Role of Woman Entrepreneur on Maintenance of Chawki Rearing Centre and its Impact on Sericulture Industry: A Case Study

Abstract

In sericulture industry, rearing of young age silkworm larvae needs utmost care to make them disease resistant till spinning of cocoons. Taking up young age silkworm rearing by farmer himself may not yield successful crop as he/ she may not have sufficient facilities to rear them. To overcome this, “The Chawki rearing centres”- (CRC) were introduced by Central Silk Board and popularized with the support of Department of Sericulture, Govt. of Karnataka. In CRC, the trained and registered owner rears the young age silkworm upto 8 ~ 10days and distributes to farmers on payment basis. The farmer rears these larvae till spinning of cocoons and market the same in cocoon market. In Karnataka there are quite a good number of CRC owners and among them one woman entrepreneur Smt. Pratima L. M. from Anekal Taluk, Bangalore District has been selected for the case study. She started CRC in the name of “KISSAN” with a capacity to rear 20,000 disease free layings/ month and distributes to the farmers of Anekal region, Bangaluru district. Within three years, her initial loan/investment of Rs. 21 lakhs was repaid and presently she is earning a profit of more than 10lakhs/ year. Because of CRC Concept, the farmers are most benefitted as they can concentrate more on the mulberry garden maintenance and disinfection of the rearing house and appliances so that they can harvest quality cocoons of 65 ~ 70kgs./ 100dfls. The role of woman entrepreneur in developing Kissan CRC to cater the needs of Sericulture farmers and also creating continuous rural employment to the youths of the region is discussed.