A step towards sustainability through Women led Cooperative

Village Rengal is situated in the remote area of district Almora in Uttarakhand. Rengal is around 42 Kms away from the district headquarter and mainly comprises of mixed caste of population. The inhabitants depend mainly on livestock as their primary occupation. The village women used to prepare “Khoya”, a dairy product made by thickening of milk by heating. The villagers used to sell this Khoya in the nearby market to earn the living and even then the earning was not able to meet the needs of the entire family. The process behind the preparation of Khoya is a hardship for the Village women as they have to gather woods from far off forest and spend hours of the day in front of the open Chulha for the preparation. The market prospects were limited and the selling of Khoya in the market was looked after by the male person of the household and thus woman of the household gets nothing despite of all the hard work. There was availability of local breeds of animals but lack of improved breeds led to low production of milk. There was also a lack of awareness related to livestock management and better techniques.

Himmotthan, an associate organization of Tata Trusts started Central Himalayan Livestock Initiative (CHELI) project in year 2015. After a thorough investigation and understanding, team CHELI decided to form women led cooperative in the area. The purpose of the cooperative was to develop a sustainable community through women empowerment. This led to the formation of Shyama Devi Self Reliant Cooperative on 13/05/2016 registered under Uttaranchal Self Reliant Cooperative act 2003 article 3. The cooperative was named after the famous Shyama Devi temple in Rengal. The aim of the cooperative was to improve the income of all the members through good livestock management. This is to achieve by introduction of improved breed of cattle, better management techniques and better marketing strategies. The project provided good breed of Buffaloes, awareness on artificial insemination, fodder promotion on common land, forest crops on private land and improved market linkages.

All the members of the SRC were also trained on the standard operating procedures of preparation of Khoya, preparation of local sweets (Balmithai & Chocolate barfi) by khoya, record keeping, inventory management and Milk testing. Now the Women were leading from the front and had direct access to market and hence to the revenue generated through sales. These training and handholding support by the project team leads to less consumption of time on a daily basis, transparency in the accounting system, thorough expenditure details from the production up to the end sale, livestock related awareness among the villagers. Till end of 2017, a total of 89 women are the shareholders of Shyama Devi self reliant cooperative. At present around 30 liters of milk is getting sold and around 8 kg of Khoya is produced on a daily basis with a total income of around Rs. 6,70,000 till Dec’17. The cooperative meets regularly to mitigate the limitations, problem solving and future planning and is working relentlessly towards enhancing the overall business.