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Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa

In the imperial Gazetteer of India 1878, Pusa was recorded as a government estate of about 1350 acres in Darbhanba. It was acquired by East India Company for running a stud farm to supply better breed of horses mainly for the army. Frequent incidence of glanders disease (swelling of glands), mostly affecting the valuable imported bloodstock made the civil veterinary department to shift the entire stock out of Pusa. A British tobacco concern Beg Sutherland & co. got the estate on lease but it also left in 1897 abandoning the government estate of Pusa. Lord Mayo, The Viceroy and Governor General, had been repeatedly trying to get through his proposal for setting up a directorate general of Agriculture that would take care of the soil and its productivity, formulate newer techniques of cultivation, improve the quality of seeds and livestock and also arrange for imparting agricultural education. The government of India had invited a British expert. Dr. J. A. Voelcker who had submitted as report on the development of Indian agriculture. As a follow-up action, three experts in different fields were appointed for the first time during 1885 to 1895 namely, agricultural chemist (Dr. J. W. Leafer), cryptogamic botanist (Dr. R. A. Butler) and entomologist (Dr. H. Maxwell Lefroy) with headquarters at Dehradun (U.P.) in the forest Research Institute complex. Surprisingly, until now Pusa, which was destined to become the centre of agricultural revolution in the country, was lying as before an abandoned government estate. In 1898. Lord Curzon took over as the viceroy. A widely traveled person and an administrator, he salvaged out the earlier proposal and got London’s approval for the appointment of the inspector General of Agriculture to which the first incumbent Mr. J. Mollison (Dy. Director of Agriculture, Bombay) joined in 1901 with headquarters at Nagpur The then government of Bengal had mooted in 1902 a proposal to the centre for setting up a model cattle farm for improving the dilapidated condition of the livestock at Pusa estate where plenty of land, water and feed would be available, and with Mr. Mollison’s support this was accepted in principle. Around Pusa, there were many British planters and also an indigo research centre Dalsing Sarai (near Pusa). Mr. Mollison’s visits to this mini British kingdom and his strong recommendations. In favour of Pusa as the most ideal place for the Bengal government project obviously caught the attention for the viceroy.

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Subject: Agricultural Extension Education × Author: Shweta × Type: Thesis ×
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    Socio-economic upliftment through Dairy Enterprise: A study of WDCS members of Barauni Dairy in Bihar
    (DR. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa (Samastipur), 2016) Shweta; Singh, Ashok Kumar
    People of rural India face lot of hardship to have a day’s square meal. Majority of them are occupied in agriculture, animal husbandry, and other ancillary activities. Income of agriculture activity has been as erratic as monsoon. Hence, rural people were forced to think of generating additional source of revenue. Since people are less literate and possess limited skills, the hunt for alternate income is constrained to few occupations. Therefore, majority of them chose rearing of milking cattle and selling its milk as a source for second income. Keeping cattle is like a diversification from the existing agriculture in which rural women are largely involved. These rural women besides doing hard household chores also undertake taxing effort to keep the cattle. They supply the produced milk to the well-established cooperative dairies working successfully on the “Anand” pattern. Operation Flood accorded the highest priority to ensuring a year-round and dependable market at remunerative prices for rural producers of milk. Indeed, Operation flood was originally conceived as a marketing project. The producer price of milk in most of Operation Flood areas is determined by the state government concerned and is set at a level that is considered remunerative to the milk producers. The Anand pattern emphasized keeping cattle in the hinterland and transporting cattle as well as fodder to the cities. Thus, the system had strong comparative advantage. The country produces only five percent of the total quantity of milk and this amount is too inadequate to meet the demand. As a result, many dairy cooperatives have been formed to meet local demand and to develop dairy industry. It has been noticed that for small farmers, livestock population is a family operation and most of the livestock management is carried out by women. Operation flood has played an important role in generating employment for women. With 3.5 million milk suppliers, it is reasonable to assume that 5 per cent represented by women who were able to stay at home rather than go out for work. This withdrawal of women from the labour force will have created an additional 1, 75000 labouring jobs, predominantly for the very poor as per the assessment report of the World Bank in 1998. Since, agriculture is considered as the backbone of India’s economy with animal husbandry as the subsidiary occupation hence dairy sector provides primary source of livelihood for more than 70 per cent of Indian rural households. The livestock contributes 4.7 percent to national GDP and 27 per cent to agricultural GDP of India (GoI, 2006). India currently has about 15.1 million farmers under the ambit of 1,55,634 village level dairy cooperative societies which are federated into about 160 milk unions and 22 state dairy cooperatives, dairy federations (GoI, 2014a). Dairy sector has been instrumental in bringing about socio-economic transformation, while the agriculture by products gives feed and fodder whereas cattle provides manure, draught power for various agricultural operations. India rank first among the world’s milk producing nations, achieving an annual output of 132.43 million tonnes of milk during the years 2012-13 as compared to 127.9 million tonnes in 2011-12 recording a growth of 3.5 per cent. The per capita availability of milk has reached a level 296.5 g/day during the year 2012-13, which is more than the world average of 296 g/day. Women’s participation in dairy farming is considered as an important tool in reducing the poverty and enhancing quality of life , because they accounts for 93 per cent of the total employment in dairy production in India (Belurkar et al., 2003). The Bihar State Co-operative Milk Producers’ federation Ltd. (COMFED) was established in 1983 as the implementing agency of operational flood programme of dairy development on “Anand” pattern in Bihar. Dr. Rajendra Prasad Dugdhv Utpadak Sahkari Sangh Limited (DMRU) popularly known as Barauni Dairy is the largest milk union in the Eastern part of India. Sixth May, 1992 was the day when Barauni Dairy was handed over by Bihar State Cooperative Milk producers’ Federation Limited to the management of Milk Union. At present COMFED has approx. 7.5 lakh members through 13,681 Dairy Cooperative Societies (DCS) and out that 1196 are Women Dairy Cooperative Societies (WDCS). Barauni dairy has outreach in all 18 blocks of Begusarai district through its DCS but out of that WDCS is only available in 13 blocks of the district with 12,396 women members. This study of WDCS members of Barauni dairy in Bihar was designed and planned with following objectives. • To assess the socio-economic and personal characteristics of members of WDCS of Barauni Dairy • To ascertain the extent of knowledge and their satisfaction in dairy related activities • To examine the extent of socio-economic upliftment among the members of WDCS on account of dairy enterprise • To ascertain the impact on quality of life through dairy enterprise • To explore the constraints as perceived by the members of WDCS about their dairy enterprise and also suggest the strategies for their greater involvement in dairy enterprise In this study Bachhawara and Bhagwanpur blocks of Begusarai district have been selected on the basis of having maximum number of WDCS. Further, total six WDCS, three from each block, were selected with the help of random sampling procedure. Finally, 35 members from each WDCS comprising a total of 210 members of WDCS of Barauni dairy were taken as the sample of study. During the study independent variables were age, education, type of family, type of house, social participation, caste, occupation, total annual income, land holding, enterprise satisfaction, herd size, fodder availability, method used for judging milk quality, milk production, consumption and sale, length of association with dairy co-operatives, average monthly income from milk, reason for choosing dairy enterprise, and technical training availed for dairying. The socio-economic upliftment and impact on quality of life served as the dependent variables in the course of study. The results demonstrate that the maximum respondents belonged in the group which includes; 45.2 per cent from middle age group, 53.0 per cent were found to be illiterate, 56.2 per cent belonged to extended/joint family, 48.6 per cent had their pucca house, 63.3 per cent belonged to backward castes, 81.0 percent of women members were found to have the popular combination of agriculture operation and livestock while 47.1 per cent of selected respondents belonged to medium group of annual income. In addition approx. 86.0 per cent respondents had less than 1 ha land, 59.0 per cent women members were found to be highly satisfied with dairy enterprise, 74.7 per cent of respondents had up to 2 milch animals in their possession, and farm and cooperative society was the major source of feed and fodder among WDCS members. In the sense of enterprise satisfaction about 59.0 per cent members of different WDCS were found to be highly satisfied with their dairy enterprise and 4.0 per cent were moderately satisfied and 37.0 per cent were somewhat satisfied. The results indicated that dairy enterprise has helped the rural women in reducing the domestic violence and poverty while it brought improvement in their social, recreational, educational and economic well-being and consequently enhanced their quality of life. During the study, social upliftment index was considered as dependent variable where as age, education, type of family, type of house, caste, occupation, income and land under farming possession were taken as independent variable; linear regression between independent variable and social upliftment index of WDCS members revealed that the co-efficient of determinants (R2) is 0.4489, indicating that the adopted model is quite fit for analysis and explains 45 per cent of variations in socio-economic status of members WDCS. The co-efficient of age is negative (-0.0042) but significant at 1 per cent level of probability. Hence, it may be said that younger members of the WDCS command higher level of social order and got more social mobility than older one. Income level and income from dairy were emerged as significant determinants for social upliftment. The co-efficient of income level and income from dairy were found positive and statistically significant at 1 per cent level of probability, indicating that these two variables are affecting significantly to social upliftment of members of WDCS. During the regression analysis co-efficient of caste was fond negative (-0.0604) but it is significant at 5 per cent level of probability, indicating the higher caste in social hierarchy command higher social upliftment among members of WDCS. Co-efficient of occupation is positive (0.0549) and significant at 10 per cent level of probability, indicating that women members with agriculture as main occupation command higher social status than members with occupation as labour, artisan etc. The variables such as; education level, type of house, land possession and type of family were failed to exert any significant influence on social upliftment parameters of women members of WDCS. For economic upliftment among WDCS members; a linear regression model was adopted for identifying important socio-economic variable which affect the upliftment of income among women members. For this purpose, economic index was taken as dependent variable and age, education, type of family, type of house, caste, occupation and income level and land ownership was again considered as independent variables. Co-efficient of determinants had the value of R2= 0.4355, indicating that 45 per cent of variation in income index was explained by variable included in the study. It was expected also because in qualitative variable, the R2does not cross more than .50 hence the model is quite fit to our study. The co-efficient of age is negative (-0.0033) but significant at 1 per cent level of probability which clearly indicated that the income level of women was inversely related to age of women. The younger women were likely to command higher economic status than aged women. Dairying women earning higher income than non-dairy source. Impact on quality of life have independent variables like age, education, type of family occupation, land ownership status and number of dairy animals owned. The findings through ordered logistic regression suggested that variable like education, type of family and occupation were emerged as significant and positive variables affecting the quality of life among the members of WDCS. Highly educated women of joint family with agriculture and dairy as main occupation were likely to had better quality of life as compared to low educated and nuclear family members of WDCS. However, the co-efficient of ownership of number of dairy animals and land possession status were found negative and non-significant. From the study, it can be concluded that farm women have understood the importance of dairy farming as means of socio-economic upliftment with regards to knowledge level it clearly indicated that there is need to motivate dairy farm women to have better acquaintance with dairy farming practices in their own interest. Thus, proper functioning of micro enterprises develops capacity as well as empowered women to improve their socio-economic status.