage of slaughterhouses... Give this a thought, my fellow Jains/vegetarians.

Also, as day by day fuel consumption is going up, the global worries of fuel shortage has forced people to generate fuel by alternative methods. Tyson foods (largest producer of meat) has proposed and doing a reasearch on turning animal fat into fuel, to tackle the fuel demands. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19420483/)
So, one more reason to un-petrofy** your daily uses, if you think you are against killing animals and not just against eating animals...



*4500 Cr rupees ~ 1 Billion dollar

** un-petrofy - reduce the use of petroleum and related products (this is not a dictionary word, purely my vocabulary :D )