In a remote coastal village of Mota Samadhiyala in Gujarat, Balubhai Sarvaiya, 48, sits huddled in his cowshed. As grey clouds of Cyclone Ochki loom large over the state, Sarvaiya is pacifying Gori, his 15-year-old cow, who is pregnant for the fourth time.

While her first three offspring were male calves, two did not survive. The third was given away to a farmer. “She will deliver her fourth baby in a fortnight. We are desperate for a female calf,” he says.

Sarvaiya is one of the five Dalits who were beaten up by self-proclaimed gau-rakshaks, a year-and-a-half ago on the outskirts of his village Mota Samadhiyala in Gir Somnath district – an incident which marked a flashpoint in the Dalit agitation of the state.

A year-and-a-half down the line, 30-odd families in the village of close to 4,000 have given up skinning dead cows. Sarvaiya says they fear re-emergence of the violence which was perpetrated against him, his two sons, Vashram, 24, and Ramesh, 18, and his brother’s sons, Besar, 21, and Ashok, 18, on July 11 in 2015.

At the time when Sarvaiya was thrashed so badly by the goons, Gori was very sick. “I had spent close to Rs 5,000 on her treatment. How could they have alleged that I killed a cow to skin her? We only skin dead cows,” he says. “However, that is a thing of the past now. We have given up on our ancestral occupation after the flogging,” he adds.

Selling hides, hooves and bones of dead cows used to fetch his family of six a monthly income of Rs 4,000 to Rs 5,000. After they stopped the skinning work, the already poor family has become poorer. “It was the dead cattle of the higher-caste Patels that we collected. After we decided to stop picking up the dead cattle, the Patels took to disposing them off themselves,” he says.

For him it is a double whammy. Being brutally beaten up has affected his blood circulation adversely. Working on farms of the higher-caste Patels in the village as daily labour fetches his family supplementary income, but he cannot carry out the hard labour everyday.

“I experience intense pain in the back and chest. I am often afflicted by fever and chills. I am not able to carry out farm labour daily. Money is hard to come by and we lead a hand-to-mouth existence,” he says.

Each of the five victims was provided a compensation of Rs 3 lakh by the government. “The money in my bank account is fast trickling away. I am only left with Rs 70,000 of the compensation now,” Sarvaiya reveals.

On the fateful day of July 11 in 2015, the Dalit skinners who were quietly dissecting cow carcasses at a lonely spot a few kilometres away from the village were attacked by a mob. They were stripped, tied to a vehicle and dragged all the way to the police station, where they were beaten up further.

Manisha, 23, Sarvaiya’s son Vashram’s wife, was six months pregnant at the time, recounts Sarvaiya. “She was traumatised by the attack on her husband. She refused food for days and kept wailing. Three months later, her newborn died. Doctors told us it was too weak to live and that she had been in shock during her pregnancy which affected her and the baby deeply,” he says.

Vashram has studied until the tenth grade. Sarvaiya has sent Vashram and Manisha to Ahmedabad for vocational training in tailoring. “At least we hope to have an alternative source of income after they return. But how much money will stitching fetch anyway,” he wonders.

Apart from the compensation, the state government had promised the victims jobs, tracts of land for farming and speedy justice within 90 days of setting up a special court to fast-track the hearings. “All that Anandiben, the then chief minister of Gujarat, offered us were ‘lollipops’ – something you lure little kids with. All of them were hollow promises. None of us got jobs, we do not have land and there was no institution of a special court to grant us what may be any sign of justice. We heard of some arrests in the case though, and the perpetrators are now out on bail,” rues Sarvaiya.

Jignesh Mevani, the Dalit contender for the upcoming Gujarat state elections, has captured the imagination of the country by capitalising on the tragic Una incident in press conferences as he asks for votes. But Sarvaiya is disillusioned by vote-bank politics. “Not once has Mevani visited us during his election campaign,” he says.

Mevani has a rather suave image and is contesting from urban Rajkot. “Let him contest elections from wherever he feels like,” Sarvaiya says, rather admonishingly. “The rural Dalits will continue their agitation until their demands are fulfilled.”

What was then a state-wide agitation staged by cow skinners from across urban and rural Gujarat quarters has now fizzled out. In Rohidas Para of Rajkot city, where the primary occupation of Dalits remains skinning of cows and stocking their hides, horns, bones and hooves in godowns before suppliers come to pick them up, business is back to the usual.

“We were initially protesting along with our counterparts in rural areas but we never actually stopped skinning. We continue receiving phone calls from gaushalas for collecting dead carcasses. We have got back to work,” says Navinbhai Rathod, a Dalit skinner from the urban quarters of Rajkot.

“Why would the urban Dalits give up skinning cows? It is a profitable business. In fact, the so-called gau-rakshaks or owners of gaushalas make a cut too, out of selling the by-products of a dead cow. There is a proper auction and a Dalit who bids the highest in the gaushala scores the contract for skinning cows from a particular gaushala,” Sarvaiya says.

“While it is business as usual for the urban skinners, it is Dalits like us in rural areas who have given up skinning because we are vulnerable to sudden attacks and death threats. The urban Dalit community has attained a certain level of solidarity and continues the occupation, while we have been forced to give it up as we are scared,” he adds.

Punjabhai Vansh from the Congress is the sitting MLA from Una, a taluka which became the hotbed of Dalit politics after the flogging incident. BJP candidate Hirabhai Koli is pitted against Vansh in the upcoming polls.

Sarvaiya is skeptical about making his party leanings obvious though. “Punjabhai is a well-known figure in Una since 20 years, however, I have not met him personally. I do not even know the credentials of the BJP candidate. Be it the Congress or BJP, they have done nothing for us. I will vote though, as it is my right and the ballot is secret,” Sarvaiya says, as he blankly stares in the distance.