Why Empowering Women in Dairying Feels Like Nation-Building

There is a quiet revolution in India that rarely makes front pages: women are the backbone of our livestock and dairy economy. Yet, I find myself unsettled by a paradox — the more central women are to milk production, the less visible and valued they often remain in the value chain.

Data compiled by recent studies makes the paradox stark. Women constitute some 82% of workers in ‘raising cattle and buffaloes’, yet most of them are concentrated in low-paid, labour-intensive tasks and informal roles — 79% are self-employed and about 20.7% work as unpaid family labour. Skilled and managerial representation is almost non-existent Uplift women in dairying — The Hindu BusinessLine. Those numbers are not mere statistics: they are the contours of squandered human potential.

Reading the analysis by Saurabh Bandyopadhyay, Ajaya K Sahu and Bornali Bhandari, I felt compelled to step back and ask: why do we let entire cohorts of women remain trapped in a low-equilibrium of low productivity and low reward when the pathways out are often known and replicable? The MSDE–NCAER research they draw on makes the diagnosis clear and practical Uplift women in dairying — The Hindu BusinessLine. NCAER’s own outreach — highlighting skills gaps and state-level patterns — reminds us that the problem is structural, not individual NCAER LinkedIn / NCAER publications.

What this moment demands is neither charity nor platitude. It demands systems thinking, dignity, and the patience to build institutions that value and elevate the people who do the work.

The moral and practical case for investment

When women move from the margins to leadership in the dairy value chain, multiple things happen at once:

• Productivity rises — because women gain access to training, improved inputs, and better animal care knowledge.
• Household incomes and resilience improve — money controlled by women is more likely to be invested in children’s nutrition and education.
• Local economies diversify — women-led cooperatives and microenterprises create backward and forward linkages.

This is not abstract: NDDB’s state-level experiments and other Gujarat models have shown that with leadership training and financial support, women-run dairies can scale and pay [NDDB Facebook post and NDDB reports]. When I think about nation-building, I do not imagine it as grand monuments alone; I imagine rural milk chilling centres run by women, cooperatives that pay fair prices, and scholarship pipelines that lead girls into dairy science.

Practical levers that work (and why I believe in them)

The policy and program prescriptions in the NCAER–MSDE work are practical because they meet women where they are and raise the floor of opportunity. I believe in a menu of complementary interventions:

• Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) and targeted reskilling: combine literacy drives with vocational programs (e.g., Jan Shikshan Sansthan models) so women can move from informal milking to roles that pay and lead.
• Mobile training units and women-only centres: technical knowledge on artificial insemination, fodder conservation, basic animal health and dairy technology must reach the courtyard and the grazing field.
• Financial inclusion tailored for women dairy entrepreneurs: microcredit, crop/dairy insurance, and working capital linked to market access make investment feasible.
• Cooperative reform and gender-sensitive policy: ensure equal cooperative membership, voting rights, and leadership pathways; land and asset rights must not be an optional add-on.
• Scholarships and career pipelines: encourage girls to study dairy science and veterinary roles through scholarships that target underrepresented states and communities Uplift women in dairying — The Hindu BusinessLine.

These are not silver bullets, but they are structural levers. When layered together, they can shift whole communities out of low-equilibrium traps.

A caution about replication: context matters

I am wary of one-size-fits-all prescriptions. The nature of women’s participation in dairying varies across states: Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana show different patterns compared with Karnataka or West Bengal. That means scaling successful models requires local adaptation, measurement, and iteration — not merely funding.

We must also measure the right things. Too often programs judge themselves by short-term outputs — participants trained, meetings held — instead of medium-term outcomes: income stability, cooperative leadership, reduction in unpaid family labour, and intergenerational education gains.

Why this is existential, not peripheral

Food systems, climate resilience, and rural livelihoods are inseparable. When women in dairying have better skills, better access to markets and finance, and a seat at the cooperative table, the entire food economy becomes more resilient. This is why I see investing in women in dairying not as a social ‘add-on’ but as a core economic strategy.

When I reflect on legacy — on the digital twin that carries my voice forward — I want to be remembered as someone who pointed to leverage points: to training that happens under a banyan tree, to scholarships that open laboratory doors, to cooperatives whose ledgers are balanced because women had the vote and the pen.

A compact I would make with policymakers and practitioners

• Prioritise RPL and mobile vocational units in high-density women dairying states.
• Tie microcredit to cooperative membership and ensure women can hold leadership positions without bureaucratic hurdles.
• Fund scholarships in veterinary and dairy science targeted to first-generation learners from dairy households.
• Build metrics that follow participants for at least three years to capture income and leadership outcomes.

Closing thought

I often return to a simple image: a woman at dawn, milking, humming, knowing the rhythm of her animal’s breath. If we can design systems that turn that intimate expertise into social power, we will have done more than boost milk yields — we will have honoured dignity and rewired an economy.

The work is practical, the tools are known, and the moral imperative is urgent. Let’s stop treating the dairy sector’s women as invisible inputs and start treating them as architects of rural prosperity.

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Regards,
Hemen Parekh