38
of preparations for the 2020 Olympic Games.
Singapore is doubling the size of its mass transit
system, while Indonesia, India, and Malaysia are
all on infrastructure drives to boost growth.
Ultimately, the key to solving the labor shortage
will be persuading Filipino skilled workers, man-
agers, and consultants to return home, according
to Economic Planning Undersecretary Rolando
Tungpalan. “If you offer the right price,” he says,
“they will come back.” —Siegfrid Alegado, with
Norman P. AquinoTHE BOTTOM LINE Grants from China and Japan will help the
Philippines fund $180 billion in infrastructure projects. But builders
will have to raise salaries to lure workers back to the country.There’s a nursing home on the outskirts of New
Delhi that offers free food and lodging, a well-
resourced hospital, and 300 attendants to cater
to residents’ every need. Its clients are cows.
The Shri Krishna Gaushala, a 37-acre sanctu-
ary with a duck pond and a 150million-rupee
($2.4 million) annual budget, is one of thousands
of havens in India for abandoned, sick, and unpro-
ductive cows. Their ranks have swelled since
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government
moved in May to ban the sale of cattle destined for
slaughter at animal markets around the country.
Cows are considered sacred by many in India’s
Hindu majority. The victory of Modi’s Hindu
nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014 national
elections has emboldened groups seeking to pro-
tect the animals. Although the Supreme Court of
India blocked the ban in May from taking effect,
so-called cow vigilantes have sought to enforce it
anyway. Attacks on cattle traders have multiplied,
while several states have tightened restrictions on
eating beef.
It’s not just slaughterhouses and leather
tanneries that are affected. Deprived of the
option of turning their spent milkers into ham-
burgers, the farmers that make up India’s
5.3 trillion-rupee dairy industry have less incen-
tive to expand their herds, which threatens
government plans to increase the milk supply.○ Measures to protect the animals may limit
the production of milk and crimp farm incomeCows Clash With
India’s Love of Dairy
“There is no demand for cows in the cattle mar-
kets, and if we abandon them on the road, they
destroy our crops,” says Puranmasi Verma, 62,
a dairy farmer from Uttar Pradesh who plans to
switch over his small herd entirely to water buf-
falo, which produce less milk.
Even as Indians’ appetite for milk products has
been growing at an average annual rate of 4.3 per-
cent for the past two decades, problems are pil-
ing up for the owners of the country’s 70 million
small-scale dairy farms, along with the companies
that buy from them. Yogurt maker Danone SA is
closing a factory near Delhi and exiting India’s
market for fresh and long-life milk products to
concentrate on its “best-performing” nutrition
and infant-formula brands, the Paris-based com-
pany said in a Jan. 12 statement.
Sales of milk and dairy products are expected
to climb to 10.05 trillion rupees by 2020, accord-
ing to Sharad Gupta, editor and publisher of Dairy
India, an industry compendium. “When incomes
rise, people spend more on dairy products,” says
Rattan Sagar Khanna, chairman of Kwality Ltd., a
dairy wholesaler based in New Delhi. Modi’s gov-
ernment is almost halfway through a three-year
national campaign to bolster bovine productivity. ECONOMICS Bloomberg Businessweek January 29, 2018