Potential of Dairy Industry with Special Reference to Generating Employment in India

Dairying has played a significant role in providing a livelihood to farmers in India. About 80 million rural Indian households are engaged in milk production with a very high proportion being landless, small and marginal farmers. The study aims to analyse the challenges faced by the dairy industry in generating employment and expanding their business. The paper has taken data from annual survey of industries over 20 years and a case study with a detailed interview of a cooperative society working in the dairy sector. The analysis is based on autoregressive distributed lag model. With the help of analysis, the study found that the dairy industry has the potential to generate employment. During the interaction for the case study, it was observed that firms in the dairy industry undertake the production of value-added products to yield profits which is limited due to low investments. However, the lack of advertisements of these products results in restrained sales and limits income of the farmers. Therefore, the study suggests that the private sector should be encouraged through product link incentive scheme and the government should intervene as a facilitator for their growth and expansion on international levels.