A Rs 50 Lakh Government Bet on India’s Most Overlooked Livestock, and Why the Real Test Begins After the Breeding Unit Opens
In the Halar region of Gujarat’s Saurashtra coast, the Bharwad and Rabari pastoralists have migrated seasonally for centuries, moving their flocks across arid scrubland with an all-white, sure-footed companion walking beside them. The Halari donkey, native to the Jamnagar and Dwarka districts, carried their belongings up to 40 km a day, crossed terrain that no tractor could reach, and then returned without complaint. By 2022, according to surveys by the non-profit Sahjeevan and the Centre for Pastoralism, fewer than 469 of these animals remained. What was once a working breed that shaped the economic rhythm of an entire pastoral community had come within touching distance of vanishing entirely.
This is the animal that the Government of India, after decades of policy neglect, has now decided to rescue, and, in the same breath, turn into a business opportunity.
From 9.6 Lakh to 1.2 Lakh: A Collapse Hidden in Census Tables
The scale of India’s donkey crisis does not announce itself loudly. It arrives in the dry language of livestock census data and then lands like a hammer.
In 1992, India had approximately 9.6 lakh donkeys. By 2007, that number had fallen to 4.4 lakh. The 19th Livestock Census of 2012 recorded 3.2 lakh. By the time the 20th Livestock Census was published in October 2019, only 1.23 lakh remained, a collapse of 61.2% in a single seven-year period. The government’s own press release noted that donkeys and camels were the only two species showing persistent declining trends across the last four consecutive censuses. Every other major livestock category either held steady or grew. The donkey stood alone in its freefall.
The reasons are layered and, in part, brutal. Mechanisation is the structural explanation: brick kilns, construction sites, and rural transport routes that once needed donkeys have graduated to motorised alternatives. Rajasthan, which recorded 23,000 donkeys in 2019, the highest of any state, saw its population fall by 71.31% between 2012 and 2019 alone, according to research published in Agricultural Reviews. Gujarat registered a 70.94% fall in the same period, Uttar Pradesh 71.72%.
But beneath the mechanisation story runs a darker current. A 2021 investigative study titled The Hidden Hide, conducted by journalist Sharat K. Verma for the NGO Brooke India and submitted to the Union Animal Husbandry Commissioner, documented a clandestine donkey hide trade operating across Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Gujarat. The driver is ejiao, a gelatin derived from boiled donkey skin that is central to traditional Chinese medicine, used as a blood tonic and believed to treat insomnia, anaemia, and poor circulation. The global ejiao industry requires an estimated 2.3 to 4.8 million donkey skins annually, according to a Congressional Research Service report published by the US Library of Congress in 2023. China’s own donkey population declined from 11 million in 1992 to 2.6 million by 2019, according to a Down To Earth investigation, redirecting Chinese procurement networks toward India and Africa. Slaughter and trade of donkeys for meat and hide is illegal in India under existing Food Safety and Standards Authority regulations, but enforcement remains, according to Brooke India, largely absent.
Rs 50 Lakh and a Question Worth Asking
In a Cabinet-approved modification to the National Livestock Mission on 21 February 2024, the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying extended its Entrepreneurship Development component to include donkeys, horses, and camels, species that previous iterations of the scheme had largely overlooked. The centrepiece of this extension is a 50% capital subsidy, capped at Rs 50 lakh, for anyone who wishes to establish a donkey breeding unit. The only conditions are a minimum herd of 50 female and five male donkeys, indigenous breeds only, and a bank-approved project report. The subsidy arrives in two instalments, the first after loan approval, the second after project completion and verification.
A project worth Rs 1 crore, which is a realistic estimate for a 55-animal breeding unit with infrastructure, would attract Rs 50 lakh from the government, with the balance financed through a scheduled bank or financial institution via SIDBI. Eligible applicants include individuals, Farmer Producer Organisations, Self-Help Groups, Joint Liability Groups, and Section 8 companies.
The scheme is economically targeted at a genuine gap. Donkey milk sells informally at Rs 2,000 to Rs 7,000 per litre in India, according to Dr Yash Pal, Director of the ICAR-National Research Centre on Equines in Hisar, Haryana. At the premium end, that figure exceeds the price of saffron-infused artisan dairy products aimed at urban wellness consumers. The premium is not manufactured. A 2023 peer-reviewed study published in the journal Foods by researchers at ICAR-NRCE Hisar characterised Halari donkey milk as having just 0.86% fat, 2.03% protein content, and lactose levels strikingly close to human breast milk, making it relevant for infant nutrition and for adults with bovine milk allergies. ICAR-NRCE itself established what is believed to be India’s first donkey milk dairy facility, sourcing Halari breed animals from Gujarat, precisely because of this nutritional and pharmaceutical potential.
Europe has understood this for years. Italy, France, Belgium, and Greece have established donkey milk industries; Europe accounted for more than 35% of the global donkey milk market revenue in 2023, according to market research firm SkyQuestt. India’s Aadvik Foods launched Lac Jennius, a donkey milk cereal product, in August 2021, signalling that at least one domestic entrepreneurial bet has already been placed. The cosmetics sector, where donkey milk functions as a luxury ingredient, adds a second revenue channel. The global donkey milk market is projected to grow through 2034, driven by nutraceutical and cosmetics demand, according to analysis by Zion Market Research.
The business case is real. But the operational constraints require honest acknowledgment. A single jenny produces between 200 ml and 1.5 litres of milk per day, a yield dwarfed by dairy cattle and buffaloes. Equine veterinary infrastructure outside specialised research centres is thin. Maintaining a 55-animal herd for a breeding unit is a significant management commitment for most smallholder applicants. And donkey milk has no FSSAI-standardised commercial framework yet, meaning the formal market for it remains largely aspirational in scale.
Conservation Wrapped in Commerce
The NLM scheme’s restriction to indigenous breeds is where conservation policy and agricultural subsidy find their least-discussed intersection.
India has four recognised indigenous donkey breeds: the Halari and Kachchhi from Gujarat, the Spiti from Himachal Pradesh, and the Ladakhi from Ladakh. Of these, the Halari is the most documented and the most endangered. It was not registered as a distinct breed until 2015 and was not counted separately in the 20th Livestock Census of 2019, meaning its real numbers remained obscured within the generic donkey category for years. The ICAR-National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources in Karnal launched a three-year in situ conservation project for the Halari in 2023, deploying molecular genetic characterisation alongside field surveys to stabilise the breed’s germplasm. At the Saurashtra Maldhari Sammelan addressed by then-Union Minister Parshottam Rupala, the government acknowledged the Halari’s threatened status explicitly and called for a dedicated conservation roadmap.
The NLM subsidy, if well directed, could fund the population recovery that NBAGR’s science needs on the ground. The Bharwad and Rabari pastoralists who have historically reared the Halari do not need convincing of the animal’s value. They have been its custodians for generations, the women of the community managing the animals while the men lead migration routes. What they have needed is economic incentive strong enough to override the easier income from selling animals to hide traders or simply abandoning the practice. Donkey milk, priced at Rs 7,000 per litre, provides that incentive in a way that no conservation notification alone ever could.
Ramesh Bhati of the Centre for Pastoralism told Mongabay-India that linking Halari donkeys to the milk economy had already begun restoring the motivation of pastoral communities to resume traditional rearing. That linkage, scaled through NLM funding, is the scheme’s most credible conservationist argument.
The Scheme the Market Has Not Yet Built
There is a structural irony at the heart of the NLM donkey initiative. The government is offering Rs 50 lakh to build supply for a product whose organised demand infrastructure barely exists. There are no cold-chain systems calibrated to donkey milk’s particular requirements. There is no FSSAI product standard for commercial donkey milk. There are no large-format retail buyers, no institutional procurement channels, and no consumer awareness campaign attached to the subsidy. An entrepreneur who successfully breeds 50 Halari jennies and milks them daily would produce, optimistically, between 10 and 75 litres per day, and then face the task of finding buyers in a market that remains, for most of India, entirely theoretical.
This is not a reason to dismiss the scheme. India’s camel milk industry faced the same scaffolding deficit a decade ago and has since developed processing infrastructure, packaging standards, and a small but growing urban consumer base. Aadvik Foods, which pioneered that market, now uses camel milk in everything from chocolate to protein supplements. The pathway for donkey milk exists. But the government’s present contribution is limited to the breeding-side subsidy; the market-building side is conspicuously absent from the policy frame.
What is needed alongside the Rs 50 lakh capital subsidy is a parallel investment in demand creation: FSSAI standardisation, pilot procurement by ayurvedic pharmaceutical companies, integration with existing equine research networks, and consumer education. Without that, the scheme risks producing breeding units that succeed biologically and fail commercially, the animal revived but the farmer unrewarded.
India’s relationship with the donkey is older than its cities. The animal arrived in the subcontinent roughly 5,000 years ago from North Africa, carried trade routes, built temples, and walked the margins of every major civilisation that rose on this land. It was never celebrated, rarely counted, and systematically abandoned the moment something faster or cheaper appeared. The NLM scheme of February 2024 is, in that long history, the first time the Indian state has formally decided that this animal’s survival is worth Rs 50 lakh of public money. Whether that money translates into a genuine revival, for the Halari breed in Gujarat, for the pastoral families in Saurashtra, for the small entrepreneurs willing to gamble on a niche protein market, will depend not on the subsidy’s size but on whether the government has the patience to build the market that must absorb what the breeding units produce. The beast of burden now needs the system to carry its weight in return.
Key Facts
- The Government of India modified the National Livestock Mission on 21 February 2024 to include donkeys, horses, and camels under its Entrepreneurship Development component, offering a 50% capital subsidy capped at Rs 50 lakh for establishing donkey breeding units.
- India’s donkey population collapsed by 61.2% between 2012 and 2019 alone, falling from 3.2 lakh to 1.23 lakh, according to the 20th Livestock Census of 2019. In 1992, the population stood at approximately 9.6 lakh.
- Mechanisation accounts for much of the structural decline, but a documented clandestine donkey hide trade, driven by Chinese demand for ejiao, a traditional medicine gelatin derived from boiled donkey skin, has accelerated population loss, according to a 2021 Brooke India investigative study.
- Donkey milk sells at Rs 2,000 to Rs 7,000 per litre in India and has been scientifically characterised as nutritionally close to human breast milk, with applications in infant nutrition, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics. ICAR-NRCE in Hisar set up what is believed to be India’s first donkey milk dairy facility.
- The scheme covers individuals, FPOs, SHGs, JLGs, and Section 8 companies. A minimum breeding unit of 50 female and five male donkeys is required. Only indigenous breeds are eligible.
- India has four recognised indigenous donkey breeds: Halari and Kachchhi from Gujarat, Spiti from Himachal Pradesh, and Ladakhi from Ladakh. The Halari, with fewer than 469 animals recorded in 2022, is critically threatened.
- ICAR-NBAGR launched a three-year in situ conservation project for the Halari breed in 2023, combining molecular genetic characterisation with field support to pastoral communities.
- The critical policy gap is the absence of market-building infrastructure alongside the breeding subsidy: no FSSAI product standard for commercial donkey milk, no cold-chain systems, no organised demand channels.
- Europe, led by Italy, France, and Belgium, already has an established donkey milk industry; Europe accounted for more than 35% of global donkey milk market revenue in 2023, according to SkyQuestt. India’s Aadvik Foods launched a donkey milk cereal product in 2021.
