to give someone power or authority to make decisions. It is the process which enables one to gain power, authority.

In short empowerment is the process that allows one to gain the knowledge, skill-sets and attitude needed to cope with the changing world/circumstances in which one lives. Women are the integral part of a nation. The status of women in any society is an index of its progress. Indian women are considered as sources of power or SHAKTHI according to mythological sources. But the actual condition of women does not match up to this statement. It remains only in the books. There is a common assumption that men are the breadwinners and that most of the female work is either done in leisure time or serves to procure supporting income for the family. They are considered as weaker sex in the male dominated society especially in rural India. They lack self-confidence, face gender discrimination and are denied educational opportunities. They have no economic independence. No one asks her opinion in taking any decision regarding household matters or any other issues. Her world is made limited within the four walls to look after her family. But the truth is different. In spite of the many difficulties faced, if proper exposure and knowledge are imparted to her for self-employment, it gives them the strength to overcome many of these problems. Today, women are at a historical compulsion to revise and redefine their values and roles at home and outside. They are capable of working hard physically on all occasions. Indian women are more patient in nature than men. That is how they manage both workplace and

family equally. If proper exposure and knowledge is given to them, they too will prove themselves to be highly potential productive forces. Involving women in economic activities is one of the key Employment gives factors of empowering women. It is an accepted fact that if they are empowered, the whole nation is empowered. economic status to women. Economic status gives way of social In their family level, many of

status. Awareness is created among the women folk in engaging self-employment in a smaller way. these women enjoy taking decision on house hold and financial matters, have freedom from dependence and are able to contribute a substantial amount to the family. They feel more valued within their family. The power of and access to taking decisions has increased for women in rural India, within as well as outside the family. Women constitute 46.5 percent of total population of the country out of which only 9 percent of them are entrepreneurs. The micro finance is agenda for empowering poor women. Micro enterprises are an integral part of planned strategy for securing balanced development of the economy of the poor women. Rural womens participation in agro-based activities is much more than what statistics reveal. This is mainly due to the fact that most of the work done by the This is a reflection on social, cultural as well as economic in the decades of development. womens work is required to be focused around family and household. In addition to this, in Indias rural

areas, there is lack of education, lack of health care facilities and lack of effective opportunities of employment for women. Such constraints and social traditions largely inhibit the emergence of this vast potential of women power which remains the nations greatest untapped resource. Today, they are at a historical compulsion to revise and redefine their values and roles at home and outside. If proper exposure and knowledge is given to them, they too will prove themselves to be highly potential productive forces. Agricultural activity has been as erratic as the monsoon. Hence, rural people are forced to think of generating additional revenues. Since these people are less literate and possess limited skills, the hunt for alternate source of income is constrained to a few occupations. A majority of them choose rearing of milk cattle and selling the milk as a source of secondary income. Cattle rearing is a diversification from existing agricultural activity. Largely, rural women are engaged in this activity. These rural women, besides doing hard household chores, also undertake the taxing job of cattle rearing. They supply the milk to the well-established district cooperative dairies working successfully on the Anand model. The present paper is an effort to study the role of district cooperative dairies in helping the women to be self-reliant, self-employed, selfdiligent, and empowered. India has been called a country of villages. There are as many as 6,38,5961 villages in India. A study held in 2008 by Max New York

Life Insurance and the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) shows that 70%, i.e., 732 million of Indian population, thrives in these villages. Gandhi ji clearly pointed out that villagers are the backbone of the Indian economy. The primary occupation in the villages is agriculture supplemented with cattle rearing. India being a rural and agro-based economy, 54% of its workforce is engaged in agriculture, of which 37% are women. As high as 78% of agriculture is dependent on monsoon and farmers curse their fate if they do not get a good crop. The rainfall has been erratic and the areas are prone to both drought and floods, rendering agricultural income uncertain for farmers. Most of the time the farmers have to borrow People of rural India face a lot of hardships to earn livelihood. A majority of them are engaged in agriculture, animal husbandry and other ancillary activities. Income from agricultural activity has been as erratic as the monsoon. Hence, rural people are forced to think of generating additional revenues. Since these people are less literate and possess limited skills, the hunt for alternate source of income is constrained to a few occupations. A majority of them choose rearing of milk cattle and selling the milk as a source of secondary income. Cattle rearing is a diversification from existing agricultural activity. Largely, rural women are engaged in this activity. These rural women, besides doing hard household chores, also undertake the taxing job of cattle rearing. They supply the milk to the well-established district cooperative dairies working successfully on the Anand model. The present paper is an effort to

study the role of district cooperative dairies in helping the women to be self-reliant, self-employed, self-diligent, and empowered.

Money to meet the cultivation cost of agricultural crops and other social obligations. Since the agricultural income is uncertain and deceptive, farmers easily get entangled in the debt cycle. Moreover, the combination of unfavorable land-to-person ratio and fragmented landholding makes it difficult to support large families on crop income alone. Thus, the underutilized labor potential and a dire need for additional income force farmers to look for subsidiary sources of income. Rearing milk cattle and selling its milk give rise to an additional stream of income. It is a real relief to most of the weaker groups of Indian society. The income from crop production is seasonal. On the contrary, dairy as an occupation helps them to procure stable income year round. In India, dairy is recognized as a substantial contributor towards social and economic development. The nations milk supply comes from millions of small producers, dispersed throughout the rural areas. 70-75% of households of small and marginal farmers and landless laborers are wedded to the dairy traditionally since ancient times (Shah, 2000). These small and marginal farmers contribute a large chunk to the milk production. They collectively hold about 70% of the national milkanimal herd. Often one or two milk animals enable these farmers to generate sufficient additional income to break the vicious subsistence agricultural debt cycle.

Domestication of cattle occurred about 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. The cow was so important to the ancient people of Central Asia, that wealth was measured in terms of the number of cattle held by them India was earlier a milk deficit country. Due to the concerted efforts under the White Revolution, it gradually became a milk surplus country. In the early 1999, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) declared India as the worlds largest producer of milk. According to FAO Global Food Outlook Report, milk production in India crossed 74 million tons by March 1999. As of 2006-07, the figure stood at 100.9 million tons, while milk production in the US, the second largest producer, was 71 million tons. This rapid growth and modernization are largely credited to the contribution of dairy cooperatives under the Operation Flood (OF) Project. It was assisted by many multilateral agencies, including the European Union, the World Bank, FAO, and World Food Program (WFP) who promoted milk production and animal husbandry. The dairy cooperative system represents more than 13 million dairy farmers belonging to about 1.22 lakh primary cooperative societies, which sell their product to one of the 198 milk producers cooperative unions. These unions, in turn, are supported by state cooperative milk marketing federations. The annual rate of growth of milk production in India is between 5-6%, against the world growth rate of 1%.2 The age of cooperative movement can be traced back to the first and the oldest human society. The domain of cooperatives is capable of meeting many economic needs of a country. The cooperative movement at present covers about 98% of

the villages and 62% of the total rural population irrespective of caste, color or creed. Milk and milk products are the second largest contributors to the gross output with 43The Role of Dairy Cooperatives in Women Empowerment a turnover of 10,000 cr annually, next to rice. Dairy industry is an agro-based industry that has brighter prospects of development and expansion in the womb of future. As on March 2005, more than 100,000 dairy cooperatives got integrated through a three-tier cooperative structure, the Anand model, owned by more than 10 million farmers, which procures on average 16.5 million liters of milk every day. The milk is processed and marketed by 198 milk producers cooperative unions. Fifteen state cooperative milk marketing federations work under the ownership of milk producers unions. It is significant to note that the women members manage more than 70% of the milk cooperatives. Certainly women get the advantages of it. The present study intends to see the impact of dairy industry on women with respect to their self-reliance and empowerment