Written by Praveen K Sharma -Mandi(HP)

pic credit-Praveen K Sharma

Life dares every existence, a few are burdened and break down. While others convert them into opportunities. The ones who brave the challenges set an example for the reluctant.

Upasana and Manjit Sharma are the trendsetters from Himachal Pradesh. They have paved a novel path to relish and earn while enjoying the village life. Their lives in the metro were tossed, when the world was hit by   COVID-19.

The Beginning

Born in Pingla, a small village in Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh, Manjeet Sharma did his primary education in the village itself. After pursuing hotel management as a professional course in 2010, he started working in Delhi.

During that time, he worked with hotel groups like Le Meridien and Town Plaza. In the year 2014 Manjeet Sharma Shifted to a Tours and Travel company “Nature Safari”. With his hard work and dedication, he rose to the post of Sr. General manager in the company.

While working in that Tours and Travel company, Manjeet got an opportunity to explore different parts of the country and experience the living and needs of the people closely. During his tours in the rural areas of the country, he saw different breeds of cows and was surprised to know that many breeds of cows in India like Sahiwal, Gir, and Sindhi give superfluous milk.

What Himachal offered

Opposite this Himachal Pradesh has a hill breed cow that gives very little milk. Good breed cows are not easily available in the state. After evaluating the concept, an idea comes to his mind of opening a dairy and breeding center for local breeds of cows in his village, so that good quality of cows are easily available to farmers.

But there was a difficulty in it, Manjit’s village was far away from Mandi and Sundaranagar town. Because of this, the milk market was not easily available to the farmers and they would find it difficult to buy cows. To solve this problem, Manjit leased 10 bighas of land between Mandi and Sundernagar town.

Determination

To make the dairy work go well, Manjeet trained one of his cousins ​​for animal husbandry. He made him responsible for the dairy as well. They built a cowshed for the cows on the leased land. In 2017, the first cow was bought.

But it was Manjit’s misfortune that after some time, his cousin ditched him and ran away by forging money. Manjit faced a big financial loss by this. Manjit had to bring his parents from the village to take care of the cows. After a lot of hard work and time, the dairy came back on track.

The tourism business in India suffered a major setback due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Manjit’s company also suffered a loss of around Rs 16 crore. Many employees had to come home. In such circumstances, Manjit also had to return from Delhi along with the family. It was a bad time for Manjeet and his family.

Tiny Steps

After spending some time in despair, Upasana and Manjeet decided to start the dairy and breeding work with full dedication. They contact some breeding centers in Haryana and Rajasthan and purchased cows and calves of Sahiwal, Gir, and other good milking varieties. In this way, he established his dairy and breeding center.

It was the result of the hard work and dedication of Manjit, his parents, and his wife that this family soon increased their number of cows to 80. During this time, he has also sold more than 100 cows to needy farmers. Manjit sends 70 to 80 liters of milk to Sundernagar every day and looking at the quality of milk, some families travel 20 kilometers and come to get dairy milk every day.

Along with this, the demand for other milk products such as ghee and paneer is increasing along with the sale of cow dung and cow urine has increased his financial benefits.

Smiles

Manjeet says that now his whole heart is to pursue this business and due to this business, apart from his family members, four people have got permanent and about 10 people have got temporary employment. Even after incurring all expenses, he can save about Rs 1 lakh monthly, which was not at all possible in Delhi.

He considers Covid 19 as a beneficial period for him and says that if this time would not have come, he would hardly have engaged in this work with so much patience. In the future, he plans to build a dairy farm of 1000 cows. He is confident that with the support of the family, he will accomplish this goal soon.