Status of Dairy Development in India – An Inter-State Analysis

Dairy sector plays a vital role in the case of a nation’s food supply, engagement of rural workforce etc. Milk production, consumption and per capita availability in India have been increasing rapidly. The determinants of demand for milk in India are: (a) increase in population, (b) urbanization, (c) increase in per capita income, (d) changing food habits and life-styles, and (e) increase in consumers’ interest in high protein diets; and awareness and availability of dairy products. Some of the challenges in dairy sector are pricing, low milk productivity due to intrinsic (low genetic potential) and extrinsic (poor nutrition/feed management, ineffective veterinary and inefficient execution of breed improvement programmes), shortage of feed/fodder and organized private sector. Access to technological innovations, improvement in infrastructural etc have been quite significant to give a strong boost to dairy development. Government has adopted several schemes for improving milk quality and quantity. All the dairy related variables are mostly pair-wise significantly positively correlated. With the help of ‘Dendrogram’, Indian states have been clustered into three clusters namely ‘High’, ‘Moderate’ and ‘Low’. Some policy recommendations for strengthening dairy sector in India have been made.