We were invited by Karuna Society for Animals and Nature in Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh, to witness a “rumenotomy”, a word that got embedded into my consciousness and I kept regurgitating it, like the cud of the cow on whom the procedure was to be done.

At Karuna, the gentle cow, a scrawny beast with a swollen stomach whom I named “Leela”, was tethered to a specially-designed operation stand. The scalpel made its first cut on the cow’s belly. The first tip of a plastic bag peeked out of Leela’s belly and then another and another. Whole bags were pulled out covered in blood, mucus and waste matter. Horrified, I saw that apart from polythene bags, there were thicker bags, biscuit packets, iron nails, leather, clips and pins.

This went on for almost four hours at the end of which two vessels were filled with a heap of plastic bags weighing a total of 52 kg! Leela had been carrying this plastic mound in her belly and slowly inching her way to death.

Cut to Kotla Nala in the heart of south Delhi. This stretch of land has an open sewer that gets industrial effluents. Bubbles of noxious chemicals gurgle and steam and an overpowering stench fills the air. Hundreds of cows, with little baby calves, are tied to short ropes in the blistering heat. Mountains of garbage line the other side, spewing degradable and non-degradable waste. Emaciated cows and calves, desperate for food, tug at the plastic bags. One sip of liquid from the hellish Hades and the cows are sick for life with diarrhoea and dysentery. This is only one of several thousands of illegal dairies in the country producing toxic and unhygienic milk.

The open garbage bin, rotting and putrid, is the second step in India’s abysmal waste disposal chain, the first being the lack of segregation in the household and usage of plastic bags for waste disposal. Abundance of plastic bags from every conceivable source is a boon for the householder, who stuffs all the garbage into them. The kudawala then chucks it into the overflowing and rotting public bin. The smell of food draws the hungry cows to the plastic bags.

But to get at the food, they must first undo the knot that ties the plastic bag. But as herbivores with no canine teeth, they cannot rip open the bag. So they eat the thin plastic bags, garbage and all. Over time, the rumen fills up with plastic bags, becoming a concrete block, leaving little space for food to reach the stomach. Plastic bags do not pass through the rumen (the first stomach) into the reticulum (the inner stomach), and remain trapped in the former. The bags take a toll on her digestion and, gradually, she starves even as the toxins leach into her bloodstream.

Lead, cadmium, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and hundreds of other chemicals proceed to slowly kill her. Then gnawing pain sets in and gnashing of teeth begins. She lies down preparing to die. The butcher is waiting and is soon at her side as she struggles to breathe. In a trice, our cow, having served humankind with her milk all her waking life, becomes meat and leather.

These are India’s plastic cows – holy cow turned scavenger. Cut open any cow or bull on India’s streets or in the gaushalas, and watch plastic bags burst from their stomachs. This has been verified by vets in private and government institutions. But why are there so many cows wandering the streets in the first place? Earlier there were small, local dairies that met consumer needs, including meat and leather. Though most cows have “owners” who are either small-time milk agents or butchers, butchers often leave the cow to “fatten” on the road. Dairy owners and butchers want cattle products with as little expenditure as possible. With all the scrap food available in dustbins, street corners, on parapets and in gutters, the wandering cow gets fat with zero expenditure. But take away the 50 kg of plastic weight from this “fat” cow and the cow is not so fat after all.

Plastic bags constitute a complete violation of environmental, human and animal rights. But we have not enacted even one strong law for a complete ban on plastic bags. Plastic bags fly about like unhappy balloons, line railway tracks, clog rivers, choke drains, create plastic soups in the ocean, exude toxins and fill the bellies of our cows. Plastic bags are our latest weapons of mass destruction.

In May 2012, members of the Plastic Cow Campaign filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court, connecting plastic bags with the death of cattle on India’s streets. It’s an animal rights case. The court admitted the case, the respondents of which are the Union of India through the ministry of environment and forests, animal welfare division, state governments and civic/municipal authorities, and the Animal Welfare Board of India. The PIL asks for a complete ban on plastic bags of all sizes and thickness (even those more than 40 microns thick), while pointing out that these are not just tools of mass genocide and ecocide, but also violate the rights of animals, land and sea, who, according to our Constitution, are entitled to a dignified life. Death by plastic bags is tantamount to cruelty to animals which is enshrined under a special act. A request to ban illegal dairies has also been included.

On February 4, 2011, the ministry of environment and forests issued a notification on plastic bags. Jairam Ramesh, the then minister, said, “it is impractical and undesirable to impose a blanket ban on the use of plastic all over the country. The real challenge is to improve municipal solid waste management systems… We must be sensitive to the needs and concerns of the lakhs of people involved in the informal sector.” So we have this strange situation where we are sympathetic to people manufacturing plastic bags, yet there are attempts to ban them, but there is no political will to “manage and handle” plastic waste. Yet another instance of non-cogent policy making, creating chaos and confusion. So where does the plastic that is being manufactured go?

I would urge the incumbent environment minister, Jayanthi Natarajan, to visit streets and markets to answer this question for us and act according to her political conscience.

In a recent pathbreaking judgment in New Zealand, the River Whanganui was granted “personhood”, which means that it is now a “person” and has the rights enshrined to such an entity. I long for the day when our animals are granted “personhood”. In the words of animal activist Tom Regan, “Animals have a life of their own, of importance to them apart from their utility towards us. They have a biography, not just a biology. They are not only in the world, they have experience of it. They are somebody, not something. And each has a life which fares better or worse for the one whose life it is.

India’s plastic deluge, open garbage systems and its wandering cows are now the stuff of tourist pictures. As Indians, we have learnt to live with it. The Indian state violates its own laws by allowing plastic bags to choke and poison its animals. Are Leela and all her wandering brothers and sisters whom we worship doomed to die of plastic?

Rukmini Sekhar is a social and animal activist, writer and editor