The question nobody asks: are the cows actually better off?

The effort highlights a glaring cow-related contradiction in the BJP's [Bharatiya Janata Party's] Hindu nationalist ideology. The party says it wants to protect cows, which are associated with divine beneficence and venerated by Hindus. Yet its pro-cow policies, including bans on cow slaughter, appear to be detrimental to cattle welfare. They are thought to be causing an increase in stray cows, typically male calves and aged milkers which, having little commercial value, are let loose by their owners. Abandoned, they feed on plastic bags and other rubbish, cause car crashes and raid farmers’ crops. The Hindu right’s pro-cow policies are terrible for India’s cows, the 'Economist', 3 February

It shouldn't surprise us. The stated aim of a policy in today's policymaking environment need have no relationship to its result. The two may, as here, even be conflict. Collectively, we rarely hold the people who make a policy responsible for its outcome. In the private sector it's different: there are the disciplines of the market and competition, and reliable, visible, constantly readable indicators of the success or failure of an enterprise. But in the public sector: 

 [G]overnment bureaucracies non-self-evaluate. At a minimum, agencies with evaluative responsibilities are not invited to evaluate - they are kept out of the loop, their opinions unsought. At a maximum, government agencies actively suppress their own internal evaluative units and are discouraged from evaluating the beliefs and policies of other agencies. Why States Believe Foolish Ideas: Non-Self-Evaluation By States And Societies (pdf), Stephen Van Evera, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Political Science Department and Security Studies Program, 2002

So politicians can get away with selling their policies according to what they say they will achieve. In the absence of data we choose politicians who have lofty-sounding goals, or who look good on camera. We vote for people, or personalities, or out of tribal loyalty to political parties. 

A Social Policy Bond regime would be different. We'd vote for social and environmental outcomes, rather than the people or policies who say they'll achieve them. Politicians would retain their roles of articulators of society's wishes and revenue raisers, but their role of allocating finance and determining the structure of bodies charged with achieving society's goals would be diminished. Those decisions would be taken by bondholders, who would make them according to the sole criterion of efficiency in achieving the targeted goal at minimum cost. Bondholders would face the discipline of the market: if they are inefficient, their bonds would be bought up by more efficient operators. A transition to such a regime should be made gradually, partly for pragmatic reasons, but partly also to give existing bodies a chance to evaluate and improve their performance. (I discuss such a transition in my book.) There would be a gradual focus away from politicians and their antics, and more on the elements that make up society's well-being. So rather than be swayed by such rhetoric as how a particular policy would be good for cows in India, say, we'd look instead at whether things are actually improving for cows. Such a way judging is perfectly acceptable in the private sector; extending it to goals currently the remit of the public sector, could greatly benefit society.