Gowala Basti: A place of Milk Mine in Tripura

       Gowala Basti a small cluster village situated just in front of the Tripura Legislative Assembly house and civil secretariat is the place renowned for milk production activities in the Agartala area of the state.

        This is the place where all the people believed to be from Bihar have settled and started their milk production activities quite long time ago. At present, the place has approximately 500 families all are some ways or other connected to milch cow rearing, milk production and supplying milk to the Agartala areas since long time.

       The most amazing part of the people is; even though they do not posses fodder or Pasteur lands but they could successfully manage the milch cows and earning large chunk of their daily income through milk selling in the municipality area of the Agartala.

      From the own version of one such milk producer of the Gowala Basti, it is stated that this place produces approximately 45,000 litres of milk per day by almost 300 milk producers. The total income earned from the daily sale of milk is approximately `. 11,70,000 per day through retail selling of milks in Agartala municipality area particularly in the sweet and beverage shops.

      Milch cows of pure Jersey, HF and Sind breeds are reared by the people of Gowala Basti for production of higher quantities of milk. Their only reliance for keeping the livestock is; concentrate feeds from the local markets and green fodder from the Lembucherra and Kamalghat areas. It is stated that people of the area have to depend on concentrate feeds due to scarce resource of green fodder in the adjoining areas.

      This scarcity in green fodder and over reliance on concentrate animal feeds is the stumbling blocks to the people as it incurs fair amount of expenditure in milk production thereby profit per liter of milk sold has been reducing with the increase in animal feeds. During rise of price of animal concentrate feed, people of the area also feels the heat in managing the input cost and maintaining the per litre profit margin.

     However, this has never deterred the people of Gowala Basti in Milk production activity and it has remained to be their one of the core economic activity since long.

This is the place for bulk organic manure and caters the demands of the organic manures to a certain extent through sale of cow dung to the orchard owners or other farmers of the state. People of the area earn a good side income through selling of cow dung and also saves money through utilization of cow dung for fuel purpose.

        This place, the people of the Gowala Basti have so much to deliver if they are given a good facility of fodder or Pasteur lands for catering the livestock especially the Milch cow rearing activities in the state.

       People from the other areas have lots to learn from the people of Gowala Basti; the place should be an ideal place for exposure tour for the farming communities from other areas for inducing their interest in milch cow rearing and first hand knowledge of milk production in economic manners.

     Agritangkol dated 30.12.2011 at 10.00 A.M