Cabinet approves Realignment of Department of Animal Husbandry & Dairying Schemes

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs chaired by the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has approved the implementation of a special livestock sector package consisting of several activities by revising and realigning various components of the Government of India's schemes for the next five years starting from 2021-22 to boost growth in the livestock sector further and thereby making animal husbandry more remunerative to 10 crore farmers engaged in Animal Husbandry Sector. This package envisages Central Government's support amounting to Rs 9800 crore over five years for leveraging a total investment of Rs 54,618 crore for five years.

Financial implication

The financial commitment of Rs 9800 crore by the Government of India over the next five years starting 2021-22 for these schemes would leverage a total investment of Rs 54,618 crore in the livestock sector, including share of investments by state governments cooperatives, financial institutions, external funding agencies and another stakeholder.

As per this, all the schemes of the Department will be merged into three broad categories as Development Programmes, which includes Rashtriya Gokul Mission, National Programme for Dairy Development (NPDD), National Livestock Mission (NLM) and Livestock Census and Integrated Sample Survey (LC & ISS) as sub-schemes, Disease Control program renamed as Livestock Health and Disease Control (LH & DC) which includes the present Livestock Health and Disease Control (LH & DC) scheme and National Animal Disease Control Programme (NADCP) and Infrastructure Development Fund wherein, the Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Development fund (AHIDF) and the Dairy Infrastructure Development Fund (DIDF) are merged. The present scheme for Dairy Cooperatives and Farmer Producer Organizations engaged in Dairy activities is also included in this third category.

Possible impact

The Rashtriya Gokul Mission will help in the development and conservation of indigenous breeds and contribute to improving the economic condition of the rural poor. The National Programme for Dairy Development (NPDD) scheme is targeted towards installing about 8900 bulk milk coolers, thus providing benefit to more than 8 lakh milk producers, and 20 LLPD milk will be additionally procured. Under NPDD, financial assistance from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) will be availed, thus strengthening and creating fresh infrastructure in 4500 villages.