M A I N   N E W S

Dairy farming spurs women empowerment in Haryana
Bhanu P Lohumi
Tribune News Service

Karnal, November 20
Empowering women, especially in rural areas, has always been a major challenge, but the active participation of women in the cooperative movement in Haryana, especially in the dairy sector, has shown the way.

There are over 35,000 cooperative societies in Haryana having around 46 lakh members. The dairy sector alone has about 700 exclusively women cooperatives with membership of around 39,000. These societies have done remarkably well, thus ushering in a new era of prosperity. Women engaged in agricultural activities are taking up dairy farming as an allied trade. Rural women, guided by the Haryana Cooperative Federation (HARCOFED) and other rural development agencies, are supplementing their income by introducing innovative schemes under dairy cooperatives.

There are five milk plants and 27 milk-chilling centres working on cooperative basis in the state. Dairy cooperatives in Haryana procure around 6 lakh litres of milk every day. These bodies have revised the procurement price of fat from Rs 350 per kg to Rs 450 per kg from June 1, 2013, which works out to be about Rs 30 per litre of milk, thus ensuring remunerative prices to women dairy farmers.

In a special scheme to motivate women members and to facilitate the working of these societies, the government has made available to these societies the milk collection units, the milko-test system, computers and milk collection canes. To ensure active participation in cooperative societies, adulteration checking kits have been also made available.