Sabita Sarkar has been a home maker all her life. It is her husband who provides for the family of four through his earnings as a farmer. The earnings, however, were not enough for the family to afford education for their son who had to leave school after completing his class 10th. Saddened by her situation, and not been able to do anything about it, Sabita had lost all hopes. She did not have any capital or skill set to start any livelihood activity. Finding some courage, she started rearing a goat in the year 2016. She conceded that rearing of goats is relatively easy than rearing bigger livestock as it needed smaller investment to start with. However, there were issues such as mortality, unavailability of feed, unavailability of health care services and other support services in the locality which posed major hurdles. Sabita soon realised that price realization of goat is completely non transparent as local aggregators try to draw maximum profits for themselves than the farmer. In 2016, Tripura State Rural Livelihood Mission started working on the goat based livelihoods project and replicated the Pashu Sakhi model of The Goat Trust in all the villages. Sabita, already having delved into goat rearing activity, started availing services of Pashu Sakhi in her village. She bought concentrate feed (dana mishran), pashu chat, masala bolus on regular basis from Pashu sakhi and fed it to her goats. Like most other beneficiaries she found it very useful to have all the services associated with goat rearing at her doorstep. The project also benefitted her to maximise and assess the asset value of her goats. This in turn enhanced her bargaining power with local aggregators. Presently she has a total of 6 goats of which 2 are adult and 4 are kids. Her earnings reached Rs 7,500 per annum from improved goat rearing. It is for the confidence that she gained by rearing goats that she also adopted buck entrepreneurship and kid nursery consequently. Her earnings have increased by approximately Rs. 16000 with the activities has adopted under goat rearing. This is a big step, she believes, in her families’ attempt to get out of poverty.
