New Delhi — A government crackdown on Muslim-dominated abattoirs and the trade of cattle dragged down India’s exports of leather shoes more than 13% in June, as leading global brands turned to China, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Pakistan to secure supplies. The drop in exports of shoes and leather garments comes as a setback for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has sought to create millions of jobs by more than doubling the leather industry’s revenues to $27bn by 2020. Emboldened by the victory of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 general election, Hindu hard-liners, who consider cows sacred, became more assertive in their calls for a clamp-down on both the meat and leather industries, run by Muslims, who make up 14% of India’s 1.3-billion people. "The writing was already on the wall," Nazir Ahmed, CEO of shoemaker Park Exports, said by phone from Agra, a shoe-making hub and home to the Taj Mahal. "We have killed the goose that laid the golden egg." India, the world’s se...
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