ONE WOMAN'S MISSION TO MODERNISE ANIMAL HUSBANDRY IN INDIA

[Guest guest]

http://www.ashoka.org/fellows/viewprofile3.cfm?reid=97702

Sagari Ramdas

 

*Country:* *India* *Field(s) of Work:* *Environment*, Economic

Development

*Agriculture*, Economics *Target Population(s):* Farmers / Sharecroppers,

Women, Children, Indigenous Individuals *Location:* Secunderbad, Andhra

Pradesh

 

*Sagari Ramdas was elected to the Ashoka Fellowship in 2003. *

 

 

Dr. Sagari Ramdas, a young veterinarian, is introducing controlled,

environmentally sustainable approaches to animal husbandry, a critical

dimension of the rural fabric where, until now, advances in development

practice have lagged.

 

*The New Idea*

 

India's over 400 million cattle (not to mention goats, sheep, chickens, and

other animals) are an enormously important part of the rural economy and

environment. Consequently, deciding on the most beneficial numbers and mix

and then managing them intelligently is one of the most important dimensions

of rural development.

 

Sagari is setting out to demonstrate how India can do a far better job at

this enormous task. Many of the principles she will be applying have been

proven in other aspects of community organizing and development, but the

field of animal husbandry has remained stuck, seemingly in a separate time

warp.

 

She believes successful approaches must be built on a strong foundation of

local knowledge. Why do people keep particular animals? In one of her two

trial areas, the tribal people view cattle as, in effect, their savings

account, an account they must build up in order to afford an adequate bride

price as well as to handle emergencies. If, as she believes, her analysis of

the balance of fodder to animals shows that the area should reduce its

cattle herds in favor of smaller, fast?breeding animals such as goats and

chickens, she must persuade the people that these smaller animals will

provide as reliable and valued a savings account deposit as the cattle.

 

Second, she believes successful approaches will flow only if there is a

long-term, interactive exchange between local residents and science

professionals and policy makers, and if this interchange is informed at each

step by accurate knowledge of the facts, both local and technical. If there

are too many animals, the resulting overgrazing will lead to environmental

degradation. Policies and incentives must change as much as villagers'

savings patterns.

 

Certainly any significant change in local patterns will only come if the

local communities participate in thinking the problems and opportunities

through, and if these communities then carry out the needed change. Sagari's

approach is therefore strongly community based at all four of the most

crucial areas in the animal care process: health care, management, fodder

generation, and breeding. At each step she intends to involve the people

directly in both generating knowledge and participating in the solutions.

For example, she plans quickly to create village-based animal care teams

that will enable each village to achieve far more efficient health

monitoring and care than currently exists. These villagers will learn such

basic health care measures as giving simple preventive vaccinations which

presently require expensive and often unreachable assistance from town-based

veterinarians.

 

Sagari envisions that empowering the village animal caretakers, mostly

women, to take charge of the many facets of livestock management will allow

a strong " feedback system " to develop between the government, scientists,

and the village teams. This should encourage government policies and

scientific research to respond to the specific needs of particular areas,

their poor people, and their animals.

 

*The Problem*

 

For want of the application of modern development theory and technology to

animal husbandry, terrible human and environmental damage has taken place.

Shifting land use and cropping patterns, excess animals, and non-sustainable

grazing patterns have led to declining fodder and forest yields and soil

erosion. Animal disease, death, and low productivity have also taken an

enormous toll on the rural economy and the nutritional level of its people.

 

The self-focused nature of the government's animal husbandry and veterinary

bureaucracies has made them deaf to the views and knowledge of those who own

and care for animals at the village level. Nor are these organizations

comfortable reaching out for collaboration. In Sagari's own words, " the

highly centralized animal health care system has denied the existence of a

local knowledge base, has failed to meet the needs of the producers,

especially the poor, landless, and marginal farmers. As a result, local

people have become more dependent on external forces for the management and

care of their livestock. "

 

The scientific research community and government policy makers have, at

best, been able to offer only target-driven bureaucratic solutions for

management problems - solutions that are insensitive to local facts and

local people.

 

*The Strategy*

 

Sagari will address these problems at three levels. First, she will

undertake village-level data gathering and analysis. Her teams will conduct

ten -day participatory fact gathering and analysis seminars in sixty

villages, gathering data on animal populations, grazing patterns, fodder

requirements, and local traditional animal health care techniques. They will

then analyze these data to determine the health, fodder, and management

needs in each of these areas. In conjunction with data gathering, the teams

will train village animal caretakers in basic veterinary skills.

 

From here, Sagari will begin developing intervention models: seeking

creative solutions to problems in the four areas of health, feeding,

breeding, and management. For example, during a past village experience,

when the local animal tenders of one area complained that fodder was not

available during certain periods of the year, Sagari helped the community

construct a fodder bank, from which grazing animals could be fed during the

dry seasons.

 

As those villagers responsible for the animals learn to analyze their needs,

and as they experience the fact that they can take charge and can create

solutions, Sagari feels they will naturally coalesce into a strong interest

group, demanding more appropriate and locally sensitive research from the

scientific community and appropriate government policies from public

officials. Sagari's ultimate goal is to change the outmoded bureaucratic

pattern of the animal husbandry field rationally. To speed that day she

plans to demonstrate her approach in two different states, moving quickly in

each by working through two well?established, quality private area

development organizations. She is also positioning herself within the

scientific, nonprofit, and government communities so that she will have

direct and influential access to those who give input to and develop

livestock policies.

 

*The Person*

 

Dr. Sagari Ramdas has felt drawn to animals since she was a child. She

vividly remembers visiting with her grandmother in the village and

interacting with the many animals for which her grandmother provided a home

- including chickens, deer, cobras and pythons. While she credits her

grandmother with inspiring her interest in animals, Sargari also recognizes

the other women of her " matriarchal " family who provided her with the

support, confidence, and example that helped her to develop her keen sense

of direction and self?confidence. Sagari reflects, " The women of my family,

who have always been involved in women's rights issues, always emphasized

the do's, never the don'ts. "

 

This affirmative upbringing gave Sagari the courage to pursue her own star,

to take and stick to a series of unconventional educational and career

decisions. First, she decided to enter the male, even macho veterinarian

field. In the field she rejected the doctoral academic track her success as

a student opened to her. She went to live in a village " to determine what my

role as a veterinarian in India should be, " again hardly what convention

would approve for an upper-class urban Indian woman.

 

It is that honesty of search, clarity of vision, and concrete realism that

makes it very likely that she will succeed in modernizing India's approach

to animal husbandry.