The Rashtriya Kamdhenu Aayog, or Narendra Modi government’s department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying, on Monday unveiled a chip to keep inside your phone to save you from radiation.
Kashtriya Kamdhenu Aayog Chairman Vallabhbhai Kathiria was quoted by ANI as saying, “Cow dung will protect everyone, it is anti-radiation... It’s scientifically proven...This is a radiation chip that can be used in mobile phones to reduce radiation. It’ll be safeguard against diseases.”
The chip is called Gausatva Kavach and was launched as part of the Kamdhenu Deepawali Abhiyan.
The Indian Express reported Kathiria as citing Akshay Kumar eating cow dung to prove his point. The report quoted him as saying, “You must have heard a few days ago that the actor Akshay Kumar… He has eaten cow dung. You can eat it. It’s a medicine. But we have forgotten our science.”
This comes only two days after the Indian Medical Association had written a tersely worded letter to the Modi government after the AYUSH ministry issued guidelines on Covid-19 that were not scientifically proven.
If one has an iota of doubt about whether this was scientific or not, Huffpost India, in 2016, had spoken to scientists after Shankar Lal, president of Akhil Bharatiya Gau Sewa Sangh had made similar claims.
Scientist Virander S. Chauhan, former director of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, had said there was no basis behind the claim that cow dung can protect people from radiation.
“In order to prove any such theory, someone has to first conduct an experiment. Apply cow dung to one sample of mobile phones and measure their emissions against phones that are not coated with dung,” he had said. “Then publish the results in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Only then can one say anything on the matter.”
Physicist Vikram Soni, Professor Emeritus at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and author of the book Naturally: Tread Softly on the Planet, agreed with Chauhan. “Emissions from the digestive tracts of cows include methane and other greenhouse gases, but cows are not known to produce dung that can absorb radiation,” he had said. “While cow dung might have insulating properties, which is the reason for it to be applied on walls of houses, and even antiseptic features, it is unlikely to absorb radioactivity,” he said.