Cattle rearing and dairying are vocations that have been traditionally centred around women, with the latter, estimated to account for as much as 85% of India’s animal husbandry. On an average, a woman with a milch animal spends more than two-and a half hours daily in its feeding, watering, cleaning, milking, and grazing. Often the responsibility of children under their mother’s keen supervision, consumes additional time and energy. The country’s over 90,000 DCSs pump in over Rs. 3500 crores every year to its to million odd farmer members, but only 20% of these members comprise women. This tantamount to violation of a cardinal principle of cooperation, ’membership should be confined to actual users and not relatives of users’. If the groundwork is being laid by women, ought not the bounty too be their legitimate accrual? Women’s dairy project (WDP), launched in 1986 as part of the Support to Training and Employment Program for women (STEP) of the Department of women and Child Development, Ministry of Human Resources Development, Government of India has made headway in imparting a pragmatic orientation to the idea that products and income from dairying can be controlled by women. A number of state level dairy federations (Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Uttaranchal, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, etc.) took up organizing WDCSs under STEP program Rajasthan Cooperative Dairy Federation has received Rs. 14.42 crores to implement six phases of women dairy projects in the state. Phase 1 covered seven milk unions and a variety of performance indicators, both measure the progress achieved due to implementation of WDP.
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