Govind's Pasture Hunt

Spot each cow in the field each morning and tap her face to mark her present, until no faces are left on the screen.

Who this is for

Govind Suthar is fifteen. He helps at a gaushala outside Deshnok, near Bikaner, where eighty-four cows and eleven calves are let out into the field behind the sheds at half past six. He left school after class six and reads slowly, but he knows every cow by her horns and her walk. The software lands in the twenty minutes after the gate opens, when someone has to be sure nobody has drifted towards the road.

How the job is done today

There is a register at the gate with eighty-four names written down one column. Ganga Devi calls the names and Govind is meant to tick. He loses his line, ticks a row too high, and a cow standing three feet away gets marked absent while one who is genuinely gone gets a tick. Some mornings they give up halfway and just count heads. The count comes to eighty-three and nobody knows which one is short. Then two boys walk the boundary wall till nine o'clock looking for a cow who was lying in the far shed the whole time.

The screens, in order

1. The Field — Opens with the photo of every cow who has not been found yet, scattered across the screen in no fixed order, so Govind can see at a glance who he is still hunting for.
2. Her Face — Tapping a photo shows her large, with her markings and her shed, so he can be certain it is her standing in front of him.
3. Found Her — One big tap marks her present for this morning and lifts her face off the field.
4. Still Missing — Shows the faces left over when the round is done, so the search begins with pictures rather than a list of names.
5. Morning Score — Keeps the run of mornings where every single cow was found, which is the only thing the game counts.
6. New Cow — For adding a cow who has just arrived, with her photo taken there at the gate.

What it keeps track of

• Cow — her name, her photo, what she looks like at a glance, which shed she sleeps in, the day she came, whether she is still with the gaushala
• Morning round — which day, who walked it, when it started, when the last cow was found, whether everyone was found
• Sighting — which cow, which morning, who tapped her, at what time
• Missing note — which cow, which morning, where she turned up in the end, spoken or typed by whoever found her

The one decision that matters

The hunt can be driven by the register or by the faces. Register order means the phone calls out cow number one, then two, then three, and Govind confirms each in turn. That is easy to build and it matches the old book. But it puts him back in a queue of names he has to keep his place in, and if he skips ahead to a cow he can already see, he has lost his line again. Faces on the field means there is no order at all, no place to lose, and he marks whichever cow he happens to spot first. Go with the faces. And do not put a clock on the round. A cow he cannot name is a cow he has to walk up to and look at properly, which is exactly the right thing to do slowly.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out milk yields, feed, medicines, donor names and anything the trust wants in a yearly report. The minute the screen asks for litres, the round stops being a hunt and becomes paperwork, and paperwork is what already fails at this gate. Also leave out a second gaushala and any comparison between them. One field, one herd, one morning.

How you would know it worked

On a morning when a cow really is gone, her name and her photo are on Ganga Devi's phone before seven, and one person walks straight to the culvert she always strays to, instead of two boys circling the boundary till nine.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

We run a gaushala near Bikaner with eighty-four cows and eleven calves, and each morning a boy has to check that every one of them is there. Make it a game on the phone. Show the photo and name of every cow not yet found, spread across the screen in no set order, and when he spots her in the field he taps her big picture and she disappears from the screen. No clock and no reading down a list, because the boy who does this reads slowly but knows every cow by sight. At the end show only the faces still missing so we can go and look, and send those faces to Ganga Devi on WhatsApp. Keep a count of the mornings where we found every single one. Let us add a new cow by taking her photo at the gate.