A central scheme of the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying, started in 2014, to develop and conserve indigenous cattle and buffalo breeds and to raise milk productivity through better genetics, mainly by expanding artificial insemination, sex-sorted semen and embryo technology.
India is the largest milk producer in the world, contributing close to a quarter of global output. That success owes much to Operation Flood and the cooperative dairy model, which linked millions of small producers to urban markets from the 1970s. Yet the average yield of an Indian cow remains far below that of animals in developed dairy nations. Most milk comes from a very large number of animals each producing only a few litres a day, kept by landless labourers and small farmers for whom dairying is a key source of daily cash.
Crossbreeding with exotic breeds such as Holstein Friesian and Jersey raised yields in some areas, but these animals are costly to feed and less tolerant of heat and local diseases. Meanwhile, many hardy Indian breeds, well suited to tropical climates and low-input farming, were declining in number and purity. Rashtriya Gokul Mission was launched to address both problems: protect and improve native breeds while lifting productivity. This page treats it as a productivity and rural income scheme based on animal genetics, rather than as a cow-protection programme.
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