Evaluation of livestock service delivery system in TAMIL NADU

Abstract

A study was conducted to analyse the livestock service delivery system in Tamil Nadu in terms of service utilization, service cost, service use, service choice, service quality and service constraints faced by service providers in rendering services and service constraints faced by farmers while receiving it in Tamil Nadu. The relative position of districts progressiveness in dairying, meat and livestock by identifying resources and infrastructure disparity among the districts was studied by application of factor analysis through principal component method. Multi-stage sampling procedure was adopted to select the sample respondents. In the first stage, two districts were chosen from highly progressive category of districts and two districts were chosen from least progressive category of districts of Tamil Nadu. In the second stage, two blocks were selected randomly from each of the district selected. In the third stage, from each block, six villages were selected by simple random sampling and from each selected village 10 farmers who availed livestock services from different service providers were selected, thus constituting a sample size of 480 for the study. Lack of regulations to deal with use of veterinary drugs was an important issue and it was rated top constraint by the practitioners. High cost of drugs makes it difficult for the practitioners to source them, stock them and use it in times of need. The practitioners travelled for long distance to attend a particular case and incurred heavy expenditure on vehicle maintenance and fuelling charges. Due to absence of diagnostic facilities, the treatment offered becomes so risky in certain circumstances. Another important constraint felt by the private practitioner was the farmers inability to pay for service after availing the service, rendering the practitioners to accept the service delivered on credit basis. newline