Sustainability of Dairy Based Livelihoods of the Tribes of Jharkhand: A study of Ranchi and Dhanbad

Abstract

The present study assesses the extent of contribution of Dairy based production system towards the Sustainable Livelihood of the tribes of Jharkhand. Out of 24 districts of Jharkhand, Govindpur and Ormanjhi blocks of Dhanbad and Ranchi districts were randomly selected for the study. From these two blocks, four villages were selected randomly and from each village 30 farmers were again selected randomly, constituting a total number of 120 respondents . The data were collected through participatory rural appraisal and personal interviews during year 2013-14 . The results indicated that the livelihoods of tribal communities in the area have traditionally been dominated by the Dairy Production System (DPS) - C+B+G (C=Cattle, B=Buffalo, G=Goat). Among the sustainable livelihood components human capital was minimum compared to others and use of traditional knowledge (5.98), Farm Energy (5.95), ICT Tools (5.71), Livestock Density (5.97) and Access to natural resources (5.85) had highest influence on Sustainable livelihood of the respondents. The DPS prevalent in the area was found to be substantially contributing for the sustainable livelihood of the respondents and was the integral part of day-to-day livelihood activities, nutritional security and traditional life style for tribal people in the area