Gudiyattam women whow way via White Revolution

VELLORE: “I now command respect from my family, especially my husband, as I have become financially independent”, says 36-year-old Kavitha of Paradarami near Gudiyattam. Her family has one-acre land where she earlier used to toil for a meager income. As a school dropout she was desperately looking for some way to educate her two sons in a good school. The turning point came when she joined the Pudhu Vazhvu Milk Producer’s Federation in December 2009.Today her individual income is around Rs 2,000 per month and she has been able to use this money to educate her sons. Kavitha is not alone. A 100 more women from this cluster, all school dropouts, who have joined the federation, have showcased with confidence that their wards do not drop out from schools. The intervention of PVP started with identifying the needs of these women and had formed Village Poverty Reduction Committee (PVRC) in the cluster of villages. These committees came up with the suggestion of providing milch animals to the target women and the project funded the same.A federation was formed and its members began receiving training in capacity building skills such as identifying good breeds, feeding, managing diseases, handling milk equipment through various agencies such as Aavin, National Dairy Development Board, a private da- iry nearby, and the TNAU.“We are free from the middlemen who used to take away our milk and pay very less for it. Today we produce quality milk and sell for good price”, noted Sundari (29). What is interesting is that the federation, comprising 13 women SHGs forming a cluster of Common Livelihood Group, lends support to the members through various activities.What is more, the federation has opted for its own 1,000 sq ft Milk Collection Centre at Paradarami at a cost of Rs 16 lakh that included equipment to maintain quality of milk, that was inaugurated by district collector S Nagarajan and local MLA S K Tamilarasan on Friday.District project manager of PVP, Sivakami Srikrishna said that the federation had received around Rs 21 lakh as financial assistance as grant from the project and Rs14 lakh as bank loan for the activities. Every day it produces around 400 to 600 litres of milk and after making available for the local consumption, sells to the Bulk Milk Cooling unit maintained by the Aavin in Paradarami.Initially, the milk collection centre was functioning for the last two years in a rented building. Now it has got its own building and the members are proud about it, she added. The centre opens for a three-hour duration in the morning and evening. The women are now well versed with measuring weight of milk with electronic weighing machine, testing fat content and the computer operations. They also maintain a database of the milch animals (disease attacks, artificial insemination, insurance cover). The women are planning to go in for value added products from milk such as kova, rose milk etc.