Vol. 11, Special Issue 6 (2022)

― Verghese Kurien, I too had a Dream

Dairying is very important to rural Indians irrespective of caste, creed, religion or race. The livelihood of a common man in rural India is very much depended on dairy farming. For this research paper I visited five dairy farmers in village Chaheru block Phagwara district Kapurthala, Punjab and surveyed them by visiting their dairy farms. In course of my visit I was able to talk to them at great lengths and was able to ask questions like how much cattle they own, which is the preferred breed of cattle and why, total milk output by the dairy farm, what the feed of the cattle, and many more.

Punjab produces highest per capita milk in the country so I was curious to know about the methods they follow and how they raise their cattle. I was also curious to know about the common diseases in cattle and how they treat them and what is the situation of veterinary hospital is the area and cost of medicines.

I also gained valuable knowledge about the problems they face while running a dairy farm. They constantly talked about spoilage of milk, corruption at milk co-operatives and unavailability of veterinary doctor at government hospital. They also talked about rising cost of feed and unavailability of greed fodder due to extreme heat and drought.

India rural household own cattle and been raising them since long time ago. If our policy maker can force real change on ground and able to distribute credit to the rural farmers our milk scene will change dramatically. We have come long way in terms of milk production from scarcity of milk to highest producer in the world. The dairy farmers of developed countries are very modern so we need to continue protecting our rural dairy farmer by providing subsidy and putting big import tax on milk imports and milk products.