Originally published as part of Khabar Lahariya’s long-form series Sound Fury & 4G ♦
India’s goat farmers aren’t kidding around when they say they’re having a bad year. The months leading up to Bakr-Eid are typically the most hectic season for the business, and the bulk of sales happen at bakra mandis – special markets that come up in cities across the country, weeks in advance of the date. Farmers, traders and buyers often travel long distances from remote rural areas to small towns and major metropolises, participating in markets like Varanasi’s Beniya Bagh, or Mumbai’s massive Deonar.
At every market, there’s inevitably some bakra (goat) or dumba (fat-tailed sheep) with a dizzyingly high asking price, say the cost of a mid-range car, or around $10,000. In the past, Khabar Lahariya reporters have seen large crowds gathering around animals with special markings in their fur: a crescent moon, or the name of Allah or the prophet, for example.
This year, however, the season was off to an inauspicious start, even before the late-March lockdown rammed a lid on all economic activity. In February, a gruesome video of a pile of dead goats, so-called victims of COVID-19, circulated in WhatsApp’s pro-vegetarian bubbles. In early July, 50 goats were “quarantined” in Kerala after four died and a goatherd tested positive for the virus. Both cases turned out to be garden-variety cattle disease, salted with rumor.
Still, throughout the pandemic, the bakra business has been plagued by uncertainty, which is exacerbated by pervasive anti-Muslim sentiments. Earlier this month, self-professed “Chrislamocommie fiberal” fighter, Twitter troll, and non-vegetarian Shefali Vaidya set off a tacky viral campaign (#bakralivesmatter) against the sacrifice of goats on Eid al-Adha. As meme-makers got to work on images of weeping goats, in Bhopal a right-wing activist actually fabricated “eco-friendly bakris”.
But amidst calls to cut goat-shaped cakes, or donate to coronavirus relief funds in lieu of qurbani, and even as the counter-trend #हम_बक़रीद_मनाएंगे (#WeWillCelebrateBakrEid) emerged, for those in the business, the biggest problem wasn’t directly one of optics. For the farmers and traders we spoke to around Varanasi, Rampur, and Banda, the bigger worry was when or whether bakra mandis would be granted permission to operate.
What reads like a clash between religious sensibilities on television and social media has very real economic consequences for many, particularly small farmers and working-class families across the Hindi belt. Goat-rearing is on the rise in rural and small-town India; policymakers often push it as a rewarding side-hustle, especially for women (see the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-supported Pashu Sakhi project). Goats can survive harsh climates, eat a range of easily available food, and the return on investment is typically high. As of 2019, goats accounted for nearly 28 percent of all livestock in the country, with the population increasing by ten percent since 2012. India is the second-largest producer of goat-meat after China, and a significant chunk of this is exports.
As in our neighbouring countries, a part of this growth has been online, with trading taking place on e-commerce platforms from as early as 2012 on a website called GoatIndia.com. Yet online sales have been relatively uneven and slow. A number of media outlets reported the phenomenon in 2015, when “Eid Bucks” were listed on sites like OLX and Quikr. A few years later, these platforms banned goat-trading (IndiaMart still allows it). While specialty websites like PashuBajaar cater to niche markets, poor infrastructure and weak accountability remain major challenges. So does a lack of government support (Bangladeshi authorities, for example, created a digital haat).
But elsewhere on the internet, direct sales are thriving, driven largely by the explosion of “bakrebaaz” as a social media subculture. Passionate bakra hobbyists buy and sell goats, but mainly invest in them for palai (raising). This involves fattening up and then publicly showing off particularly worthy animals, especially andul (uncastrated) bucks. As many small-time goat farmers come online for the first time this year, their transition is being shepherded by these tech-savvy creators of bakrebaaz content.
A Degree in Bakrology
We see him from behind, a noble silhouette, his head held proudly high. A plume of smoke bursts across the screen and the action film soundtrack swells as Raees reappears, running in slow-mo over a hill. History will repeat again reads the caption.
Raees is only one of many celebrity goats on YouTube — on channels with names like Bakra Kingdom, National Bakra Team, and Bakrology — run by individual owners, large goat farms, or small film production companies. The goats include members of every breed, from Beetal to Xing, from every state in India. Some have classic pet names like Sultan or Bholu, others reflect the filmy flavor of the season (Ertugrul is quite popular this year following the success of the Turkish drama). Channels from Pakistan and Bangladesh add to the mix. Run typically by young or middle-aged men, often with tech or engineering backgrounds, the aesthetic of these channels ranges from over-the-top editing to basic phone-camera footage. Parallel accounts on Instagram and Facebook drive traffic to the videos.
Sufiyan Kazi, a software test engineer in Mumbai, started as a hobbyist before founding the channel Bakrology. With support from his family, he began investing in the business of goat-raising too. Kazi told us he’s sold nearly fifty goats this year through his channel and through social networking. “I have almost 600 groups on WhatsApp; that’s more than enough,” he said. These include friends, colleagues, acquaintances, family, fans and other bakrebaazis.
The biggest Indian goat channel, FSA Entertainment, is run by full-time YouTuber Fahad Zariwala from Mumbai. From February to July or August he focuses mostly on goat videos, but covers other animal fairs, livestock, and “exotic” pets year-round. Fahad explained, “When you think about goat farms, you always think about qurbani goats – people buying goats for slaughtering, for Bakr-Eid.” The goat farms he shoots at, on the outskirts of the city or further afield in Maharashtra, are typically used by goat geeks for lodging and boarding of their animals. Owners pay a monthly fee, which includes all food and basic medicine. “They can go on weekends, and visit and play with their goats,” Fahad said. Farms compete to get their clients the best return on investment.
Zariwala says YouTube is the most popular platform for goat lovers. He recently ran a March Madness-style contest to pump up his 800,000-plus subscribers and drive engagement. Besides weight and khubsoorati (beauty), Fahad told us it was all about “furriness” – and when it came to breeding bucks, aggressiveness. Goats featured on his channel tend to sell more quickly than they would otherwise, and for better prices. Zariwala sometimes charges farms a small fee, but says he makes most of his money through Google Ads.
Zariwala has noticed that despite the usual buzz on his channel, people do have less “purchasing power” this year. “People who used to buy ten goats are buying two goats this time. And people who used to buy goats worth one lakh rupees, they’re probably buying goats worth 80,000 or 50,000 rupees. That’s how the virus has impacted it.”
According to him, the pandemic has actually worked in favor of those farmers who were well-poised to go online, or already had a strong social media presence or network, since people are going directly to them rather than to markets. At Deonar, for example, sellers usually pay a stall rent of Rs.1,200 per goat.
But this doesn’t help farmers who live in the more remote areas of Rajasthan, UP or Gujarat, or other states, and who normally send goats to the big markets. Kazi said, “There is no such impact of corona in Mumbai, but in the villages, where people would sell for Rs.15,000, they are selling for Rs.10,000. We are unable to go there and visit them.”
Goats of the ‘Gram
In previous years, Khabar Lahariya has reported from the Eid bakra mandis in Varanasi and Banda. Uttar Pradesh has the country’s third largest stock of goats (after Rajasthan and West Bengal) and the excitement at these venues is contagious. This year, our reporters wondered whether these markets, fed directly by rural farmers, had moved online at all.
In Rakhauna village, about 20 kilometres southwest of Varanasi, KL reporter Sushila tracked down Kashi Goat Farm, an establishment with a small but promising web presence. Punyapal Singh took her around the property, which he said was established around two years ago. “We started with breeding, with goats from Rajasthan. Then, after some training in Lucknow, we made our YouTube channel, a Facebook page, and a website… we are slowly trying to move forward with more training,” he said. Though their goats usually sell well at Beniya Bagh, this year the buyers are coming to them.
“Marketing is happening online via our mobiles,” Singh said. “But during the lockdown when work completely stopped, it was definitely affected.” He added, “The average income this year will be much lower around Bakr Eid than usual.”
Singh told us that for every 50 people who visit the farm, around 10 or 20 are interested in starting their own goat business. He raised a crucial point, that “In the lockdown, as people reverse migrated back to their village, goat-rearing is one option they’ve found to focus on.”
Hafif Ahmed, from Milak in Rampur district, had more to say about e-commerce. The 25-year-old told senior reporter Nazni that he much preferred selling goats online than at the bakra mandi, where there was a lot of jhik-jhik (negotiation and bargaining). He had actually had more sales this year than before. “Look, this is the modern era, every person in every industry is doing business directly, through online,” Ahmed said. “All the payments are online too now. Our government, our administration, they are all encouraging this as well.”
“Almost every house has a smartphone. So we made a pamphlet and circulated it on WhatsApp and Facebook,” Ahmed said. The response had been “very good. Even as I’m speaking with you, I’ve gotten two-three call-waitings for orders,” he told Nazni. Ahmed was using the Bhim app and Google Pay for money transfers.
Ahmed’s educational background has been helpful. His family is involved in the dishware trade, and he himself has a B.Com from Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), an M.Com from Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Rohilkhand University, and a B.Ed to boot. But the goats “are my shauk, my passion,” he said. His family supported him in building a farmhouse, which now houses a couple hundred animals.
“With the whole world affected by coronavirus and this illness everywhere, so many festivals have come and gone,” Ahmed said. “Our biggest concern was how we’d do qurbani for Bakr-Eid because the mandis are not being held. And social distancing is very important. If we don’t follow the government’s directions and work with them side by side, we won’t be able to do any work, nor will the administration support us.”
If people come to choose their goats in-person, they maintain social distancing norms, and use masks and gloves. “We figured, even if the customer can’t come here, we show them the goat on video call and weigh them then and there. Then we do home delivery. We don’t cheat the customers – we don’t put any chemicals to increase their weight, to expand their stomach. These kinds of tricks we don’t do. All of our goats are Rs.300 per kg,” Ahmed said. “Inshallah, we’ve had over fifty orders so far. It’s been very good for me that I’ve been able to take this online.”
Following the Herd
“We realized the day that lockdown happened there would be a problem,” Kana Ram Prajapat, a farmer in Jaipur, Rajasthan told Nazni over the phone. “So we did put up something on YouTube.” But e-commerce can be challenging, especially for goat farmers whose main occupation is agriculture, and who use the profits from goat-rearing to pad out their regular incomes.
Prajapat found few takers for his twenty goats. “I started doing this four years ago,” he said, “but this year was different. No one is buying for more than Rs.16,000 or Rs.17,000. It used to always be over Rs.20,000.” There was no fixed date for the local bakra mandi, and he feared he’d harassed if he simply showed up at the location with his goats in tow. While his video attracted a few potential buyers, they were all from out of state, he said.
In Rampur, UP, Nasir Mian is primarily a farmer, but he also raises five or six goats every year to sell at Bakr-Eid and make a little profit. It’s a significant investment, he told Nazni, “When we raise them with the intention of the sacrifice, we have to pay extra attention to the diet, to the feed, and be wary of the weather so they don’t get sick. You have to take extra special care of the qurbani bakri.”
According to Mian, market rates go down when only locals are buying. “Because of coronavirus, people are not able to come from Bombay, so our business has been deeply impacted,” he said. “Sometimes you can’t even cover the cost of feeding the bakra.” This year, he took his goats to the regular animal mandi, but “The situation is so bad that people didn’t even ask what the rate is,” he said.
Mian saw a post about ‘online qurbani arrangement’ with home delivery. He thought, “People who do the sacrifice first look at the beauty of the goat, then its health.” If people are willing to book the sacrifice online, why not the goat? He had heard that “the whole business around online selling of goats” was already common in Rajasthan, but decided to try it himself for the first time.
“This is business,” Mian said, “there is always some challenge, and one always has to find an alternate route. We have made our bakra photos viral through WhatsApp groups, through my friend groups and those of my acquaintances.” While he’d had some queries, he hadn’t sold any animals when we spoke to him a week or so before Eid.
Ruminants of Tradition
There are other encouraging signs from around UP, for example, with five AMU grads launching their own online marketplace, Net Livestock earlier this month. But beyond the young men trying to break into the online market, and the gleeful fanboys of bakrebaaz YouTube, there are older veterans who are still overwhelmed by the changes.
Nazni spoke to one of them, Zulfikar from Rampur district, about a week before Bakr-Eid. Zulfikar told her he had grown up learning palai, as his father used to raise goats. He had been raising them himself for around 20 years, and this time around he had a flock of about 40 animals.
“I invested three-four lakh rupees,” he said, “Every year it depends a bit on how much money I can get together, usually I take a little from a brother, a sister, we invest together to earn something.”
A couple of weeks earlier, Zulfikar had taken his goats to the local Tuesday market, as he had no idea whether the special bakra mandi might be allowed. “We were shooed away,” he told Nazni. “We had no idea what to do, where to go.” He was wondering if there was any way to take his goats to Delhi – to Jama Masjid or one of the other Eid markets – but the authorities in the capital hadn’t made any arrangements either. In previous years he’s gone as far as Deonar to sell his stock.
Zulfikar circulated very simple videos of some of his goats on WhatsApp, with his number superimposed, but these were a long way from the slick productions of the YouTubers we spoke to from Mumbai. Wondering how to crack e-commerce, Zulfikar had not sold any goats when we spoke to him. “I’m just sitting at home with the animals,” he said.
Eventually some mandis were held without permission, or under the shadow of severe restrictions and delays. “This is a seasonal thing,” Zulfikar explained. “If a goat doesn’t get sold for Bakr Eid, then it is sold half rate.”
Zulfikar would actually make a great host, going by the pictures he sent us of himself, posing with his flock. His elegant white beard complemented his polished, poetic description of the ideal qurbani goat, his words revealing decades of experience and knowledge. “The goat should be at least a year old. It has to be clean, its ears must be clean, no broken horns, no problems with its hooves,” Zulfikar said.
“You need a ‘fresh’, saaf sutra animal. Qurbani depends a lot on beauty.” This means feeding them channa, “and also a lot of milk, depending on the goat’s weight. That helps the coat and colour. Also guler ka patta [Indian fig leaves] – goats love to eat them and it keeps them healthy and beautiful.” He went on, “Besides colour… The ears should be big… The nose… it’s like when we go to see a rishta [match] for a son or daughter’s wedding – the qualities we look for. It’s the same kind of feeling.”
When social media and virtual marketplaces eventually find ways to bring together traditional farmers like Zulfikar, goat geeks like Zariwala, and everyone in between, perhaps bakra e-commerce will become as robust as India’s online marriage mart. That would be a show worth watching, and entail a game-changing opportunity for some of India’s most vulnerable rural families.