As meat sellers, we face discrimination. It’s as if you’re doing something illegal, when it’s not, said a butcher.
| Photo Credit: R.V. MOORTHY
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At a butcher’s shop in Mayur Vihar, Deepak Dutta, 30, originally from Kolkata, is enveloped in jasmine incense, so it wafts outward, concealing the smell of meat. The glass frontage is covered in black film and there’s a curtain drawn too. He ensures all the waste collected during the day is kept in a packed unit and dumped in Ghazipur’s wholesale meat market, so the neighbours don’t object. “As meat sellers, we face discrimination. It’s as if you’re doing something illegal, when it’s not,” he says, adding that supermarkets selling meat are not subject to the same kind of perception or policing.
Across Delhi-NCR, anyone associated with the meat business wishes they could do something different. There’s not more than ₹25,000 a month in it for small-time traders, the risks are high with cow vigilantes on the prowl, there are a series of bribes that must be given, and neighbours and family members look down on the profession.
Bribes routine affair
In Trilokpuri, not far from Mr. Dutta’s meat shop, Javed (name changed to protect privacy), 40, has been working as a middleman for 24 years: he buys a supply of meat from the Ghazipur wholesale market and sells it to individual shops. Often, he tells himself he’ll quit this job for something better. He shells out ₹2,000-3,000 every day for bribes to the police so they will pass the consignment without deeming it beef, even though no cow is killed at the market, say traders. “Who will even listen if I raise my voice? They hurl casteist and religious remarks at me,” Mr. Javed says.
In Jamia Nagar, Roshan (name changed), 53, has the words “Buffalo Meat Shop” emblazoned in bright yellow on this shop front. Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) rules make this mandatory. There are also images of the buffalo, and he acknowledges people use buff and beef interchangeably. When they do, it could be “a life or death situation,” he says, referring to cow vigilantism.
Earlier this year a viral video showed several meat shops across Vinod Nagar in Delhi’s Mandawali area, being forced to close by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Councilor Ravinder Singh Negi, during Navratri. In the same month, two meat suppliers — Mohammad Shoaib, 19 and his cousin, Nawab, 21 — on their way back from the Ghazipur Murga Mandi were allegedly thrashed, abused for their religion and profession, and robbed of ₹25,000 by three policemen and four unidentified men.
Mr. Shoaib’s grandfather entered the meat industry because of a financial crunch. His father now hopes to move out with plans to open a small dairy farm in Bhalswa Dairy. “Humey bas thodi izzat ki zindagi chahiye ab (We just want a life of respect now),” the father says.
Industry hygiene issues
A part of the alienation the meat-selling community experiences is because of the state of the meat market itself. Skin-related infections and breathing problems are common. “If it rains, you can’t walk,” says Mohan, a meat seller who has been in the business for two decades.
Plus, “There’s the Ghazipur landfill right here,” says Azad, 45, pointing in the direction of Delhi’s garbage hills. “It makes the air contaminated, and flies and mosquitoes are everywhere, all around us – always,” he adds, saying 7,000 people who work here experience this daily.