Vishwanath Hegde works as chief operating officer of a city-based firm, but his role goes much beyond just managing key functions in the company. He has to motivate rural women who are seasonally employed to start engaging in dairy farming, something that can ensure regular income.
“It is tough to convince women from villages to get involved in any income-generation activities as often their families are male-dominated. In rural areas, agriculture is the mainstay. But due to its seasonal nature, people are practicallyjobless otherwise,” says Hegde.
Thus in summers, even if they manage to find work as labourers, it is hardly for 12-13 days in a month, earning them `100 per day, not enough to run households that have two to three children apart from the aged.
The city-based supply-chain firm Hegde works for, MokshaYug Access (MYA), has managed to convince some 9,000 women from villages in Tumkur, Mandya and Kolar to work as dairy farmers.
Siddamma A, the mother of two from KG Halli village in Tumkur today earns a good Rs7,000 a month and has a bank account and an ATM card. Her income has gone a long way in ensuring continued education for her two children as well as helped her buy a television set and a grinder for her home. She now plans to get a LPG connection.
This is a far cry from her earlier life, where getting Rs10,000-12,000 a year by selling paddy and ragi from her farm was considered great.
Siddamma says every day, she milks the cattle and brings about 12 litres of milk to the collection centre.
For this, she earns Rs240 per day (Rs20 per litre), which is directly deposited into her account. The milk that Siddamma and her friend Mahalakshmi, from the neighbouring village of Banavara, bring to the collection centre undergoes quality checks and is sent to a bulk milk cooler, some 10 km away.
Post the cooling and final quality checks that are weighed in at the bulk milk cooler, milk cans are then ferried to packaging units, from where they are sold at retail outlets and to ice-cream factories, hotels, coffee shops by MYA.
In the process, Siddamma and her family not just have a secondary source of income (as her husband works in the farms), but dairy farming has enhanced their overall financial state.
While for Mahalakshmi, the income she earned helped her buy one more cow, thus increasing her milk quantity and overall remuneration. She now takes about 30 litres a day to the collection centre, earning Rs600 a day.
According to Nandkumar D, cluster manager, Tumkur district for MYA, once women are motivated to become dairy farmers, they are trained on milking, cleaning and how to use cattle feed.
Hegde says that by maintaining a bank account, the women learn about savings as giving money in their hand leads to squandering. “I visit the nearest branch at least once a fortnight to make withdrawals. Doing banking transactions not just help in keeping an eye over my finances but also increase my confidence level,” says Mahalakshmi.
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