Volume - Indian Dairy Association

3productivity enhancement. The future growth has to sustain primarily onenhanced productivity and not on increase of livestock population.5. In the rural areas, most of the livestock rearing activities are handledby women force. As many as 75 million women are engaged in livestocksector as against 15 million men. There is an increasing trend towardsparticipation of women in livestock development activities. This has led toempowerment of women headed households in the rural communities.6. In recent years, a gradual shift is taking place in livestock sector fromresource driven systems to demand driven systems and involvement ofeducated youth in livestock production activities. The increase in theprocessing of especially milk and meat had provided a fillip to thisdevelopment. Livestock production systems have also provided muchneeded diversification opportunities especially in the states like Punjab,Haryana and Uttar Pradesh and also in the poorly endowed regions likeBundelkhand.7. Processing and value addition has been primarily limited to the milksub‐group. The meat sector continues to be handled in an unorganizedmanner. For making the meat sector more vibrant, profitable, exportoriented and provider of safe meat, a greater emphasis needs to be givenon establishment of modern slaughter and processing facilities.8. The growth of the livestock sector during the 8 th Plan was 4.01 percent per annum, which decelerated to 3.45 per cent in the 9 th Plan and 3.91per cent in the 10 th Plan. The contribution of milk sector to the total outputfrom livestock is about 68 per cent and in some of the states it is as high as80 per cent. After the completion of Operation Flood, there has hardlybeen any investment in the cooperative sector. The investment undercentrally sponsored schemes has gone to non‐viable areas mainly in theNorth East. The private sector has made considerable investment butmainly in the processing sector, which has not given the required impetusfor achieving higher growth rate in milk sub‐sector; consequently thegrowth has decelerated to 3.91 per cent in the 10 th Plan. During the sameperiod the growth in egg production was positive and increased from 4.41per cent in the 8 th Plan to 7.26 per cent in the 10 th Plan. The growth in wool