Got a selfie with a cow? Enter this contest

Have a selfie with a cow? Following last year's success, an NGO has yet again organised a selfie competition to raise awareness among people for protection of cows. Doing away with the smartphone app and instead moving to social media platforms, Goseva Parivar has called on participants to upload their selfies with a cow. However, it clarified that they were not working at the behest of 'gaurakshaks' and were instead looking to highlight usefulness of cow protection —both for farmers and town dwellers.

"The response was overwhelming. Much more than what we had expected. As a result, the bandwidth became very low and it crashed multiple times. Also, users at far flung places complained that they were unable to use it. So we decided that this year, that they will have the freedom to send it to us on platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram," said Avishek Pratap Singh, a senior member of the NGO.

He added that the aim was to educate farmers and city folk alike. "One of the most expensive inputs for farmers is fertilizers. If they use cow dung and cow urine instead of the expensive urea, not only the cost of production will come down but also the quality of produce will be better. We don't want to call it 'organic' farming because these days people use that tag to make farm products more expensive. We would rather call it 'low-cost' farming," he said, adding, "The selfie contest will also promote those products and ask city people to buy those because unless farmers get buyers, they will continue to suffer and commit suicide."

On allegations that it was a stunt ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in 2019, he said, "Our initiative is without any colour and it is not addressed to people of any particular community."